Fair Use Note

WARNING for European visitors: European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. Learn more about this notice and your responsibilities.

Thomas Paine

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

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

1 Dec - The Fight for Head Room

Tamil Protest in TorontoImage by christopher.woo via Flickr
 fotoFRONTERA

La danza de los Pingüinos
El gatito amarillo
Ave azul entre los árboles nevados

Lilith News

The city of Toronto was snow free this November, the first time in 162 years that the city went snow-less during the 11th month of the year. 

Creekside

I reckon we've had just about enough of this bullshit
Shorter Harper : If you point the war crimes finger at me, I'll deflect it at the troops. Faced with mounting condemnation for government ass-covering over Richard Colvin's testimony about Afghan detaine...
( About that time it suddenly occured to me we likely have international treaty obligations regarding torture which should be looked at regarding rendition, Afghanistan,freeing of our citizens held out-of-country in War Crimes.... )

 Dr. John v. Kampen
UbuKubuntu - is Gnome 3 off track? 
*Having worked on the first Mac OS* the phenomenon of the computer 'desktop'-travesty has always accompanied me. My involvement goes back nearly 27 years. To be frank: visually hardly anything has fundame..

The Existentialist Cowboy -
Limbaugh Commits Prosecutable Treason 
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy Rush Limbaugh has urged that a military coup overthrow the current government in Washington. That is a prosecutable crime called 'seditious treason' and there is pro...

New IDF unit to fight enemies on Facebook, Twitter
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1131918.html
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office is to begin drafting computer experts with an eye toward establishing an Internet and new media department unit, Army Spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu said Monday.

Speaking at the Eilat Journalists Conference, Benayahu said the new department would focus on the Internet's social media networks mainly to reach an international audience directly rather than through the regular media.

Another spying scandal at Gitmo
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/another_spying_scandal_at_gitmo_I7hKkTOEivnunImP6QY4gI
A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees.
Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003.
The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.

Bill Clinton's Transformative Change Vs. Barack Obama's Incremental Change
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/12/1/111950/911
The Village Blogs have adopted Jacob Weisberg's clarion pom poms in arguing that President Obama is having the most transformative first year any Democrat has had since FDR. This strikes me as a ludicrous claim. Chris Bowers discusses Nathan Newman's much more reasonable claim that President Obama has achieved small progressive victories. Chris makes the salient point that Newman's list of achievements are largely a part of a temporary stimulus bill, not lasting, transformative change. I want to add a point I have made before - the biggest change in the first year of a Democratic Presidency since FDR was President Bill Clinton's revamping of the U.S. tax structure. Clinton has been labelled by these same pom pom wavers as an incrementalist, small bore President, but they always ignore, as they must, the most important progressive accomplishment of the past 40 years - the raising of taxes on the well off and the lowering of the tax burden on the less well off enacted by President Clinton. I'll repeat from my earlier post on the subject here:

[I]n 1993, Bill Clinton pushed through the most progressive legislation the US has had since the Johnson Administration. It was called, prosaically, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

The Mutual Fund Fraud
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/the-mutual-fund-fraud.php
All these government-sponsored savings vehicles—401(k), IRA, etc.—should be set up to strongly encourage people to put their money in indexes. It’s bizarre that the government is, by bipartisan agreement, basically complicit in encouraging people to funnel their savings into elaborate frauds. Why not teach this material to high school and college students?
( Ludicrous proposal : asking the fox to alert the game )

 The War
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/the-war.php

#

# Rob Mac Says:
December 1st, 2009 at 10:44 am

I wonder why war bonds have fallen out of favor.

They haven’t. We just call them Treasury Bonds now and sell them to the Chinese.
( Upstaged by a commenter. )

Amy Goodman on Her Detention at the Canadian Border: This is Democracy's Loss
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/amy-goodman-her-detention-canadian-border
Amy Goodman weighed in on Democracy Now about her detention at the Canadian border and what it might mean for assuring that there is still a free press in Canada and that journalists are not intimidated into not covering stories that the government thinks are harmful to corporate interests.
Full segment and transcript available at Democracy Now.

1 Dec - Following the Trail : Organized Destruction 

 ( A look at a seemingly  improbable  connection : Iran's nuclear power generating program, 'global warming', and infrastructure denial by the 'West' via a propaganda campaign of false claims of  'terrorism' and 'suspicion' . )

 

World AIDS Day: President Obama Earns a ‘D+’ in Fighting Global AIDS;
Organizations Call for Urgent Course Correction

http://healthgap.org/press/wad09_report_card_pr.htm

 

In Afghan Debate, Few Antiwar Op-Eds in Nation’s Two Leading Newspapers

President Obama has issued orders for a major escalation of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by sending 34,000 additional troops. Has the media helped beat the drum for war? A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reveals pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a huge margin in the OpEd pages of the nation’s two leading newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/1/study_in_afghan_debate_few_antiwar

Campaign Contributors Rewarded With Afghan Escalation

The Money Party: Permanent Estate Tax Cuts

Job Cuts Loom as Stimulus Fades

 Some toy drives check immigration status
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6746254.html

They don't claim to know who's been naughty or nice, but some Houston charities are asking whether children are in the country legally before giving them toys. 

In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss 

That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama’s election.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven. 

 WTO Chief Pascal Lamy: Free Trade and Interdependence Help Promote Freedom, Human Rights and Civil Liberties

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/1/study_in_afghan_debate_few_antiwar
( I can't speak for other countries : but when I studied Canadian history, the fight to establish a tariff wall so that east-west in-country trade had the same costs as the shorter north-south routes was an ongoing fight for forty years. Reversing that was on Nelson Rockefeller's agenda in 1945. In 1993 the Progressive Conservatives sponsored NAFTA : and went from 153 to 2 seats in the House. The Liberals brought it in; a blatant contradiction to their election platform. Now the minority government { Progressive Conservatives : an honest oxymoron } is doing the bidding of corporate sponsors : despite the near embarassment when the previous Liberal leader nearly managed to bring off a coalition government....until sabotaged by his party. I think we can figure out what happened there : the bagman calleth. )

Nelson Rockefeller on TIME Magazine, May 22, 1939Image via Wikipedia

 
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments:

Post a Comment