“Co-dependence”… 30 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements.66 comments
Birds sit on a giraffe’s neck in the Masai Mara game reserve, Kenya [Radu Sigheti/Reuters]
Doesn’t look so bad here, does it?
Summertime… 28 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, WAR!.111 comments
Gaza Strip, 26 May 2009: People gather by the sea to take advantage of a rare commodity in the territory: space. ‘It’s the one place where you can breathe good air,’ says one resident [Photograph: /Antonio Olmos]
under threat of fire..
****
Or, just under fire… Not sure why this photo appealed to me, appearing in the NYT tonight, with the story of a cop killing in Harlem.
Police officers near the scene where a fellow officer was shot at East 125th Street in Harlem on Thursday night. Patrick Andrade for The New York Times
At least by the time the quick report was in the Times, it seems not much was known.
The pic of Bloomberg and Kelly is grim. Sorry for the dead, sorry for the living… but these days, I just think, what comes now.
***
6 to 1.. the California SC caved… to the religious yahoos. 26 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, California / Pacific Coast, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose, San Francisco, SCOTUS, Sex / Reproductive Health.92 comments
Demonstrators in favor of same-sex marriage wait in front of San Francisco City Hall for the California Supreme Court to rule on the legality of a voter-approved ban on same-sex unions. [Paul Sakuma AP]
From the LAT:
[I]n addition to rejecting the gay-rights lawyers’ contention that Proposition 8 was an illegal constitutional revision, the court also flatly discarded Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s argument that the measure was unconstitutional because it affected an “inalienable right.”
But the court said “well-established legal principles” require that Proposition 8 be applied only prospectively, leaving intact same-sex marriages that occurred before the November election.
“The marriages of same-sex couples performed prior to the effective date of Proposition 8 remain valid and must continue to be recognized in this state,” George wrote.
Justice Carlos R. Moreno, in the lone dissent, warned that today’s ruling “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities.” […]
“It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority,” wrote Moreno, the court’s only Democratic appointee.
Justice Joyce L. Kennard, who joined the majority last year in giving gays the right to marry, said in a separate opinion that Proposition 8 was not sweeping enough to be a constitutional revision, which can only be placed on the ballot by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
Noting, as the majority opinion did, that judges must set aside their personal views, Kennard said the court was required to follow the state Constitution and the court’s previous rulings.
“And when the voters have validly exercised this power, as they did here, a judge must enforce the constitution as amended,” Kennard wrote.
Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, a former civil rights lawyer who also joined last year’s ruling in favor of marriage rights, wrote separately because she disagreed with the majority’s definition of a constitutional revision.
“The drafters of our Constitution never imagined, nor would they have approved, a rule that gives the foundational principles of social organization in free societies, such as equal protection, less protection from hasty, unconsidered change than principles of government organization,” she wrote.
The court declined to determine whether same-sex marriages performed outside of California — and not formally recognized by the state prior to the election — would be legal in California. The court said it did not hear arguments on that question and “it would be inappropriate to address” it today.
The case for overturning the initiative was widely viewed as a long shot. Gay rights lawyers had no solid legal precedent on their side, and some of the court’s earlier holdings on constitutional revisions mildly undercut their arguments. …snip…
Well.. I think we should just vote on everything. LOL. Give it a whirl. Watch rights disappear. We are united in our divisions.
IIRC it has been strongly suggested, rumored… that Werdegar is gay. I wondered when I read it was 6 to 1, if she was the hold out. But no! It was a Latino male.
So… we have some 18,000 SSMs… upheld. And it is banned for everyone else.
You have to love schizophrenia.
***
As I find things of interest on Sotomayor and reactions will post in thread. She is being called “a moderate” out here, with indications of some rulings that will provide ”concern” for liberals. Apparently last time her name was up, her nomination to the Fed bench was in congress, Hatch voted YES on her.
So Ob may get what he wanted, supposedly he wants a high YES vote on his pick. On the other hand, who knows what the conservatives are hatching… 😉
She is tangled up in the New Haven firefighter case that is now before the SCOTUS, on the bench there she voted for throwing out the promotional test on the grounds it was tainted – when no black firefighters were able to do well enough for promotion to captain…. Oh well.
You know Ob… make the conservatives happy. And wealthy. And whatever else he can serve up for them.
Still the weekend.. ;) 24 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Abortion Rights, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, SCOTUS, Sex / Reproductive Health, WAR!.59 comments
A new collection of bathtubs designed to look like women’s shoes have gone on sale. The tubs cost up to £17,000. The user reclines with their feet at the toe end of the shoe and their head towards the heel. Water trickles from a jet at the heel Picture: SOLENT
Jeff Cohen of FAIR has a post up about the coming SCOTUS pick…
[O]n this topic (like others), Obama speaks eloquently. . . out of both sides of his mouth.
In revealing comments to the Detroit Free Press last October about his models for Supreme Court picks, Obama praised liberal lions Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan of the Warren Court as “real heroes of mine.”
Then he added: “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think their judicial philosophy is appropriate for today.”
After noting the Warren Court’s powerful role in taking on racial segregation, Obama added a typically frustrating caveat:
“I’m not sure you need that. In fact, I would be troubled if you had that same kind of activism in circumstances today. . .
“So when I think about the kinds of judges who are needed today, it goes back to the point I was making about common sense and pragmatism as opposed to ideology.” …snip…
It’s so cute the way they call him “pragmatic”…
Less important than his direct quotes, but very interesting, is the set up Cohen provides for the article… let me just give a ringing, GOOD LUCK!
[T]he centerpiece of the Times article was a fascinating study conducted by two University of Chicago law professors (one of whom is a conservative federal appeals judge) analyzing the judicial records of the 43 justices who’ve served on the Supreme Court since 1937.
Four of the five most conservative judges of the last seven decades (Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito) now sit on the Court. With Anthony Kennedy at number ten, five of the ten most rightwing judges are currently on the Court. The current majority, in other words, is almost a conservative all-star team.
By contrast, among the ten most liberal judges since 1937, the only sitting justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg – she’s number nine. Today’s other three “liberal” justices (Stevens, Breyer, Souter) are in the top 15, but outside the top ten.
All in all, that’s a rightwing-dominated Supreme Court.
The study gives credence to the claim of Justice John Paul Stevens (age 89) that he hasn’t moved left since being appointed by President Ford in 1975, but that the Court has moved right.
And it backs Stevens’ assertion that “every judge who’s been appointed to the Court” since 1971 “has been more conservative than his or her predecessor” – with the exception of Ginsburg (who recently underwent surgery related to pancreatic cancer).
The question facing Obama: Will he continue this trend of shifting the Court rightward?
Unfortunately, from what we’ve seen of Obama’s general penchant for “moderate” appointees who don’t inflame Republicans, it’s quite possible the Court will continue trending rightward – if liberals get replaced with less liberal appointees. …snip…
…it’s quite possible the Court will continue trending rightward…
More than possible…
Long weekend… 22 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Divertissements.72 comments
A hazel dormouse slumbers. Hazel dormouse numbers have fallen by almost two fifths in the past two decades – but the rate of decline is slowing down significantly [Picture: PA at the UK Telegraph]
I have had one of the more irritating 24 hours… and just want to crawl in to a ball… and sleep. Well, sort of.
The modern era… somehow my normal monthly purchase from Safeway tripped a fraud signal to my bank… I use a debit card, buy every month in the third week, roughly, of the month from Safeway, roughly the same amt. I made it thru the automated check, entering the debit card number, the SS last 4 digits, then verified the amounts that Safeway was trying to put on the card… was assured the card and the amount was released.. Safeway calls back.. I say re-enter… they do, several times. Decline decline. So I call a Fraud Specialist. Ricardo. By then there is no chance my order makes it on the delivery van for the afternoon.
Ricardo assures me the card is now released.. says the Safeway transaction tripped a wire as I had not used the card in weeks. Right! not since I ordered from Safeway in the third week of April, for within 10.00 of my order today. Like March and February.
Then I say, shall I advise you I am buying a digital TV, an antenna and maybe a couple of other related items, probably tonight – and definitely online? Shall I pre-clear this, I ask? Shall I identify the supplier? Would that help? He asks the amount, I pick a number more than I think I will spend.. he says there should be no problem, esp as I have just been on the phone with Fraud.
Mother of God. Let me out of here.
I was a wet noodle on the kitchen floor, when it was over. The only good news is that it being Memorial Day Weekend… the Sat delivery times from Safeway still had openings.
In related news, I suddenly got offers for credit cards… Discover, with whom I never had a credit card.. and Capitol One, never one with them either… both offered 0% interest on balance transfers. Something I had read the card companies were not going to do anymore. I have no desire or need for either card… but seems it has been months without the usual credit card trash mail…
Whew.
***
INSTANT UPDATE, 2:29 pm on the Pacific Ocean
Secret! It’s a Big Big Secret! By now there are reports in Boston Globe, LA Times, NY Times… and Isikoff in TIME (or is it Newsweek, who knows who can tell the difference).
But humor Ob. It’s a fucking secret meeting.
Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights on with Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Vince Warren joins us now. He’s in San Francisco, though he’s usually based in New York, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He met with President Obama earlier this week, the day before President Obama gave his speech at the National Archive yesterday.
Vince, welcome to Democracy Now! And start off—well, explain why this meeting that you, representing CCR, and other human rights groups had was supposedly originally a secret meeting. And then, what happened? And where did you meet? Tell us all the details.
VINCENT WARREN: Well, I’m not—still not allowed to talk about the substance of the meeting, but it was a meeting in which we met at the—in the Cabinet Room of the West Wing. And there were a number of high-level officials that were there at the meeting. [I have read Rahm and Axelrod and iirc Ob’s counsel, Craig attended — Mcat]
And what was sort of shocking about it is we were told that we should not at all talk about the meeting, but right promptly afterwards, the press started calling us, because the White House Press Office told everybody about the meeting.
But it was—in my sense, it was something that President Obama wanted to do to be able to talk and to hear our views, the views of some of the human rights organizations like CCR, and to really embrace his critics, which I think is a wonderful hallmark of this administration.
The problem is that he goes out the next day, and he has a speech in which he not only embraces the opposition, meaning George Bush’s policies, but then he comes out with things that even George Bush didn’t come out with, like preventive detention.
Preamble.
VINCENT WARREN: […]
What was very surprising was to hear President Obama talk about what he called prolonged detention, but what I think we can all safely say is preventive detention, moving forward, the idea of detaining people not because they’ve committed a crime, but because of their general dangerousness or that they may commit a crime in the future. That’s something that the documents that President Obama was standing in front of, particularly the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, simply doesn’t permit. And when I heard that in his speech, I was deeply, deeply shocked that he would go in that direction.
AMY GOODMAN: Had he told you that the day before?
VINCENT WARREN: No, he hadn’t—he didn’t talk about his speech at all. We really didn’t have a sense of what was going to come the next day. And we didn’t discuss preventive detention. And I think what’s interesting about it is, for most people in the room, I suspect that that wasn’t even something that anybody was contemplating or really could conceive of. We haven’t heard that discussion for, you know, eight or nine months. And so, this was really the first time that we were confronted with it.
Con law scholar remember. Deliberative. Listens. Open wide for the pabulum. It’s coming at you on an F-22. Lobs of pabulum fired from warships.. to the right, to the left. Drones overhead with pabulum bombs…
Farther on Warren makes an interesting point, calling these meetings “secret” (but of course the WH wants to also use them!, so they immediately release that the meeting occurred) may be an effort to silence critics.
Change.
It’s all old already.
He wants to be a ”transformational figure”, they say 20 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Israel/AIPAC, Pakistan, WAR!.83 comments
Gallery at the NYT on the bombing raid on Granai in the Farah district…
Nuria, 7, another sister, was also at the aunt’s house. The calamity in the village of Granai illustrates the test for the Obama administration as it deploys more than 20,000 additional troops. [Joao Silva for The New York Times]
The “calamity” in Granai… “a test for the O administration”… it is all so procedural. A process. A test. We must simply work it thru, like school.. and ensure… something or other for the Obama administration.
The bombs were so powerful people were shredded.
***
Jon Meacham of Newsweek on Charlie Rose..
[J]ON MEACHAM: […] And he wants to be a
transformational figure.CHARLIE ROSE: Transformational to what?
JON MEACHAM: I think, to use a phrase from another president, to a kinder, gentler nation. I think that the reason he.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s really it, huh, a kinder, gentler nation?
JON MEACHAM: I think so. Don’t you think that he’s trying to
hopefully build a country where the fundamental needs of a great majority of the people are taken care of, so that they can then pursue whatever they want to pursue? That is if you try to do what you can with education, you try to secure the environment through energy, you try to guarantee at some
level healthcare as a fundamental human right, in order to enable people to live their lives, hopefully according to the free market that’s ever more regulated at this point. But I do think so. I think it’s a fairly straightforward vision. …snip…
Mr Meacham is in a tiny sound proof lock box. All of his own making. Earlier in the sit down with CR, he talked of his childhood in Chattanooga where Grand Daddy was a judge… as a small child he’d trail along after his grandfather, spending time with the courthouse denizens…
Yes I can see that. Rather too clearly.
Things get to a mix of sharp and fuzzball focus on Iran and Israel, however.
[C]HARLIE ROSE: Well, and security of the United States is crucial too.
JON MEACHAM: Right. And press twice on would you, how will you deal with Israel if they wanted to make — take a strike against the Iran militarily, about the nuclear program. He said it’s not my place to assess the needs of the security of the state of Israel. He went at this twice, so he’s clearly giving Netanyahu a lot of space.
CHARLIE ROSE: What he’s trying to do is give Netanyahu some space and time, at the same time seeing how much he can work over the period of time he’s trying to get to figure out what the Iranians might be willing to do.
JON MEACHAM: Right, right. And his argument is, even if this fails, it will show that we have gone — we went as far as we could, and therefore we’ll have — hopefully we’ll have the world with us.
CHARLIE ROSE: Can make the case to the world we tried everything.
JON MEACHAM: Right. Which is obviously a reaction to the diplomacy around Iraq. ..snip..
He and CR seem to think it, ObamaWar, is “different”. Sounds a lot the same to me.
Of course, they could, all of them, subject and interviewer, both sets, be whistling Dixie. Blowing it out their asses.
There is definitely Dixie in the deal.
Here is just a lovely image.. appropriately evocative of Tee Vee Land..
JON MEACHAM: […] He told me the last movie he saw was “Star Trek,” because, as he put it, everybody was saying I was Spock, so I need to check it out. But then I can’t do it, but then he did the Vulcan hi, which is kind of — when the nuclear hand does that, it’s a little scary.
Is there Dixie in outer space – out drifting between the planets? I feel sure there is.
***
Things move along.. I see scanning the headlines that we will try a Gitmo detainee in NYC… but aren’t we scared to death he will get free and kill us all, all of us!, in our beds? Rape our children, watch our tvs and eat our Cheetos? Flush our bibles down the toilette?
And, we broke up a nice, highly inflammatory terror plot. Jewish synagogues were to be bombed, using car bombs no less… and they planned on shooting military planes down from the sky. ”Recently radicalised Islamists”… say the police sources.
Mid week… 19 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements.49 comments
Reader Photos in The Guardian: Stripes by clairebelles on March 13, 2009 Photograph: clairebelles
I am in a bit of a fog.. no grudges or issues.. 😉
Face down in the gooey hopeyness of happyness… 18 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Pakistan, WAR!.89 comments
Obama – Singapore restaurant promotion – Reuters
I see headlines from the NYT to MSNBC.com that Pahkeestahn is all too likely gonna take our money! and nuke up! Or nuke up more! Congress is worried!
Their jelly spines must be dripping on the carpeting we paid for… they are worried they will slip in their own slime. What else could they be worried about?
I have said it before, this is Condi and her mushroom cloud.
It is.
I dropped in over at Silber, as I had not been there in a while.. he quotes from Laura Flanders:
[W]hat I wish was a joke was some of the rest of what’s been coming [into my inbox]…
Like all the mail from supposedly anti-war groups who worked hard to elect Barack Obama on an anti-Iraq war platform, but now, when it comes to escalation in Afghanistan, are lining up in support.
After the president announced the deployment of 4,000 more troops (on top of the extra 17,000 he’s already sent) Jon Soltz, an anti-Iraq war organizer with VoteVets wrote in the Huffington Post: “With today’s announcement President Obama has shown that he ‘gets it.’ That’s why we at VoteVets.org are supporting the plan.” They even have a rah-rah petition going.
Americans United for Change ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of anti-Iraq war ads in 2007. But they refused to answer a Washington Post blogger’s question about Afghanistan. Anti-war organizers – and plenty of generals agreed — there was no military solution possible in Iraq. But many of those who got their head round that idea then, seem to believe the opposite is true in Afghanistan, even though Obama’s own advisers say the struggle there can’t be won on the battlefield.
On the website of the liberal Center for America Progress there are no fewer than five articles supporting the president’s policy, including one headlined “Seven Reasons Why We need to Engage in Afghanistan.”
On the Afghanistan deployment, as the Center for Media and Democracy’s John Stauber has pointed out, MoveOn has thus far been silent on Afghanistan.
When MoveOn’s members were recently polled on their priorities for 2009, the subject didn’t apparently make the cut.
Can’t be too surprised over VoteVets.. they were just biding their time til a Woodrow Wilson sort got in… nor can one be surprised at Center for American Progress, which was always a Clinton sourced gambit. Bill openly supported the Iraq invasion, he just did it in the UK press. Then later when the going got tough he did opinion pieces to help his old buddy (Blair) out – again in the UK press.
There is a long list of the so called left collaborators.
Tired illusionists. But – it works quite well.
Jason Ditz takes an already well worn look at the reversals or hedges or somersaults (if you did not watch him and read him closely over the past two years) that Ob has managed in the past few days… but closes with something that is very true:
And where are the Democrats, President Obama’s own party, in all of this? Several have expressed concerns with the president’s ever more hawkish policies, but by and large they’re taking a wait and see approach. To the extent that they have spoken out at all, Sen. Graham et al. have excoriated them as being driven by “hatred of former President Bush.” To the extent the “new” policies greatly resemble the previous administration’s, it seems that the Bush faction’s allegiance lies with the executive, and the real change is the growing reluctance of Democrats to even oppose the policies in theory.
Bingo. Plus most all of the Dems agree and the others are headless chickens. Caged chickens.
Cheney has carried out a several weeks long campaign to influence the WH. And it worked. If any one caught This Week, Liz Cheney ate Katrina van den Heuval for breakfast. Polished her off. KvdH could not even lift her eyes to confront LC (they sat directly across from one another and carried the bulk of the “roundtable”).
How bad is that?
How shameful is that?
If they can run the global wars against terror for a hundred years, they will. Flicking the imagery of “Leader” back and forth – as suits them…
At some point the country will crash and burn… the various rising nations, one supposes, to pick up the pieces, but they, the USA! USA!, can run the 909 mil bases, or however many bases we have in foreign countries, for a long long time…especially as they bleed us to death.
I cannot do a damned thing about any of it, but I sure as hell am not going out face down, gulping in the slap happy cupcake frosting they serve… The pink and green sugar goop of a cheap propaganda play – one that is about killing.
Took a while… 16 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, Seymour Hersh.62 comments
McChrystal and Clarke Brief Press at Pentagon
ARLINGTON, VA-MARCH 22: Army Major General Stanley A. McChrystal (L), vice director for Operations, listens as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke speaks at the Pentagon March 22, 2003 in Arlington, Virginia. McChrystal and Clarke briefed the media on the latest developments of the United States led war against Iraq.
Photo: Stefan Zaklin/Getty Images
Mar 22, 2003
… for me to catch on to who McChrystal was, that we had seen a lot of him before… when I began googling for his photo, noticed him beside Tory Clarke – it all came back. Day after day, those briefings from the Pentagon. That dumb-fuck face of his.. this man that all sorts of venues are trilling is a “scholar warrior”. Yes I remember when Kos used that scheisse to hose the thread commenters into supporting the mil. Why! my goodness! they have advanced degrees… from Ivies. Bow down.
So… do ya think Ob did his due diligence on this pick? Or did he snooze in the bubble of the Oval? I say he SNOOZED. Biden (too often in the Oval with Ob for the Daily Briefing and for the Economic Daily Brief) said Yes… Rahm said Yes… Axelrod said Yes…
There at the propaganda podium for the invasion. Side by side with Tory Clarke. More than whiffs of torture off his command in Iraq… and then there is Tillman.
There is bound to be more.
Mrs Tillman will not be shutting up.
Considering we are swimming in blood and guts, this should go badly.
I snagged a couple of graphs from Tiny Revolution:
It’s sickening to see Obama try to justify illegal secrecy by hiding behind the troops in just the way Bush used to do. It’s even more appalling to see him not only do nothing to hold torture commanders accountable, but promote them.
Good luck with that, Mr. President. The Tillmans are unwilling to sit quietly and let pass McChrystal’s part in the propaganda disgrace and coverup of their son’s death by ‘friendly fire’. Sy Hersh has tied McChrystal to Cheney’s assassination squads. And, if the principle of command responsibility had any force at all in the U.S. military, McChrystal would have to answer for the pervasive, routine use of torture by his dirty-war task forces in Iraq.
Late last year, confirmation hearings for his last post were held up by concerns about the torture under his command, but a private chat with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee appears to have given everyone involved the cover sought.
Photos or no photos, the upcoming confirmation hearings are going to be an occasion for looking back.
***
From one of the comments at Tiny Revolution, “oarwell” at 10:58 pm:
[B]ig money goes looking for a better return on investment. War is the most lucrative, the most profitable venture. [Smedley] Butler argues that the only way to smash the war racket is to take the profit out of war. But as long as the same concerns that profit from war own our press, that is difficult, to say the least.
Is Obama in thrall to these war pigs? Of course he is. They are cynically using him as the best mechanism by which to quell dissent. Policy is disconnected from politics. You think anyone except paid propagandists actually wants to escalate in AfPak? Elite financial interests seek access to oil in central Asia, as well as all the usual spin-offs of war (not to mention the heroin trade, which has boomed since we liberated Afghanistan). If, in their immoral calculus, releasing photographic evidence of war crimes (Hersh says it’s photos of children being sodomized in front of their parents) would interfere with rallying the public to their profitable enterprise, then enormous pressures are brought to bear to stop their release. Pressures that possibly include blackmail. You think they wouldn’t do that? And how many innocent civilians did they kill in Iraq, in Vietnam? They care only about profit, not about human rights or “liberty” or “freedom.” …
Of course a lot of what Hersh said and wrote about the unreleased photos, he said and wrote in 2004, 2006. IMO he would not be volunteering all of that these days. I heard him myself, on Hardball, following his own breaking of the story, say we had done things even Israel would never do.
Give it a break Sy. Really.
***
Last, I was very entertained by this phrasing from the press release on Ob and Mrs Ob going to Accra:
The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.
Yup. Blessed. Double Blessed. “Sound”, “civil”, “lasting”. I think they should take the children and the dog. Let’s be wholesome!
***
Oh too good to pass up… MO at UCMerced today…
“Remember you are Blessed! And remember for those blessings you must give back!”
Each word, staccato.
I think the Obs should go to Africa wearing great towering papal mitres – emblazoned with the stars and stripes.
Floating over the coral… 14 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.79 comments
Corals and mangrove grow at the protected Bunaken National Marine Park in Manado, Indonesia. Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity are threatening to destroy the vast Coral Triangle in South East Asia, the World Wildlife Fund said in a new report. [Romeo Gacad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]
IOZ (drawing from this NPR report):
[T]he United States has always tortured. The sudden decision of the Obama administration to air its predecessor’s dirty laundry concomitant with its denigrating the possibility of seeking to prosecute either the authors of torture policy or the practitioners thereof indicates only that the current regime seeks to return the practice of torture to the legal demimonde where it is practiced circumspectly and in a manner that allows it to be denounced when made public, i.e. a return to the status quo ante. Note that even as Obama “ended torture,” with a few loops of the executive pen, he reaffirmed the procedure known as extraordinary rendition, which is nothing other than the venerable American tradition of hiring others to do our dirty work. The new focus on so-called contractors as the main advocates for torture is part of the same effort, to make non-policy policy, always maintaining a degree of deniability, something the clumsier Bush administration was never able to accomplish.
A paragraph that gave me a headache, in all its curlicues not unlike our wink and nod policies. We avert our eyes.. and all is fine. Aversion therapy.
Hallelujah! and Amen! and Praise be Jesus!
Marisacat 