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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

2 March - Sad to Silly Reports

 Red Earth

Native PrideArticle from Osawatomie (n°2), the clandestine...Image via Wikipedia

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is an American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier
Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act.
www.leonardpeltier.net
We will continually keep you updated on developments regarding Leonard’s FOIA requests and lawsuits.
freeleonard.org
 Leonard being taken to trialImage by Sheila Steele via Flickr
QUICK FACTS CASE OF LEONARD PELTIER . Leonard Peltier is an imprisoned Native American considered by Amnesty International ...
www.freeleonard.org/case/index.html

Free  Leonard Peltier (106 signatures on petition)
www.thepetitionsite.com/6/free-leonard-peltierPeltier's extraditionImage by Sheila Steele via Flickr 
As a result, Leonard Peltier has spent over 35 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. People are commonly set free due to a single constitutional violation ...
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/index1.htm

 

 TVNZ - News

 UK committee urges US-Taliban talks

The United States must hold direct talks with the Taliban if it is to have any hope of ending the Afghan war, an influential British parliamentary committee says.
The Foreign Affairs Committee said the military campaign was not working and urged the British government to use its influence in Washington to convince it to engage fully in direct talks with Taliban leaders.
"An Afghan-led, but US driven, process of political reconciliation is the best remaining hope that the UK and others have of achieving an honourable exit from Afghanistan," the report said.
The report was based on interviews with experts and officials.
Britain and the United States have long stressed the need for a political settlement in Afghanistan. But officials have also said any talks must be Afghan-led, and insisted military pressure is helping bring insurgents to the negotiating table.
The report, however, argued the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai did not have the clout to negotiate a settlement without the direct involvement of Washington.
"All of those from whom we took evidence were convinced that the US's direct endorsement of, and participation in, talks was essential if a peace settlement is to be brokered..."
It said that while the military campaign might be achieving tactical successes, the overall security situation remained precarious.
Current tactics might even reduce chances of a settlement by raising mistrust and radicalising the insurgency.

............

( As if this was news. ) 

 CAMP NEW JERSEY, Kuwait (March 21, 2003) - Maj...Image via Wikipedia

Petraeus Apologizes for Deaths of 9 Afghan Boys

Hat Tip Glenn Greenwald 

Image via Wikipedia The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.
The NATO statement, which included an unusual personal apology by the commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the boys had been misidentified as the attackers of a NATO base earlier in the day.
The attack on the boys occurred high in the mountains outside Nanglam in the Pech Valley of Kunar Province. American troops are preparing to close their bases in the valley in the next several weeks, in part because their presence has vexed the villagers, who would prefer to be left alone. The area is poor, and the only major road was built to service Forward Operating Base Blessing, according to local residents. 
President Hamid Karzai, who was in London for an official visit, condemned the attack “in the strongest terms possible.”
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -AUGUST 27 : A handicapped...Image by Getty Images via @daylife Calling it “ruthless,” he questioned whether the Western goals of combating terrorism and securing Afghanistan could be achieved if civilians continued to die.

 Home Nature Report

A Democratic Egypt? Look at what happened in Iraq


Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq 

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges -- in fact, "ALL state enterprises" to foreign operators. 

 Airstrikes in Libya did not take place - Russian military

Disclaimer:

DON'T BELIEVE A DAMN WORD YOU READ ON THIS WEBSITE! 

( Not a bad motto. 'Management' does not claim infallible omnipotence about truth of what you read. )

Hundreds at London quake service

Around 2500 ex-pats filled the Westminster Cathedral, while a similar number braved the cold outside to take part in the prayer vigil.

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The Blaster
Comments on Politics, Foreign Policy, and Defense

Franklin C. (Chuck) Spinney


contributor to the online newsletter Counterpunch and occasionally to the Huffington Post. A compendium of my more important unclassified can be downloaded here. 

Kosovo: A Template for Bungling and Blowback in the Wars of Empire


Advocates of humanitarian intervention like to remember Kosovo as an example of a "good" war to distinguish it from Bush's bad war in Iraq and the Bush/Obama bungles in Afghanistan.  But Kosovo was really a template for bungling and blowback in the wars of empire that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The attached article summarizes some of the reasons why this is so.*
--------------
* For a summary of the military's lessons in Kosovo, see the discussion beginning on page 61 at this link.
GREGORY CLARK,  Japan Times, 1 March 2011
A recent Council of Europe report says that during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict, militia leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) tortured and killed hundreds of Serbs and political rivals in secret Albanian hideouts, removed their organs for sale and dumped their bodies in local rivers.
The report added that these people were also heavily involved in drug, sex and illegal immigrant trafficking across Europe. Yet while all this was going on, the NATO powers had decreed that Serbia should be bombed into accepting the KLA as Kosovo's legitimate rulers — rather than the more popular Democratic League of Kosovo headed by the nationalist intellectual Ibrahim Rugova advocating nonviolent independence. 
Recent years have not been kind to Western policymakers. They have shown an almost unerring ability to choose the wrong people for the wrong policies. Think back to the procession of incompetents chosen to rescue Indochina from the communist enemy. Does anyone even remember their names today? Yet at the time they were supposed to be nation-savers. ... continued.
 

Comic relief: Thomas Friedman as an analys--kid you not

 He also said that Arab revolted because they were impressed with the coverage by Aljazeera of Israeli democracy.  If he knows Arabic, he would have known that Aljazeera covers Israel extensively: but it mostly covers Israeli crimes. 


In Thawing Arctic, Fragile Food Web at Risk of Unraveling (Part I)

In Thawing Arctic, Fragile Food Web at Risk of Unraveling (Part II)

 In Thawing Arctic, Fragile Food Web at Risk of Unraveling (Part III)

Why is Obama prosecuting Tim DeChristopher, the gas-lease pranker?

The 77 leases were for areas near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument. They may as well have been drilling for oil in the National Gallery or the Kennedy Center.
Once Obama took office, his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, invalidated the leases and handed back the oil companies’ money.

‘Fracking’ Comes to Europe,Sparking Rising Controversy

Four miles from the seafront, in a series of farmers’ fields, a company called Cuadrilla Resources is putting down some of Europe’s first shale gas wells. UK-based Cuadrilla is hopeful that the Bowland Shale — the geological formation that runs through the area — will eventually yield millions of cubic feet of gas, possibly as much as 10 percent of the UK’s total needs. But environmental groups are raising alarms about the potential impact on water supplies, the landscape, and the UK’s wider energy policy.

Across Europe, a host of energy companies are exploring for unconventional deposits in what some are comparing to the great oil and gas rushes of the past. Exxon Mobil has bought up concessions in Germany and Poland. Shell is active in Sweden and Ukraine. Chevron is in Poland. Total is in Denmark and France. And Cuadrilla is also exploring in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

( See 'Water,Wealth and Power' - in the Topical Index - for unbelievably awful reports of permanent aquifer destruction...from Fracking )


Chevron sues Amazon natives it poisoned with toxins

Now that it looks like they’re going to lose – $27 billion or more! – Chevron is counter-suing the tribes. In New York. For a case they insisted only Ecuador had jurisdiction over.

GMOs: Devaluing the definition of “Organic”

NPR quotes Charles Benbrook, chief scientist for the Organic Center, as saying the anti-GMO campaign “could undermine the trust that increasing numbers of consumers have in organic food.” (Not the GMOs, of course… but the nasty campaign that points at them.)

Shoppers wary of GM foods find they're everywhere - CBS News
www.cbsnews.com

 

No seeds, no independent research
www.latimes.com
Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola — most of the acres planted in these crops in the United States are genetically altered. "Transgenic" seeds can save farmers time and reduce the use of some insecticides, but herbicide use is higher, and respected experts argue that some genetically engineered crops
 
'Jaan Ki Dushman - BT Cotton' (Enemy of Life - BT Cotton) Part 1 Short Film with English subtitles
www.youtube.com
‎'Jaan Ki Dushman - BT Cotton' (Enemy of Life - BT Cotton) Part 1 Short Film in Hindi Cast: Dr Sudhir Kumar Kaura Directed, Story & Music by: Dr Sudhir Kumar Kaura Dated: 3 November 2010 A Production of Bharatiyam Presents www.bharatiyam.co.cc This is a reality Film Depicting The Pain of An A
 
Future of genetically modified crop uncertain despite court victory
www.stltoday.com
When federal regulators gave farmers the green light to plant genetically modified alfalfa, some growers of the nation's fourth-largest crop
 
Control over your food: Why Monsanto's GM seeds are undemocratic
www.csmonitor.com
Large biotech agribusinesses like Monsanto control much of the global seed market with genetically modified (GM) crops. This centralization of GM seeds threatens food safety, food security, biodiversity, and democratic ideals.
 
 
 
Institute for Responsible Technology
Having escaped from a field the GMO bentgrass has spread to canals and drain ditches, because it grows best where there is a lot of water, according to David Bunker, a local applicator who is involved in identifying the spread and efforts to control the bent grass.

“It is in every single drain ditch,” Bunker said.
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2011/02/27/news/doc4d6a0e854ed35657251680.txt
www.argusobserver.com

SCIENTIST WARNS OF SAFETY OF MONSANTO'S ROUND-UP:
It's an emergency! Please read this.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-monsanto-roundup-idUSTRE71N4XN20110224

Scientist warns on safety of Monsanto's Roundup
www.reuters.com
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Questions about the safety of a popular herbicide made by Monsanto Co have resurfaced in a warning from a U.S. scientist that claims top-selling Roundup may contribute
 
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/02/center-for-food-safety-cfs-to-host-pig-business-documentary-screening/
Center for Food Safety (CFS) to Host Pig Business Documentary Screening
www.foodsafetynews.com
WHAT: A special screening of the documentary Pig Business with remarks by Robert Kennedy, Jr., followed by a panel discussion with leading experts on the effects that large factory pig farming operations have on workers; the environment, notably our waterways; food safety; independent pig farmers a
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz1_knWUpVk

California: New bill introduced to protect the Delta from the Peripheral Canal

ensure that the imperiled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is protected from potential conveyance projects to export water to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and southern California. 

The deficit hawks' war on children

 While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
 Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)

The Hindu

Blind development will hurt ecology and health: Jairam 

Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday criticised the country's “blind development plans” at the cost of ecological balance. 

Launching the country's first research centre on marine biodiversity at Jamnagar in the Saurashtra region for protection of the fragile coastal eco-system, he said it was clear from the popular agitations in different States that the people did not want development unless it simultaneously ensured protection of the environment.
In an oblique reference to the mushroom growth of ports and newer demands for setting up steel and cement plants in coastal areas, Mr. Ramesh asked: “What is the use of providing employment to the people if their health is not protected?” Uncontrolled development of industries caused environmental pollution and resulted in health hazards, particularly cough and cancer.
more slideshows »

U.S. authorities slap insider trading charges on Rajat Gupta 
U.S. court issues summons to Congress for anti-Sikh riots

News Tribune

Use of steam for Hanford cleanup creates concern

DOE has proposed steam reforming as one technology in a suite of technologies new to Hanford that it believes has the potential to reduce the cost of environmental cleanup of Hanford tank waste by billions of dollars and accelerate cleanup.
Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive waste held in tanks until it can be treated for disposal. DOE's plan is to divide the waste into high-level and low-activity waste streams.
All of the high-level waste will be turned into a stable glass form at the vitrification plant. It had been planned to be disposed of at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in a deep geological repository.
But the majority of the volume would be low-activity waste and the vitrification plant never was planned to be large enough to treat all of the low-activity waste in a time frame that DOE and regulators consider reasonable.
The treated low-activity waste would be buried at Hanford without the extra protection to the environment provided by a deep geological repository.
 

Renewable Energy is (Not) Great

Renewable energy displaces all types of generation, including natural gas, hydro and nuclear.  Renewables are also intermittent, meaning they are none of dispatchable, firm or flexible.  This intermittency can create system operating havoc and forces the need for additional natural gas-fired generation, to back up the renewables and integrate them into the power system.
Renewable project developers (don’t) need the current high prices to develop these projects

We (don’t) need smaller projects in the mix
When a developer of a large-scale solar project can make an attractive return while being paid 44.3 cents per kWh (about 6 times the commodity cost of energy), what does it say about the inherent inefficiency of paying 80.2 cents per kWh to a small, household project, for the same thing ?
It’s inefficient for society to pay a higher price for something when it can be provided at a lower price, on otherwise the same terms.  It’s true that there are some benefits to smaller, distributed projects but those benefits are dwarfed by the premiums paid for smaller projects.
There are similarities between Ontario’s micro-FIT projects and Chairman Mao’s encouragement of small backyard steel furnaces in 1958.  Output from the furnaces was poor and resources were applied uneconomically.  In early 1959, Mao realized his folly but didn’t order a halt to the program as he didn’t want to dampen the enthusiasm of the masses; the program was only quietly abandoned much later in that year.
  Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller was making the “the bill impact will be low because we’re doing just a small amount of this really expensive stuff” argument.  Don Dewees, an economics professor at the University of Toronto and respected energy policy researcher and commentator responded, “Well if it’s so expensive, why are we doing any of it at all ?”

In Other News . . .

  
They're Not Green
For too long we have been politically correct. We need to be scientifically correct and look for better solutions to solve our energy needs. Industrial wind power is not the answer.John Droz Jr., Physicist
Documentary

 

Stare At Boobs For Longer Life

 Moderating,trolls,soup ladles and ethics
( Yep. Everything from soup to nuts - on a grand scale. )

The steady-state environmental delusion
The continent we call the Antarctic used to be a green and verdant place till it split off and drifted to the cold south polar region to be encased in ice. Everything on it died.
The Dinosaurs were knocking about for 150 million years and died off about 65 million years ago. They got hit by a mass extinction but mass extinctions were old news by that time. It had all happened before and several times. There was one before theirs called the Great Extinction. That baby took out 95% of the species on our planet, even most of the insects, and we still don’t really know what caused it. About 2.4 billion years ago, another one of the extinction events was caused by new organisms releasing massive amounts of a poisonous gas into the atmosphere. It wiped out zillions of other organisms but a handful of them managed to adapt to it and thrive. The world recovered. The poisonous gas was called oxygen.

Close encounters of the purred kind: Aliens spoke to us in a 'cat-like language' claim Russian flight controllers


Guest Post by Gordon James Gianninoto: The Man from Planet X

Written by Rod Crawford, a real American professor in the state of Washington, this movie is now in the public domain and can be downloaded for free.

....a stroll across the moors finds a probe from Planet X and it is stronger than steel and five times as light. The shady Dr. Mears instantly plots to obtain the secret and become king of the earth, but others lighten it up by wondering where he would mine such metals. Further exploration reveals a pointed sphere has landed from Planet X and contains a short alien humanoid with a long face amazingly similar to the statue faces of Easter Island, which actually are portraits of the giant humans, the Annunaki, from Nibiru, which is Planet X of today. He has to breathe a special atmosphere, which if true would make an invasion difficult, I guess, but is no hindrance to plot development.

... In real life, Planet X needs large quantities of powdered gold to keep the warmth of the planet by putting it in the atmosphere on its long trip through space. Banned forever now by other ETs, the Annunaki came to earth and created man as slaves to mine gold. Everything I say about that is based onhttp://zetatalk.com and on the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, recently deceased.

( ZetaTalk is also cited at Pole Shift, which has those orbital shots of sea flooding in Indonesia...noted as fakes by one commenter )

ZetaTalk leads you through the vast amount of information being relayed by the Zetas in answer to questions posed to their emissary, Nancy. The ZetaTalk answers cover such subjects as portents of a Pole Shift and how this relates to the Transformation in process; how life in the Aftertime following this shift will be different from today; the self-centered or service-minded spiritual Orientation of humans as well as aliens from other worlds and how inadvertently giving the Call to aliens can put you in touch with one group or the other; how Visitations can be more easily interpreted when spiritual orientation is understood; how visitors from other Worlds are watched by the Council of Worlds, which has set Rules regulating their behavior; why we are only gradually getting acquainted with our visitors from other worlds, and what will allow the Awakening to occur faster; to what extent the Government is aware of and interacting with the alien presence; the true nature and reason for the Hybrids being developed by the Zetas to merge the best from both Zetans and Humans; why aliens can disappear and move through walls, and what both physical and spiritual Density changes will be like in the future; what the Zetas have to say about our Science theories; what the Zetas as students of human nature have concluded on what Being Human means; and straight ZetaTalk about our Myths.  

 

Wikileaks vs UFO Disinformation?

When the first mention of UFOs in the tranche of diplomatic papers unveiled by Wikileaks proved to be less than explosive, the ufological rumour machine went into interstellar overdrive with a wackyleak of its own, released on 17 January via ‘Allnewsweb’:
New secret UFO Wikileaks cable revealed
A source from within the inner circle of the Wikileaks team has confidentially leaked to All News Web the content of a State Dept cable, concerning UFO affairs, that Wikileaks has declined to upload onto their website.
“It is critical all embassy staff understand that they are not to discuss under any circumstance concerns DOD has with UFOs entering orbit, once again the seriousness of this matter cannot be overstated”
The cable was sent on 9 November, 2005 by the State Dept to a diplomat connected to the US embassy in Kiev, Ukraine.

 

 


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