Pages: << 1 ... 1181 1182 1183 1184 1185 1186 1187 1188 1189 1190 1191 ... 1326 >>
Humans vs. Birds: Hitchcock in reverse
Mickey Z.
"Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts." - William S. Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer
Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Then the "settlers" arrived. As one of those settlers wrote in the 1600's: "There are wild pigeons in winter beyond number or imagination, myself have seen three or four hours together flocks in the air, so thick that even have they shadowed the sky from us."
"By anyone’s estimation, it was the most abundant bird on Earth," writes Alan Wiesman in his book, The World Without Us. "Its flocks, 300 miles long and numbering in the billions, spanned horizons fore and aft, actually darkening the sky." As late as April 1873, residents of Saginaw, Michigan witnessed "a continuous stream of passenger pigeons overhead between 7.30 in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon."
Perpetual War: Get ready for a “lasting military presence” in Iraq
Jeff Huber
URUKNET: U.S. Army Col. Timothy R. Reese says it’s time for the U.S. to "declare victory" in Iraq and "go home." It was time to declare victory and go home in January 2007, when the Bush administration decided to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and charged off on its cockamamie "surge" strategy.
The original stated objective of the surge was political reconciliation in Iraq. By September 2007, when it was clear that the political objective was not in sight, Gen. David Petraeus pulled a bait-and-switch and announced that the military objectives of the surge were being met. Petraeus hagiographer Thomas E. Ricks slipped Freudian in February 2009 when he confessed that Petraeus’s goal was never to end the Iraq conflict but to trick Congress and the American public into extending it indefinitely by achieving short-term results though bribing Iraq’s militias.
Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?
Sara Robinson
There are dangerous currents running through America's politics and the way we confront them is crucial.
All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?
And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."
Goldman's new 'American Socialism Manifesto'
Paul B. Farrell
Warning: Behavioral economics means one thing to Wall Street and Washington and something quite different to Main Street. It depends on whether you're the nudger or nudgee, the manipulator or the manipulated, the guys making lots of money or the folks being scammed.
Average folks erroneously believe behavioral economics helps them. But behavioral nudgers just want to help themselves.
And both political parties are guilty. Behavioral economics is all the rage since the new president hired some academic behaviorists. That also helped the GOP, made average folks forget the former president had his nudgers, too, like former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Moreover, his party recently hired 350 lobbyists, many former Senators and Congressmen, to kill the new guy's health-care reform.
INGRATES
Jeff Archer
I have lived in three countries and have spoken to people from many nationalities. All consider human life to be valuable and all are protective of their own countrypeople. However, I have yet to meet someone of non-U.S. origin who holds the opinion that one life is more important that those of millions of people who do not share his/her nationality. Welcome to the U.S., a country that not only considers the life of one U.S. citizen to be superior to multitudes of lives of foreign nationals, but threatens nations who assist the U.S. in returning U.S. nationals to their homes, even though they have been held under criminal charges.
A couple of days ago, former President Bill Clinton became a national hero once again (he had previously achieved this status with talk show comedians during the Monica Lewinsky affair). He went to North Korea and gained the release of two U.S. journalists who had been tried and convicted for crimes against the nation of North Korea. There are those who maintain the two women were innocent, while others point to activities that show their guilt. One thing is sure: North Korea acted in a benevolent manner in releasing the two reporters.
Bush tortured children, and America yawns
Mary Shaw
“You have the power to hold your leaders accountable.” – President Obama,
Ghana, July 14, 2009
At an Amnesty International conference a few years ago, I had the honor of attending a talk by Clive Stafford Smith, a British attorney who represents some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Smith shared some alarming details about the abuse that his clients received. Perhaps most shocking was Smith's description of cigarette burns and other scars that covered the body of a teenage prisoner. This boy had been taken into custody when he was only 14 years old. And this kid is allegedly not the only child who has been forced to experience the nightmare that is Gitmo.
The graveyard of empires
Eric S. Margolis
Afghanistan is rightly called `the graveyard of empires.’ We should call the Mideast `the tomb of peacemakers.’ In this troubled part of the world, real peace is as elusive and rarely-seen as the white Arabian gazelle.
So we observe with an abundance of caution President Barack Obama’s long-awaited Mideast peace offensive.
Many of the administration’s biggest guns have been sent to the Mideast in an all-out effort to get America’s squabbling allies to accept a comprehensive regional peace deal. The only notable absence from the American diplomatic A-team was, interestingly, Hillary Clinton, who was left at home to make nice to a visiting Chinese delegation.
The Many Layers of NaHalt Shimon beg the question: Where's the money coming from?
eileen fleming
[Occupied East Jerusalem] Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
"The events in Sheikh Jarrah garnered international censure from the European Union, the United Nations (UN) and from Britain, which said it was 'appalled' at the move. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday night called the Israeli evictions "deeply regrettable" and she urged "the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions." [1]
NO-COST v. HIGH-COST CARE
Re-reported, edited by Carolyn Bennett
“… In this country if you’re poor — you don’t have much of a shot,” says Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical, an organization originally created “to help poor tribes in the former British colony of Guyana, South America,” now devoting “60 percent” of its work to helping residents of the United States of America.
Remote Area Medical (established 1985) is a publicly-supported all-volunteer organization, an airborne relief corps of volunteer doctors, nurses, pilots, veterinarians and support workers participating in expeditions across the world. They work at their own expense and use donated medical supplies, medicines, facilities and vehicles.
The Real World: Mercenaries, Murder and the American Way
Chris Floyd
Who could possibly have suspected this? A Beltway-wired mercenary company hired by the American government to act as freebooting muscle in the war of aggression against Iraq has been accused -- in sworn affidavits from company insiders -- of operating a murder and gun-running racket in order to push its hard-right owner's religious extremism. Can such a thing even be contemplated? Why, the next thing you know, they'll be telling us that good, clean-limbed, all-American agents used KGB-derived torture tactics against helpless captives or something!
And yet, incredible as it may seem, insiders from the company once known as Blackwater (and now going under the brand-name disguise of Xe) have given sworn statements implicating the company and its founder, Eric Prince, in killing Iraqi citizens for God and profit (as if there were any difference between the two amongst our gilded militarists), running guns to various militant factions in the conquered country -- and murdering potential witnesses who might testify in investigations of Blackwater's nefarious doings.
<< 1 ... 1181 1182 1183 1184 1185 1186 1187 1188 1189 1190 1191 ... 1326 >>
