Saturday, January 29, 2011
Video Of The Week: Egyptian Protesters Take The Kasr Al Nile Bridge In Cairo, And More
'Democracy is great in theory, but if it will cause any disruption to business as usual, we prefer dictatorship'...
Read "Dead-Enders on the Potomac", MERIP on the U.S. response to the overthrow of the Tunisian government and the unseating of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
[Source, CNN iReport]
Labels:
Africa,
Democracy,
Egypt,
Liberation Movement,
Middle East,
North Africa,
Tunisia,
US Foreign Policy
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The 2011 "Weather Report" For America's War On Afghanistan - It's Going To Be A Stormy Blood-Soaked Year
Afghanistan (Combat Incident) Summary
by babatim on November 7th, 2010
See here for January 15 2011 update, "The Start of a Long Year"
[Click thumbnail for a larger chart]Breakdown of TB (Taliban)/ AGE (Anti-Government Element [ie. Tribal Fighters]) incidents by Regions:Main types of attacks have remained consistent with earlier weeks; IEDs (163 – previous week 164) have remained the numbers one tactic, followed by CPX (complex) attacks (82 – previous week 81), SAF (Small Arms Fire) attacks (76 – previous week 101) and rocket / mortar attacks (43 – previous week 42).
1. South-eastern Region
(140 incidents – 36% of countrywide incidents)
2. Southern Region (125 incidents – 32%)
3. Eastern Region (36 incidents – 9%)
4. Central Region (34 incidents – 9%)
5. Western Region (21 incidents – 5%)
6. North-eastern Region (21 incidents – 5%)
7. Northern Region (16 incidents – 4%)
8. Central Highlands (0 incidents)
Suicide attacks have continued with average of 2.5 attacks per weekly, which is slightly lower than last year’s weekly average of 3 attacks per week. However, due to increasing usage of suicide bombers in complex attacks, the amount of “used” suicide bombers have continued increasing in Afghanistan.
If the same trend will continue throughout the winter we will have total of approx 17500 – 18000 TB / AGE initiated incidents on this year, which would be approx 80% higher than last year.
And if the current trend would continue throughout the next year we could be witnessing approx 34000 – 36000 TB / AGE initiated incidents during the next year.
Although this is unlikely scenario and more likely the increase of attacks will not continue with the current pace, the outlook of next year is grim....
Source, and more
[Note: The statement "Both sides of the conflict" implies government and anti-government elements of the population]
Friday, January 21, 2011
For SOME PEOPLE 'Endless War' Validates Their Religious Delusions - Apocalyptic and Crusading Xtian Cults Infest The US Military
Also See: Welcome to Crusade 2.0, The Really Really Long War... "Let's imagine that the Cold War was a detour. The entire 20th century, in fact, was a detour... ...For those who see Islam as a civilizational threat, the key dates aren't 1945 or 1989 but rather 1683, 1492, 1099, and 732."
It's notable some of America's military leaders are Kinky SICK FUCKS too!
From 2002:
"UN struggles to explain away presence of US-Sponsored Iraq weapons inspector with S&M fetish"
In short, Harvey John "Jack" McGeorge, a former Secret Service officer "who has no specialised degree in any of the relevant sciences", HAS considerable expertise in unusual sexual practices.
Despite his lack of background "He runs a business offering seminars on "weaponisation of chemical and biological agents" but his OTHER businesses offer "training seminars of a different kind involving "various acts conducted with knives and ropes". This relates to his role as co-founder of Black Rose, a "pansexual S&M group" based in Washington, and also as a founder of Leather Leadership Conference IN, which "produces training sessions for current and potential leaders of the sadomasochistic/ leather/fetish community".
When "Outed", McGeorge tendered his resignation, but the Pentagon refused to accept it.
Story @ PrisonPlanet.
The original Independent UK story link is dead, but remembered personally
Now, the featured presentation
"The Christian fundamentalists have a fear and loathing of Islam even older than that of the Zionists.
For the fundamentalists September 11 opened the door to a new crusade, to the renewal of the age old battle between Christendom and Islam now brought into the heartland of America.
Thus, Christian fundamentalist organizations in the state of Oklahoma, led by State Representative Rex Duncan, have pushed legislation that would prohibit the state’s courts from using Sharia law to decide any cases.
This nonsensical gesture (American courts are bound to use American law) was “passed overwhelmingly in both the house and senate” of Oklahoma. (Hailey Branson-Potts, OkGazette.com, “State Question 755,” October 6, 2010).
At the foreign policy level, both groups lobbied for the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. ~~Islamophobia as a Form of Paranoid Politics, Lawrence Davidson, Logos Journal 2011: Vol.10, Issue 1
You've been on-duty for a couple of weeks now in an ICBM missile silo's artificial atmosphere... it's disenfranchised environment, and your finger is on the
BIG RED BUTTON.
Apocalyptic "Christianity" helps steady the nerves when the phone rings with the bad news...
It's the "GO" code.
It IS 'Gods Will', after all... Hail Mary full of... [Click]
...and that's NOT all folks!
USAF Academy Taps Member of "Lord's Army" to Speak at National Prayer Luncheon
•
•
•The National Prayer Breakfast is sponsored by The Fellowship, a foundation associated with The Family, a secretive group of influential Christian lawmakers and politicians whose mission is to advance the evangelical Christian agenda in Washington and across the world.
An anonymous MRFF client and spokesperson attending the Air Force Academy issued a statement on Tuesday claiming that an email sent to everyone at the academy made it clear that the attendance at the luncheon, although technically optional, is strongly encouraged:
.. when the base-wide e-Mail begins with a highlighted statement:it's not hard for so many of us here at USAFA [US Air Force Academy] to conclude that the senior leadership is STRONGLY encouraging attendance. The attached flyer goes on to say that you can purchase his book at the BX and that he'll be available to sign it, too. A visit to his web site, though, and one gets the impression that, while everyone on base is invited to attend, this isn't going to be the most inclusionary event of the year.The Air Force Academy and the MRFF have been butting heads over the evangelical influence at the academy for some time now. The MRFF charges that academy cadets are pressured into joining evangelical groups and attending Bible studies, while the academy has made public attempts to promote religious diversity by offering more types of religious services at its chapel and assessing the spiritual "climate" at the academy.
The first paragraph reads "Clebe is what he likes to call a complete Marine. To him, USMC will always mean a U.S. Marine for Christ." I can only conclude that anyone that doesn't share his particular religious view must be an "incomplete Marine," (or soldier, or [sailor], or airman) unworthy of the uniform. And shouldn't it be USMC as in "US Marine for the Constitution?" That's the document he swore to defend when he was commissioned.
It's a National Prayer Luncheon, but the message [couldn't] be clearer to those who may pray to a different deity or those that have a more ecumenical interpretation of their god - if you're not an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian, this event isn't for you. Yet senior academy leadership seems to want us there anyway.
Last September, Air Force Academy graduate and MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told Truthout that an anonymous Air Force cadet contacted him and claimed to be part of a "underground" group of about 100 cadets, who came together because they could not rely on legitimate channels to address pressure from evangelicals in the academy.
Weinstein's source said that some cadets pretended to be evangelical and attended services and Bible studies in order to maintain standing among their peers and superiors... [In Full @ Truthout]
Seymour Hersh Claims High-Ranking Members Of The US Military Belong To Christian Cults
Hersh was quoted as saying"Don't they get it? We're gonna change moseques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.' That's the attitude. We're gonna chance mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC]."He further claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC were members of the "Knights of Malta" and "Opus Dei," two little known Catholic orders."They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally,"Hersh reportedly continued."They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent "the whole notion that this is a culture war" between religions.
It was President George W. Bush who first invoked images of a holy war in the Middle East, when he suggested soon after Sept. 11, 2001 that the US was on a "crusade" in the region.
The "Knights of Malta" were a Catholic order founded in 1085 as a group of monks who cared for the wounded. It evolved into a military order that safeguarded Christian pilgrims from Muslims during the nine "Crusades," where Europe's Christian states laid siege to Muslims for control of Jerusalem.
"Opus Dei," popularly depicted in the Hollywood film "The DaVinci Code," was founded in 1928 and officially accepted as part of the Catholic church in 1947. The group's website claimed their principle calling was to bring about a "Christian renewal" around the world.
In Full @ Truthout
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Voices From The (Santa Cruz) Village: Controversy at the "Red Church" - Is The City Interfering With The Church's Homeless Outreach Program?
[This Video Is One Hour Long... Pop Out Player?]
Louis LaFortune, host of Santa Cruz Community Television's "Voices From The Village" hosts a roundtable discussion with local leaders about the situation between the city and Calvary Episcopal Church's homeless outreach program, which illustrates the unnecessary city-driven adversarial relationship between the independent homeless programs of Santa Cruz and the city, with Father Joel Miller, Pastor at Calvary Church, Richard Enriquez, a Calvary Church volunteer, Don Lane, Santa Cruz City Councilman, and Scott Galloway, Calvary Church volunteer/former Santa Cruz Metro Transit District Director, and others.Video source: Santa Cruz Community Television
The document in question is Here... Written by FORMER city councilmember Cynthia Matthews, the document is a letter to the archdiocese of the Episcopalian church on a Santa Cruz city letterhead requesting their assistance in forcing Reverend Joel Miller of the Calvary Episcopal Church to end the homeless assistance program by pretty much falsely claiming alleged 'behavioral problems' and 'noise issues' "requiring" 'excessive' police and emergency service calls.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
...And The BREAKING STORY In Santa Cruz California Today Is:
"Santa Cruz and Watsonville Compete For In-N-Out Burger"H/t: Gleaned From January 19 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary ('Cheap Crap' - It's The Bottom Line For 'The American Lifestyle' And China's Monetary Policy) @ Razed By Wolves
[ DoubleDouble Greezy GutBomb ]That's right... In one of the most expensive places to live in the US, with simple one-room apartment rentals in the $1,000 dollar range (Student style @ $650/month for a closet of a room in someone's house with three other people is also a possibility) and also notable nationwide for one of the highest unemployment rates as well, the city is concerned about attracting a fast food restaurant paying minimum wages.
The rent will eat up more than half of the closet dweller's income.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
America "Profiled": 'Countries With Wide Income Inequality Are Unstable, Have Large Underclasses, High Rates Of Crime & Little Opportunity'
Alternet:If current trends continue, “The United States by 2043 will have the same income inequality as Mexico.” (Tula Connell, Mar 12, 2010, AFL-CIO Now.)
The Class War Launched by America's Wealthiest Is Getting More Savage
By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet
January 13, 2011We’re in a class war.
It’s the corporations and the very wealthiest against all the rest of us. We’re losing.
In 1962 the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much.
Is that a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, just a few of them a little bit higher? No.
From 1950 to 1965, median family income rose from $24,000 a year to $38,000 a year. That’s close to 4 percent a year, close to 60 percent over 15 years. That’s a rising tide.
In 1964 there was a big tax cut. That’s when things started to slow down for average people. By the mid-'70s the rise of the middle class stalled. From 1975 to 2010 median family income rose $42,936 to $49,777. That’s not quite 16 percent over 25 years, less than six-tenths of 1 percent per year.
Briefly, when taxes went up under Clinton, median income rose, peaked at $52,587 in 1999, and then, after Bush cut taxes, declined. Keep in mind that this is median family income. In the '50s and '60s, family income was usually earned by a single person. Today, family income normally comes from at least two people.
At the same time, income for the richest soared. In 1979 the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of all U.S. income. Now they earn 24 percent of all U.S. income. One percent of Americans earn nearly one-fourth of all the income in the country.Then came the crashes of 2001 and 2008 and the recessions that followed.
The crash hasn’t changed anything. Things have become worse.
From 1990 to 2005, adjusted for inflation -- the minimum wage is down 9 percent, production workers’ pay is up only over 15 years 4.3 percent.
At the same time, the rich get richer:
Corporate profits are up 106.7 percent. The S&P 500 is still up 141.4 percent since 1990. CEO compensation is up 282 percent. Call it transfer of wealth. Or call it class warfare.
What’s wrong with the rich getting richer?
Slate's Timothy Noah, in "The United States of Inequality," wrote, “Income distribution in the United States [has become] more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.”
Take a look at that list.Countries with wide income inequality don’t lead the world in research, technology, industry, and innovation. They’re unstable. They have large underclasses. They have high rates of crime. They have little opportunity.
In such countries the rich have disproportionate power. They take control of all aspects of society, especially government, the police, and the judiciary. They become self perpetuating.
If current trends continue, “The United States by 2043 will have the same income inequality as Mexico.” (Tula Connell, Mar 12, 2010, AFL-CIO Now.)
Countries with high levels of income inequality are third-world countries... "...Here’s how regular people can deal with cultures of high inequality."
(All The Country Grrrrls Know) It Ain't Easy Being 'Duhks' In A "Fast Paced World"' [Quaaaaa!]
[Video - The Making Of Fast Paced World]
Saturday, January 15, 2011
“Hey! We TOLD the Bitch to shut up” - AZ Teatard Leader On Gabrielle Giffords
NOT MY TRIBE
1/13/2011
Translated into plain English that is...
Basically Mr Humphries said that anybody who has a Palin contract out on him should go into hiding.
Quote: The Arizona congresswoman shouldn’t have attended an event “in full view of the public” if she had security concerns, according to Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries.“It’s political gamesmanship,” he told the Guardian. “The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?”Yeah, how DARE somebody stand up and speak publicly even though the TeaBags had targeted her?
I guess if Mr Humphries were ever threatened he would just shut up AND go into hiding. Just because TeaBags are cowards the rest of are supposed to follow their sick example...
MORE @ Not My Tribe
Again... Just for the record...
(Click the Teabag for "Poison Control" information and therapy advice for
"Teabaggers Syndrome", a psychological disorder affecting many Americans)
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Your Infrastructure Will Be Your Undoing - One Reason Why Natural Gas CANNOT Replace The 20% Of Coal-Fired Powerplants Due Offline By 2015
In the San Francisco Chronicle today:
Feds put nation's pipeline operators on notice
Federal safety officials responding to the findings of the San Bruno disaster probe issued a nationwide bulletin Wednesday urging operators... of natural-gas pipelines to verify they have accurate records about their lines and to cut pressure on them if they don't.
The regulators took the unusual step in response to the discovery that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had erroneous records about the high-pressure gas line that exploded in San Bruno in September, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
The revelation raised questions about whether the utility had set the line's maximum allowable operating pressure too high and whether it had used an inspection method for the pipe that was ill suited to detect some possible weaknesses... [Read more]
Even as America comes to depend more and more on Natural Gas for it's energy needs, and it WILL ramp up even more dramatically as that 20% of all coal-fired power plants, 50,000 MW of nation's dirtiest coal plants, begins to go offline due to EPA regulations, one can begin to see that flammable gases are MUCH more dangerous than the 'Bunker Fuels' and Coal traditionally used in power generation.This isn't some fanciful initiative Lisa Jackson dreamed up one day.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to continually update pollution limits to reflect the latest science. The U.S. District Court, for instance, has ordered the EPA to set new mercury standards by the end of next year. As a result, new rules are now coming down the pike on smog-forming pollutants, on mercury, on coal ash...
...according to industry analysts, many coal plants will have to shut down...":[The rules] would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances. Many of those plants are about 50 years old and are already inefficient. "Those investments are just not going to be justifiable," said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs at Ceres, a group of environmentalists and institutional investors.In Full @ New Republic
Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "
But that's not all. Gases are hard to contain in the material's transmission infrastructure itself, EVEN WHEN THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS SHINY NEW, and the source needs to be somewhat nearby the end user to prevent massive product and by-product losses which also pollute heavily.
In the United States, methane emissions from natural gas distribution mains accounts for 32 percent of the industry's total methane emissions. (source)That means gas pipelines and infrastructure everywhere to control costs and pollution, leading inexorably to more stories like these over the last few days:
2,000 Evacuated After L.I. Propane LeakAnother news story today:
"A cracked plastic valve on a propane tank was the source of a leak that sent thousands of gallons of toxic, flammable liquefied propane gas..." More
Gas leak raises alarm at Miami elementary schoolColumbia Missouri:
Miami Fire-Rescue hazmat teams responded to a gas leak Saturday afternoon at Silver Bluff Elementary School.
The situation -- liquid propane gas leaking from three large tanks near the school cafeteria... More
Gas leak by new parking garage under control sourceLittle Rock Arkansas:
CenterPoint Energy fixing Pine Bluff gas leakIt could be worse, ALOT worse, like the blast that wiped the homes and people who were in them near a transmission pipeline in the suburban SF Bay city of San Bruno off the map a few months back.
PINE BLUFF, Ark. (KTHV) -- The Pine Bluff Fire Department has evacuated one block bordered by 3rd and 4th Streets, as well as Main and State Streets because of a gas leak. source
Considering the public safety track record of most power generation companies in the United State AND their state regulatory bodies...
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep....one would think that our everyday lives over the next few years, as the RUSH to 're-tool' our energy infrastructure intensifies with the typically concurrent lack of inspection/regulatory oversight (if only due to the lack of qualified inspection personnel), will become MUCH more dangerous.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush... In Full @ Alternet
References:
The New York Times: "Utilities shift to gas-based plants as alternative to coal"
Wall Street Journal: "Utilities are increasingly looking to natural gas to generate electricity"
Financial Times: "Wave of closures set to hit U.S. coal stations"
Denver Daily News: "PUC approves retiring Denver-area coal-fired plants, switching to natural gas"
Reuters: "Xcel to shut or convert Colorado coal power plants"
Chattanooga Times Free Press: "TVA to shutter coal plants, turn to nuclear"
Times Daily: "TVA to idle coal plants to cut emission output"
Charlotte Observer: "Duke considers closing old coal plants"
1984...Twenty Five Years On: The Surveillance State - You Are Being Conditioned On A Mass Scale To Accept It
"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it... All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals.It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of (Cf. minute 7:45 in the video for more on this...) their own children." ~~George Orwell, 1984
Note: This video is 9 minutes 26 second long!
Pop Out Player? Click Here
Feeling powerless kids?
Some things that have historically been effective in alleviating that feeling:
"Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies, and organisations of the National Socialist Party.Or: "Are you so shut down you can't feel no more?" (Tom Petty, When A Kid Goes Bad)
Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine ...
Sabotage in all the areas of science and scholarship which further the continuation of the war - whether in universities, technical schools, laboratories, research institutes, or technical bureaus..." ~~The third leaflet of the German anti-Nazi group the White Rose
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Global "Weather" Forecast For 2011 From Russian TV: Expect Stormy "Weather" And Potential "Lightning Strikes" In The United States
We Americans are exceptional... we're too 'stupidified' to revolt. Motivated by the hunger for 'stuff' and fearing anything that might upset the 'applecart' that supplies it, even if it's untenable for the long term and future of our children (and THEIR children) or outright murderous of people who happen to be in places 'needing to be bombed' in the American 'national interest'.
Also, we might miss "The Young And The Restless" while we're in the streets waiting for someone else to do our 'revolting' for us.
We will be continually kept psychologically off-balance and blinded by an ongoing savage blanket blitz advertising campaign hammering on us that we 'need' all that 'stuff', using the same technique, fear, that they sell us wars... on nations, and self-created 'terrorists' who in reality are typically rogue CIA agents like Osama bin-Laden and the mythical a-Qaeda, translated into English as "the database", which it was... They were the people on the CIA and Pentagon's database and payroll as allies in their war on Russia in Afghanistan.
Expect no civil rights, expunged one-by-one in the name of those wars based solely on lies... Just like the advertising of the "shiny... shiny..."
Expect no audience participation... (Snicker into cuff) ...because
The Revolution WILL NOT be televised.
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