Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. - Tommy Smothers
10th Anniversary - May 1, 2000-May 1, 2010
DECISION TO STOP DEGRADING GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM ACCURACY
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release May 1, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT REGARDING THE UNITED STATES' DECISION TO STOP DEGRADING GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM ACCURACY
Today, I am pleased to announce that the United States will stop the intentional degradation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals available to the public beginning at midnight tonight. We call this degradation feature Selective Availability (SA). This will mean that civilian users of GPS will be able to pinpoint locations up to ten times more accurately than they do now. GPS is a dual-use, satellite-based system that provides accurate location and timing data to users worldwide. My March 1996 Presidential Decision Directive included in the goals for GPS to: "encourage acceptance and integration of GPS into peaceful civil, commercial and scientific applications worldwide; and to encourage private sector investment in and use of U.S. GPS technologies and services." To meet these goals, I committed the U.S. to discontinuing the use of SA by 2006 with an annual assessment of its continued use beginning this year.
The decision to discontinue SA is the latest measure in an on-going effort to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. Last year, Vice President Gore announced our plans to modernize GPS by adding two new civilian signals to enhance the civil and commercial service. This initiative is on-track and the budget further advances modernization by incorporating some of the new features on up to 18 additional satellites that are already awaiting launch or are in production. We will continue to provide all of these capabilities to worldwide users free of charge.
My decision to discontinue SA was based upon a recommendation by the Secretary of Defense in coordination with the Departments of State, Transportation, Commerce, the Director of Central Intelligence, and other Executive Branch Departments and Agencies. They realized that worldwide transportation safety, scientific, and commercial interests could best be served by discontinuation of SA. Along with our commitment to enhance GPS for peaceful applications, my administration is committed to preserving fully the military utility of GPS. The decision to discontinue SA is coupled with our continuing efforts to upgrade the military utility of our systems that use GPS, and is supported by threat assessments which conclude that setting SA to zero at this time would have minimal impact on national security. Additionally, we have demonstrated the capability to selectively deny GPS signals on a regional basis when our national security is threatened. This regional approach to denying navigation services is consistent with the 1996 plan to discontinue the degradation of civil and commercial GPS service globally through the SA technique.
Originally developed by the Department of Defense as a military system, GPS has become a global utility. It benefits users around the world in many different applications, including air, road, marine, and rail navigation, telecommunications, emergency response, oil exploration, mining, and many more. Civilian users will realize a dramatic improvement in GPS accuracy with the discontinuation of SA. For example, emergency teams responding to a cry for help can now determine what side of the highway they must respond to, thereby saving precious minutes. This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world.
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/FGCS/info/sans_SA/docs/statement.html
Photograph by Richard Hoyt
Mike Wilhelm & Hired Guns
Monday, May 3, 2010, 6:30-9:00 pm
Blue Wing Saloon & Cafe
9520 Main St., Upper Lake, CA.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
By Wellman Moody
UPPER LAKE – Mike Wilhelm & Hired Guns will play Monday from 6:30 pm until 9:00 at the Blue Wing Saloon & Cafe. The Blue Wing is located at 9520 Main St., Upper Lake. Reservations are recommended for parties of six or more. The telephone number is 707-275-2233. For more information about the Blue Wing or performance schedule go to www.BlueWingSaloon.com.
In my book, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy, Freddy Berthoff described his mescaline trip at a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert in the summer of 1970 when he was 15. “Earlier that spring,” he wrote, “the helmeted, rifle-toting National Guard came up over the rise during a peace-in-Vietnam rally at Kent State University. And opened fire on the crowd. I always suspected it was a contrived event, as if someone deep in the executive branch had said, ‘We’ve got to teach those commie punks a lesson.’” Actually, President Nixon had called antiwar protesters “bums” two days before the shootings. While Freddy was peaking on mescaline, CSNY sang a new song about the massacre:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in O-hi-o…
Plus nine wounded. Sixty-seven shots – dum-dum bullets that exploded upon impact -- had been fired in 13 seconds. This incident on May 4, 1970 resulted in the first general student strike in U.S. history, encompassing over 400 campuses.
Arthur Krause, father of one of the dead students, Allison, got a call from John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, who said, “There will be a complete investigation.” Krause responded, “Are you sure about that?” And the reply: “Mr. Krause, I promise you, there will be no whitewash.”
But NBC News correspondent James Polk discovered a memo marked “Eyes Only” from Ehrlichman to Attorney General John Mitchell ordering that there be no federal grand jury investigation of the killings, because Nixon adamantly opposed such action.
Polk reported that, “In 1973, under a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, the Justice Department reversed itself and did send the Kent State case to a federal grand jury. When that was announced, Richardson said to an aide he got a call from the White House. He was told that Richard Nixon was so upset, they had to scrape the president off the walls with a spatula.”
Last year, Allison Krause’s younger sister, Laurel, was relaxing on the front deck of her home in California when she saw the County Sheriff’s Deputy coming toward her, followed by nearly two dozen men. “Then, before my eyes,” she recalls, “the officers morphed into a platoon of Ohio National Guardsmen marching onto my land. They were here because I was cultivating medical marijuana. I realized the persecution I was living through was similar to what many Americans and global citizens experience daily. This harassment even had parallels to Allison’s experience before she was murdered.”
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Now, 40 years later, Laurel, her mother and other Kent State activists have been organizing the “2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal” (see http://bit.ly/8AD8TQ) scheduled for May 1-4 on the campus where the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators originally occurred. The invitation to participate in sharing their personal narratives has been extended to 1970 protesters, witnesses, National Guardsmen, Ohio and federal government officials, university administrators and educators, local residents, families of the victims. The purpose is to uncover the truth.
Laurel was 0nly 15 when the Kent State shootings took place. “Like any 15-year-old, my coping mechanisms were undeveloped at best. Every evening, I remember spending hours in my bedroom practicing calligraphy to Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush,’ artistically copying phrases of his music, smoking marijuana to calm and numb my pain.” When she was arrested for legally growing marijuana, “They cuffed me and read my rights as I sobbed hysterically. This was the first time I flashed back and revisited the utter shock, raw devastation and feeling of total loss since Allison died. I believed they were going to shoot and kill me, just like Allison. How ironic, I thought. The medicine that kept me safe from experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder now led me to relive that horrible experience as the cops marched onto my property.”
She began to see the interconnectedness of those events. The dehumanization of Allison was the logical, ultimate extension of the dehumanization of Laurel. Legally, two felonies were reduced to misdemeanors, and she was sentenced to 25 hours of community service. But a therapist, one of Allison’s friends from Kent State, suggested to Laurel that the best way to deal with the pain of PTSD was to make something good come out of the remembrance, the suffering and the pain. “That’s when I decided to transform the arrest into something good for me,” she says, “good for all. It was my only choice, the only solution to cure this memorable, generational, personal angst. My mantra became, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to me.’ And it has been.” That’s why she’s fighting so hard for the truth to burst through cement like blades of grass.
Laurel Krause, sister of slain Kent State University student Allison Krause
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Krassner’s latest book is an expanded edition of his 1993 autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, available at paulkrassner.com.
40 years
Published Facebook May 1, 2010
Tonight I'm tired. It's May Day, 2010. In three days, 40 year anniversary's will commemorate the National Guard murders of students @ Kent & in two weeks, Jackson State (Ohio & Mississippi). I grieve for those kids as I grieve for the kids I knew in Basic Training who were killed within 90 days in Nam. I grieve for millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians & Laotians killed by my government. I grieve cause we still have dead kids coming home to disbelieving parents.
I'm tired of commemorations. I'm tired of war. I'm tired of hallowed eyed young men and women grieving their wars.
But what really exhausts me is historical misrepresentation. Historical Revisionism might be a proper political term, but Denial is the true root of most crap many people take for truth.
Take Kent State for instance. The aftermath has been deeply & widely reported: Hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the United States were shuttered; Graduations were delayed or completely canceled; Students, many in shock, returned home as campus towns emptied and "authorities" prayed for a return to quiet, "normal" campus life, in September.
But what put Kent State students in the streets in the first place? Why was the Guard called in? Were the Kent students acting alone, in a vacuum, isolated from other youth & students on other campuses on the fourth of May? They & thousands of students around the nation, had been in the streets all weekend! Why?
Check it out! I WAS THERE when it all came down!
The Scene: New Haven, CT, Yale Campus, May Day weekend 1970. The war against Vietnam was NOT "winding down" and there was "no light at the end of the tunnel" despite the fact that only 34% of the U.S. population supported the war at that point. Thousands planned to attend demonstrations in New Haven to oppose the war & support the Black Panther Party, whose leadership was on trial there, trials many in the freedom & liberation movements believed to be racially and politically motivated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Black_Panther_trials
(The Black Panther Party, we were to learn, was being decimated by the Criminal Nixon Regime & Hoover's FBI - Fred Hampton had been executed in his bed a year prior by Chicago police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton)
WHILE IN ROUTE to New Haven, on May 1, 1970 news came of our government's "secret bombings" of Laos and Cambodia, which had been, up to that moment, concealed by Nixon and Secty of State Kissinger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
(side question: Know from where the Khmer Rouge sprang?).
This news enraged millions of students, activists & veterans ALREADY pissed off!
Point being, Cambodia was "Neutral" and bombing them was a War Crime. (Kissinger still walks around a free man!). Please understand that OUR American Government dropped more tonnage on tiny Cambodia in 10 years then in all of Germany in WWII!
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54/057.html
You can't imagine how this news of Secret Bombings affected tens of thousands of people ALREADY very angry and thoroughly opposed to the war AND our own governments at-home, in your face, repression! Our government was spoon feeding us and the world boldface LIES and could care fucking less.
THIS IS THE BACKGROUND, the in our face REALITY that informed our passions as we arrived in New Haven!
On Friday night, there were demonstrations and lots of tear gas. More after the rally on Saturday. For Sunday, a meeting was organized by students representing campus leadership of many colleges & universities on the East Coast.
On THAT Sunday morning, (I was at the meeting because as a recently discharged GI, some (note: Abbie!) thought I might have something to add to the conversation. It was not necessary.) students wasted little time in determining to commit to RETURN TO THEIR CAMPUSES AND SHUT THEM DOWN FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!
The date? Sunday, May 3, 1970.
I spoke at a NYC school THAT afternoon & made my way back to Louisville from New Haven. via Southern Ohio and I thought of stopping at a couple of schools there but determined I could make better use of my skills in my own community, near Ft. Knox.
The murders of Kent State students by the United States National Guard occurred in the context of colleges BEING shut down. The National Guard, by their criminal actions, helped close the rest of campuses in this country and took positions in the streets of many American college towns.
The murders of students at Jackson State two weeks later also occurred in the context of a massive antiwar & liberation movement against a backdrop of overwhelming and aggressive police presence overlaid with good old fashioned American Racism.
That's my story & I'm sticking to it!
With exception of getting exposed to Berkeley during 1964, Cody's Books, Mario Savio, Free Speech Movement, Sexual Freedom League, KPFA, etc., and later attending a few demonstrations Veterans took part in against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, I ended up into Peace & Love.
I am a Veteran, with honorable discharge and recommendation, who volunteered to serve our country during war [or what we were led to believe was war] and ended up becoming more of a Hippy because I was over-educated, liked history, knew none of what was tried in the past worked, without people getting hurt, and realized progress was directed in reviewing alternatives to 'History Repeating Itself'.
Leading up to the following picture story it is very important to remember:
I was not an activist or in anyway involved with activism (period).
May 15, 1969 - Bloody Thursday
Republicans Authorize Murder of Students:
Orders issued by Richard M. Nixon and Ronald W. Reagan
Democrats, As Usual, Did Nothing To Stop the Carnage, Until Their Elders Were Gassed
[digg] - You have probably seen the above title posted here, over the years, and here is why. Early on Thursday morning May 15, 1969, after returning from an 'Angel's of Light' party with Allen Ginsburg, who was into his "home, home, home" harmonium Blake phase, a friend and I drank what we thought was a half bottle of orange juice someone had left in the refrigerator.
Just as we were 'downing' the last gulp of juice, the boyfriend of one of the women at the house came into the kitchen and said, "Where did you get that juice from?"
As it turned out, the orange juice contained a quarter ounce of mescaline sulfate and we were on our way to being thoroughly dosed.
Seeing it was going to be one of those 'sunshine daydream' mornings, we headed down Telegraph Ave. to UC Berkeley, where we would take a right at the clock tower, and walk up to Tilden Park to hang out at the lake for the day.
About one half block from the campus we heard, what sounded like, gun shots and saw a large group of screaming people running toward us. Not knowing what to do, we began running South, with the crowd.
Photo: Kathryn Bigelow
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall4.html
Needless to say, we were not involved with these politics, this experience was horrible, and all we wanted to do was 'get out of there'. We ran back down Telegraph Avenue, towards Dwight Way, and as we are in front of a little bookstore called "Ma's Revolution", the police started shooting ..and I hear a woman screaming from the roof, "You've killed him!" This is when James Rector died and Alan Blanchard lost his sight.
Photo: Ron Stinnett
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall6.html
Photo: Kathryn Bigelow,
"about two minutes after James Rector was shot"
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall6.html
Photo: Kathryn Bigelow.
About 20 minutes after Alan Blanchard was shot.
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall6.html
We continued running south and stopped a little past Dwight Way in front of a 'finish it yourself' furniture store to collect our thoughts. As we stood there, we saw the police setting up what looked like a big gun on a tripod, which turned out to be a pepper gas cannon. As the police were starting to point it at the crowd, something happened, causing the cannon to trigger and fire some sort of explosive.
Whatever it fired, it hit a car about 10 feet away from us, in the back window and exploded, causing the car to burst into flames.
Photo: Ed Krishner
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall4.html
We ran around the corner on Dwight Way and headed East, but no matter which way we headed, the police forced us back to Telegraph Avenue.
As we were running south on Telegraph Avenue, again, we passed a used car lot and I remembered there were stairs in the back of the lot that led to the next street.
We ran up the steps and along side of the large apartment building (below picture). When we got to the street, we saw more police headed our way, so we ducked into the garage of that large apartment building, went to the back, and hid underneath a large panel truck.
Photo: Ron Stinnet
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall5.html
We lay on the cement floor, for hours, waiting for the darkness of night and the effects of the 'orange juice' to wear off.
When it got dark, we snuck through backyards, back to the house from where we had started, and I will never forget my 'imposed' May 15, 1969 People's Park experience; it caused me to become "active".
For those who know me, it should be easy to locate me in this picture, taken on May 19, 1969... "By this time THEY had pissed me off and I put my body on the line!"
Photo: Dick Corten
Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/69gall8.html
Clicking here will take you to the beginning of the pictorial history of "People's Park" starting with, "Making the Park - May 1969".
Reference: Welcome to a Celebration of People's Park Source: http://www.peoplespark.org/ [click to visit].
History Page: http://www.peoplespark.org/history.html [click here].
During 1970 the murders at Jackson State [click to read] & Kent State [click to view picture story] occurred.
In my opinion, the People's Park, Jackson State, and Kent State student murders, by Republicans supported by Democrats, were what caused "War Babies" to retreat to the safety of their middle class, parental, Victorian, upbringing.. the same ones who later evolved into a 'Prozac Nation'. [Continue]
Peace On War
by dahbud mensch
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad. - Dwight D. Eisenhower - The Military-Industrial Complex
The kids dance and shake their bones - while the politicians are throwing stones - it's too clear we're on our own - singing ashes ashes all fall down - Grateful Dead
How THEY Silenced the Counterculture
Permalink: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/mensch001.html
When we were children during the '50s,
No one who saw it could forget it, a foul and awesome display. - Kenneth Bainbridge, physicist
We were the first group of teenagers
to become mass educated and,
THEY
portrayed US
as Terrorists & killers
[Notice use of 'Bush Neocon/Federalist Speak words: TERROR & KILLERS]
and tried to take our music away.
When we asked about civil rights,
THEY responded
When we asked about war,
THEY Killed Us on the Campus
THEY Killed Us on the Streets
THEY Killed Us in Vietnam
When we got older and raised families,
we went in debt and became a
In case you haven't noticed,
THEY RETURNED
THEY Took Your Jobs
THEY Took Your Homes
THEY Took Your Money
THEY Started Illegal Wars
THEY Destroyed the Economy
THEY Put Martha Stewart & Tommy Chong In Jail
and... THEY
Held the Teachers Accountable!
This EVIL
good ol' boy network
Brought Disgrace to the United States
with Republican/Democrat
Senate/Congress Approval,
AND WALK FREE TODAY.
Nobody Listens the First Time Around
None of the Above
Should Be On Voter Ballots
http://www.nobodyforpresident.org/
Will You Be My Neighbor Stephen?
Eyjafjallajökull - Iceland Volcano Activity 201005.02 - 15:05 UTC - Webcam
Gay Freedom Day - June 26, 1977
MP3 Audio Sound by: C. Spangler
Armistead Maupin & Bobby Kent and The Christian Cadillac
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/GayFreedomDay-1977.html
North Beach Fine Art Exhibit
James Redo, Mery Bernard, George Long, Agneta Falk
The Fine Art Painters of North Beach
May 1-22, 2010
Location: 850 Greenwich Street, San Francisco, CA
Opening Party Time: Thursday, 06 May 2010 17:00
Facebook Event Page - More Information Available in Marliese's Corner
Maya Vision by James Redo
Steve Bell cartoon - Oh Shit !!! We Won!/Lost!/Drew*! = *Delete Whichever Is Inapplicable
Steve Bell on the results of the general election +++ Andrew Sparrow's Election Live Blog
With the outcome of the general election we find ourselves in a position unknown to this generation of political leaders with no single party able to have a majority and therefore a majority government.
On the critical question on the formation of the government which can command a parliament majority, I have of course seen the statements of other party leaders. I understand and completely respect the position of Mr Clegg. - Gordon Brown [Ummm... remember what happened with the U.S. Supreme Court and ? be thankful ??? ]
A good use for smart meters
New energy meters could change the industry forever, predicts one industry leader
Kipper Williams - It tells me how much energy I've used shouting at the TV
Hawking's ideas for building time machine
by Chris Matyszczyk, May 4, 2010 1:23 PM PDT
If there is one thing that would, perhaps, cement your relationship with the man or woman of your dreams, it is surely the offer of a one-week trip to Neptune.
Thankfully, this obvious truth coincides with Stephen Hawking's latest advice on how you might be able to achieve such a trip. As part of his documentary series on the Discovery Channel, Hawking has already warned us about aliens not being all that pleasant and promised that time travel will, one day, be as feasible as getting a Prius to go 60 mph uphill.
Now, however, he has offered some specific pointers towards building your own time machine. In a moving, hopeful, and rather long disquisition published in the Daily Mail, Hawking offers what might seem to some a rather simple summation of his time machine construction manual: "All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider, or a rocket that goes really, really fast." (Unless, of course, it was an editor who wrote that.)
Personally, I wouldn't be entirely sure where to locate a wormhole other than in a piece of very old Emmental cheese. However, Hawking insists: "The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me."
I decided to stay and discovered that tiny wrinkles occur in everything. Even the model Bar Rafaeli. And there's every reason to believe there are wrinkles in the fourth dimension. All you have to do is to find one of these and enlarge it. Then, fly through it.
Will You Be My Neighbor Stephen?
Please don't think I am being gratuitously sexist when I mention Bar Rafaeli. Hawking himself dreams of holding a party in a precise moment in time and space. And he dreams of the attendance of a future Miss Universe. Then he worries that, ultimately, the Grandfather paradox, the one that suggests you won't really ever be able to shoot your former self dead, would prevent such a party ever taking place.
So, ever optimistic, he moves on to consider black holes. If even light can't emerge from a black hole, then time, as we know it, would be slowed. Yet just as he begins to excite, he throws in his doubts: "It's pretty dangerous. It's a long way away and it doesn't even take us very far into the future."
Let's focus, he says on building a time machine that will fly into the future. Yes, let's. And his hope is stimulated by the experiments in the Large Hadron Collider beneath the French-Swiss border.
It's all about speed, he believes. So the CERN experiments bring a true hope. Your spaceship might be a large version of one of the tiny particles that are being hurtled around the collider: "They can only get to 99.99 percent of the limit. When that happens, they too start to travel in time. We know this because of some extremely short-lived particles, called pi-mesons. Ordinarily, they disintegrate after just 25 billionths of a second. But when they are accelerated to near-light speed they last 30 times longer."
The near-light speed he is referring to is just under the "cosmic speed limit" of 186,000 miles per second. The conclusion, then, for all you who wish to dedicate yourselves to the cause of time travel is to build a very, very large spaceship that can go, say, 185,000 miles per second. "It really is that simple," says Hawking.
Hawking doesn't suggest specific materials from which your time machine should be made, but he is clear that it would have to hold a huge amount of fuel, so that, though it would start slowly, it would speed up to such an extent that it would zoom along at just under that cosmic speed limit.
Personally, I find the mind contortions involved in thinking about these things more taxing than living with lice. However, it seems to me that perhaps your best option, should you want to be the first human to take his lover to Neptune on a very fast spaceship, is to have some children pretty quick: Spaceship construction seems quite a time-consuming and long-labored process. You might not finish in, as it were, time. If you have some kids now, they will surely be able to carry on your good work.
And, once they have made the cosmic journey, perhaps they will defeat Hawking's assertion that time travel backwards will be impossible. Then, they will come back, raise you from the dead (did I mention that they froze you before you popped your clogs?) and then take you out through their wormhole to a new, happy, and celestial life.
Well, Hawking does say he's a dreamer. We should all be, shouldn't we?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20004118-71.html
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.
Obey, Spend, Obey, Don't Look Up, Obey, Spend, Obey
Airborne Fungus Expected to Spread in U.S.
About 10 People Have Reportedly Died in Northwestern U.S. After Infection With C. gatti
By Kathleen Doheny, WebMD Health News, Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
April 23, 2010 -- A potentially deadly airborne fungus, widely dubbed the killer fungus, has infected more than 50 people in the U.S., according to the CDC, and is expected to spread from the Pacific Northwest where it first surfaced.
Even so, public health officials say, there is cause only for concern and awareness, but not for alarm.
The killer fungus, which first surfaced in Canada in 1999, appeared in the U.S. in Washington in early 2006. Since then, reports of cases have occurred in Oregon and Northern California.
"We wouldn't recommend that people change their habits in any way," Julie Harris, PhD, MPH, a staff epidemiologist with the CDC, tells WebMD. "We wouldn't recommend people stay indoors or don't go hiking or don't go outdoors."
The fungus species triggering the infection is Cryptococcus gattii, which can cause pneumonia or meningitis. But the infection ''simply is not common enough for people to warrant changing behavior," Harris says. "It's still very rare. People should be concerned but not alarmed."
At a news briefing Friday, Katrina Hedberg, MD, MPH, interim state epidemiologist for the Oregon Department of Health Services Public Health Division, told reporters that it's also rare that people exposed to the fungus end up getting sick.
While the CDC wouldn't specify the number of deaths, citing incomplete data, Hedberg says that ''of the 50-plus cases, around 10 of them have died."
Twelve of those 50 cases, including three deaths, have been in the state of Washington, according to Nicola Marsden-Haug, MPH, an epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health, Shoreline.
Marcia Goldoft, MD, a medical epidemiologist with the department, urges people to keep the threat in perspective. "The benefits of outdoor activity and exercise far outweigh the risks of a rare disease such as C. gattii."
Tracking the Fungus
Researchers in the U.S. have been studying the fungus, traditionally located in tropical locations, for several years, says Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD, chair of the department of molecular genetics and microbiology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
The fungus, he tells WebMD, ''originates in soil and is associated with certain tree species, and becomes airborne."
While the fungus was typically seen in tropical areas of South America and other tropical and subtropical regions, it surfaced in Vancouver Island, Canada, in 1999, says Heitman, the senior author on a report on the fungus published online this week in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
"It is a microbial pathogen that can cause significant illness and even death, but it is very uncommon," he says.
Infections can be treated with antifungal agents, but no vaccine is available for C. gattii, Heitman says.
The first recorded U.S. case was in Orcas Island, Wash., Heitman says. That was followed by cases in Washington and Oregon.
Hedberg says the 50 reported cases have occurred in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.
Heitman's team has discovered a new pathogenic strain of the fungus in the Oregon cases.
Unlike another fungus type, Cryptococcus neoformans, which typically infects those who are HIV-positive or other immunocompromised people, the C. gattii fungus can infect apparently healthy people.
The 50 cases reported to the CDC, Harris says, include people from age 15 to 95.
How the Fungus Spreads
''The fungus is present in the environment," Hedberg says. "It's present in soil or in trees." As trucks transport lumber down the I-5 corridor in the Pacific Northwest, she says, the fungus has likely spread.
The airborne fungus is inhaled. "People have to inhale it to get sick," Hedberg says. "It's not spread from person to person at all."
And, she adds, many are exposed but few actually get sick.
The time from exposure to the fungus to onset of symptoms varies, Heitman says. It could be two to eight months.
Fungus Symptoms
Four symptoms are typical of infection with C. gattii, says Harris of the CDC. They include:
Severe headache - Fever - Chills - Shortness of breath
Some people infected with the fungus have just one of the symptoms, she tells WebMD, but often they have all four.
See your doctor if you experience the symptoms and think you may have been exposed, she advises.
She encourages doctors to be alert to the symptoms in patients, especially if they live in or have visited the Pacific Northwest.
Seismic Activity Of Interest
201005.07 20:00:00 UTC
Here is what caught my attention first (yesterday):
MAP 4.5 2010/05/06 23:12:33 48.326 -127.847 10.0 VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA REGION
and here is what caused this post (today):
MAP 4.5 2010/05/07 17:09:05 -24.029 179.784 614.3 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 5.1 2010/05/07 17:46:15 44.396 -129.437 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 18:41:55 44.407 -129.456 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.5 2010/05/07 18:43:09 44.456 -129.410 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 3.9 2010/05/07 18:48:38 44.458 -129.107 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.2 2010/05/07 18:51:01 44.490 -129.557 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 18:55:05 44.508 -130.052 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.3 2010/05/07 19:03:32 44.536 -129.557 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 3.9 2010/05/07 19:15:59 44.527 -130.659 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 4.4 2010/05/07 20:02:20 44.496 -129.418 10.0 OFF THE COAST OF OREGON
MAP 7.2 2010/05/09 05:59:43 3.775 96.055 45.0 NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
Related 2010 Seismic and Volcano Activity
Eyjafjallajokull Volcano (Iceland)
"NO VOTE, NO TAX !" CAMPAIGN ** A cartoon by Benrik Pitch
Benrik Pitch: If you weren't allowed to vote last week, you shouldn't have to pay taxes under this parliament. A newspaper should spearhead the cause of non-voters and force a change in the law.
I share their despair, but I'm not quite ready to climb the Dark Mountain
To sit back and wait for the collapse of industrial civilisation is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens value
George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 May 2010 20.30 BST, Article history
Those who defend economic growth often argue that only rich countries can afford to protect the environment. The bigger the economy, the more money will be available for stopping pollution, investing in new forms of energy, preserving wilderness. Only the wealthy can live sustainably.
Anyone who has watched the emerging horror in the Gulf of Mexico in the past few days has cause to doubt this. The world's richest country decided not to impose the rules that might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, arguing that these would impede the pursuit of greater wealth. Economic growth, and the demand for oil that it propelled, drove companies to drill in difficult and risky places.
But we needn't rely on this event to dismiss the cornucopians' thesis as self-serving nonsense. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculates deforestation rates between 2000 and 2005 in the countries with the largest areas of forest cover. The nation with the lowest rate was the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The nation with the highest, caused by a combination of logging and fire, was the United States. Loss of forest cover there (6% of its own forests in five years) was almost twice as fast as in Indonesia and 10 times as fast as in the DRC. Why? Because those poorer countries have less money to invest in opening up remote places and felling trees.
The wealthy nations are plundering not only their own resources. The environmental disasters caused by the oil industry in Ecuador and Nigeria are not driven by Ecuadorian or Nigerian demand, but by the thirst for oil in richer nations. Deforestation in Indonesia is driven by the rich world's demand for palm oil and timber, in Brazil by our hunger for timber and animal feed.
The Guardian's carbon calculator reveals that the UK has greatly underestimated the climate impacts of our consumption. The reason is that official figures don't count outsourced emissions: the greenhouse gases produced by other countries manufacturing goods for our markets. Another recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the UK imports a net 253m tonnes of carbon dioxide, embodied in the goods it buys. When this is taken into account, we find that far from cutting emissions since 1990, as the last government claimed, we have increased them. Wealth wrecks the environment.
So the Dark Mountain Project, whose ideas are spreading rapidly through the environment movement, is worth examining. It contends that "capitalism has absorbed the greens". Instead of seeking to protect the natural world from the impact of humans, the project claims that environmentalists now work on "sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level which the world's rich people - us - feel is their right".
Today's greens, it charges, seek to sustain the culture that knackers the planet, demanding only that we replace old, polluting technologies with new ones - wind farms, solar arrays, wave machines - that wreck even more of the world's wild places. They have lost their feelings for nature, reducing the problem to an engineering challenge. They've forgotten that they are supposed to be defending the biosphere: instead they are trying to save industrial civilisation.
That task, Paul Kingsnorth - a co-founder of Dark Mountain - believes, is futile: "The civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it." Nor can we bargain with it, as "the economic system we rely upon cannot be tamed without collapsing, for it relies upon … growth in order to function". Instead of trying to reduce the impacts of our civilisation, we should "start thinking about how we are going to live through its fall, and what we can learn from its collapse … Our task is to negotiate the coming descent as best we can, whilst creating new myths which put humanity in its proper place".
Though a fair bit of this takes aim at my writing and the ideas I champion, I recognise the truth in it. Something has been lost along the way. Among the charts and tables and technofixes, in the desperate search for green solutions that can work politically and economically, we have tended to forget the love of nature that drew us into all this.
But I cannot make the leap that Dark Mountain demands. The first problem with its vision is that industrial civilisation is much more resilient than it proposes. In the opening essay of the movement's first book, to be published this week, John Michael Greer proposes that conventional oil supplies peaked in 2005, that gas will peak by 2030, and that coal will do so by 2040.
While I'm prepared to believe that oil supplies might decline in the next few years, his coal prediction is hogwash. Energy companies in the UK, as the latest ENDS report shows, are now beginning to deploy a technology that will greatly increase available reserves. Government figures suggest that underground coal gasification - injecting oxygen into coal seams and extracting the hydrogen and methane they release - can boost the UK's land-based coal reserves 70-fold; and it opens up even more under the seabed. There are vast untapped reserves of other fossil fuels - bitumen, oil shale, methane clathrates - that energy companies will turn to if the price is right.
Like all cultures, industrial civilisation will collapse at some point. Resource depletion and climate change are likely causes. But I don't believe it will happen soon: not in this century, perhaps not even in the next. If it continues to rely on economic growth, if it doesn't reduce its reliance on primary resources, our civilisation will tank the biosphere before it goes down. To sit back and wait for what the Dark Mountain people believe will be civilisation's imminent collapse, without trying to change the way it operates, is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens are supposed to value.
Nor do I accept their undiscriminating attack on industrial technologies. There is a world of difference between the impact of windfarms and the impact of mining tar sands or drilling for oil: the turbines might spoil the view but, as the latest disaster shows, the effects of oil seep into the planet's every pore. And unless environmentalists also seek to sustain the achievements of industrial civilisation - health, education, sanitation, nutrition - the field will be left to those who rightly wish to preserve them, but don't give a stuff about the impacts.
We can accept these benefits while rejecting perpetual growth. We can embrace engineering while rejecting many of the uses to which it is put. We can defend healthcare while attacking useless consumption. This approach is boring, unromantic, uncertain of success, but a lot less ugly than the alternatives.
For all that, the debate this project has begun is worth having, which is why I'll be going to the Dark Mountain festival this month. There are no easy answers to the fix we're in. But there are no easy non-answers either.
Realtime Magnetosphere Simulation - Information Source
Eyjafjallajökull Volcano (Iceland) Update
The folks at eldgos.mila.is (Iceland) have done a fantastic job revamping their pages and there is now an English version of their Webcam pages Check It Out, ~@~
We SHELL not EXXONerate Saddam Hussein for his actions. We will MOBIL'ize to meet this threat to vital interests in the Persian GULF until an AMMICOble solution is reached. Our best strategy is BPrepared. Failing that, we ARCOming to kick your ass. == Blood for Oil?
FEDS GONE WILD PART I
The Department of Interior Oil and Gas Royalty Scandal and Its Wyoming Roots
By Laton McCartney and Rone Tempest, WyoFile, Guest Writer, 9-03-09
[snip] Minerals Management Service is, to the few people outside the energy industry who’ve ever heard of it, an obscure Interior Department agency. Yet it has an enormously important mission: leasing out onshore and offshore sites for exploitation by oil and gas companies, and collecting tens of billions of dollars in royalties from those companies. In fiscal 2008, those revenues came to a whopping $23.4 billion. Royalty payments are this country’s second largest source of income (the largest, of course, being taxes). And not incidentally, Wyoming, which gets 49 percent i of the federal royalties collected in the state, ii is the largest recipient of these revenues. In fiscal 2008, the Cowboy State received $1.27 billion dollars in federal oil, gas and coal royalties, almost twice as much as any other state.
The Lakewood branch of Minerals Management operated differently from its parent in Washington, D.C. Following the Bush administration’s oft-expressed desire to run government like a business, the Lakewood office functioned like a quasi-business, collecting royalty payments not in cash, but in “kind,” that is, in actual oil and gas. The Lakewood office then sold this oil or gas on the open market, competing with private sector traders.
Lakewood’s operations were unique in another way. The office had become a rogue enterprise, a feds-gone-wild hotbed of sex, payola, cocaine and corruption. iii Which was why Salazar’s visit was no ordinary meet-and-greet. Eight days after taking office, Salazar and his colleagues had come to Colorado to lay down the law.
“We are no longer doing business as usual,” the Stetson-wearing secretary told reporters. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
“The President has made it clear that the type of ethical transgressions, blatant conflicts of interest, wastes and abuses that we have seen over the past eight years will no longer be tolerated,” Salazar warned Lakewood employees. He vowed to re-open a two-year-old investigation into alleged corruption and mismanagement that critics—and former Interior Department employees—claim had cost Americans billions of dollars in lost revenue.
When you read Inspector General Devaney’s 2008 report on the office, the word “tawdry” leaps to mind, astonishment not so much that Minerals Management personnel were corrupt, but how cheap they were. Devaney’s report doggedly details hundreds of industry gifts to federal Royalty-in-Kind employees: golf games, tacky little sight-seeing tours, luggage, golf bags, silver-plated trays, dip bowls, boozy Christmas parties, visits to bars, ski lift tickets, snowboarding lessons, hotel rooms, country music concerts, tailgating parties, paintball outings, drunken dinners etc., etc. Sure, it all adds up to tens of thousands of dollars, but come on!
The contempt in which the oilmen held the government officials shines up off the pages: references to Minerals Management marketers as the “MMS chicks;” e-mails damp with sexual innuendo, such as the Shell Pipeline Company official inviting the marketing specialist “girls” to “meet at my place at 6 a.m. for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding…”
Yet the report also has its moments of pathos, as when Minerals Management marketing specialist Stacy Leyshon tells Devaney that, yes, she did sleep with a Shell Oil guy, but she didn’t have an improper “personal relationship” with him because a “one-night stand” isn’t personal. iv And what about the hurtful revelation to Minerals Management marketing specialist Crystal Edler? She thought she was dating a man from Hess Corporation, but Devaney found that the guy was putting her down on his expense account when they went out—he was working.
And then there was Greg Smith, the Lakewood office boss of the Royalty-in-Kind program. Devaney’s report observes, almost as an aside, that Smith used illegal drugs and had sex with his subordinates “in consort with industry,” which brings to mind a fairly unlovely picture. The statement that government was in bed with the oil and gas industry was not, in this case, metaphorical. [snip] - Continue reading:
FEDS GONE WILD PART II
How the ‘Royalty in Kind’ Scandal Went From Wyoming to the National Stage
The second of a two-part investigative series from WyoFile detailing the Wyoming roots of a national Department of Interior scandal.
By Laton McCartney and Rone Tempest, WyoFile, Guest Writer, 9-03-09
[snip] “The Department of the Interior is institutionally unwilling to aggressively collect the money owed to the American people by the oil industry,” stated Maloney’s report, titled A Wink and A Nod:
How the Oil Industry and the Department of Interior are Cheating the American Public and California Schoolchildren.
The report said that “for decades” Interior had given “loyal and devoted service to the petroleum industry” and had a record “replete with mismanagement, duplicity, evasions, and outright lies.”
[snip] Bush’s transition to power was conducted by his vice-president, Dick Cheney. Cheney had left his $25-million-a-year job as CEO of Halliburton, the oil-field services and construction giant co-headquartered in Dubai and Houston, to run for office in 2000. Cheney was an active executive. In an unheard-of xiii move, he “seized the initiative” to staff much of Bush’s Cabinet during the hiatus provided by the Florida recount. Cheney, not Bush, announced the appointment of several key transition team officialsxiv.
He selected David J. Gribbin III, a faithful friend from their days together in high school in Casper and at the University of Wyoming, to be the transitional liaison with Congress. To follow his mentor back into politics, xv Gribbin left his job as chief lobbyist for Halliburton. With Gribbin in place, Cheney took charge of negotiations with lawmakers about the legislative agenda.
Cheney chose Thomas Sansonetti, the Cheyenne lawyer xvi and GOP activist, to head the inner-circle team choosing top personnel for the Interior Department.
Sansonetti, who has never held elected office, xvii is a well-known quantity in the Wyoming party and preceded Diemer True as the state’s Republican organizational powerbroker: he was Republican National Committeeman, 1996-2001 (True took over in 2002) and chairman of the state Republican Party from 1983-87 (True was chair 1992-96). When Craig Thomas won the 1989 special election to replace Cheney, who had left his seat to become George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary, Sansonetti became Thomas’ aide. A member of the Federalist Society xviii, Sansonetti was also a lobbyist for the coal industry.
Although the energy industry was represented at all important levels within the incoming administration, industry lobbyists continued their own efforts. According to Newsweek, oil and gas lobbyists met at the American Petroleum Institute offices nine days before the Inauguration to draw up a “wish list” for a Bush energy plan. The list was sent over to the Bush Energy Department transition team. The expansion of the royalty-in-kind program was near the top of the list.
Membership on the Energy Department team was a political plum, and the incoming administration rewarded generous supporters with seats at the table. Men who had given the Bush campaign more than $100,000, like Tom Kuhn, head of the Edison Electric Institute, or more than $200,000, like Enron’s Kenneth Lay, became Energy transition team players. Some transitional heavyweights were not among the largest contributors, but were important in themselves, as high-level industry lobbyists. Diemer True, at this time chairman of the Independent Petroleum Producers Association, was a team member in Energy, although he and his family had given only $125,000 to state and national Republican parties and candidates in recent election cycles.
The Bush transition team, prevented from occupying the customary federal transition team quarters by the long dispute over who had won the election, had raised its own transition office money and rented a 20,000-square-foot office in a southern Virginia suburb. There it began the work of accepting résumés for 6,125 federal jobs within the new Republican administration’s gift.
To head the critical Department of the Interior, Sansonetti’s team chose Denver oil-and-gas lawyer Gale Norton, a protégée of Reagan’s first Interior Secretary, James G. Watt. Sansonetti had worked with Norton in Watt’s Interior in the ’80s. Like Watt, Norton was a Mountain States Legal Foundation attorney, and like Sansonetti, she was a member of the Federalist Society. Norton was confirmed almost immediately after Bush’s inauguration.
But her department was not fully staffed for months.xix The expansion of the royalty-in-kind program, near the top of the energy industry’s wish list, was going to have to take place in Interior’s Minerals Management Service, which lacked a new leader for some time. Thomas R. Kitso, who had replaced Cynthia Quarterman in February 1999 and stayed on after January 2001, resigned that November. Deputy secretary of Interior J. Steven Grilesxx announced that Lucy Querques Denettxxi of the Minerals Revenue Management division would be Acting Director until “further notice.” [snip] - continue reading:
May 15, 2001
Halliburton & KMNF [Azerbaijan] Ink 12 Year Contract
"Halliburton International Inc. and KASPMORNEFTELOT (KMNF), the marine division of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), have entered into a 12-year contract for a marine base and associated services to support Halliburton Sub sea offshore construction activity in the Caspian region. Halliburton Sub sea is a business unit of Halliburton Company’s Energy Services Group. "The base, with a 6,000-square metre lay down area, is located at KMNF’s Southern Basin adjacent to Caspian Shipyard. It will be primarily utilized to support Halliburton Sub sea’s catamaran crane vessel Qurban Abbasov (previously known as the Titan 4) during the restoration and upgrade of the vessel and during the forthcoming offshore construction, pipe lay and sub sea activities. The site will also be developed to provide warehouse, office and training facilities that will include advanced diver and life support technician training, utilizing the company’s 16-man modular saturation system. "The Qurban Abbasov is operated by Halliburton Sub sea in an alliance agreement with SOCAR for a period of 12 years. It will provide an advanced, stable, dynamically positioned construction platform for saturation and remote vehicle diving; flexible and bundle pipeline installation with trenching; emergency pipeline repair, subsurface well intervention with wire line; and coiled tubing. It also will be used in flotel configuration for hook-up and commissioning work. "'The acquisition of the marine base is a further indication of our commitment to the Caspian region and to the success of the partnership arrangements with SOCAR,' says Edgar Ortiz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Halliburton’s Energy Services Group." --Aylward, Marine Publishers and Halliburton Press Release, May 15, 2001.
[Ed. NOTE: The original documents are currently missing and here were their link addresses: http://www.aylward.co.uk/story1.htm - and - http://www.halliburton.com/ESG/ESGNWS/ESGNWS_051501.asp . Another interesting point is this contract runs out in 2013 and perhaps why Iran is of interest. - Source plus Rice Oil]
October 4, 2001
Ted Rall cartoon October 4, 2001 This cartoon was done less than a month after 9/11 and shows a rectangle divided into four smaller rectangles. At the top it says: I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE PAIN IS GONE
The upper section (of each smaller rectangle) has a black background, with white print, and below them there is a cartoon.
1st small rectangle shows a cartoon of an oil man with a wrench working on an offshore oil rig.
The top caption says: AMERICANS CAN'T TAKE THIS LYING DOWN. AFTER ALL, WE'RE A SUPERPOWER!
Below, in the cartoon, it says: CASPIAN SEA, KAZAKHSTAN WORLDS LARGET OIL RESERVES.
2nd rectangle, next to the one above, shows a cartoon of two oil executives talking in a room with UNOCAL Petroleum on the wall.
The top caption says: 7,000 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MURDERED. THEIR DEATHS MUST BE AVENGED!
Below, in the cartoon, it says: PIPELINES ARE EXPENSIVE. THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE ROUTE FROM KAZAKHSTAN TO THE SEA IS ESSENTIAL TO PROFITABILITY.
3rd rectangle, bottom left, shows a cartoon map with a pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to the Port of Karachi, across several countries the U.S. is currently fighting in.
The top caption says: TERRORISM MUST BE ERADICATED. LET'S START AT THE SOURCE!
Below, in the cartoon, it shows the: SHORTEST POSSIBLE PIPELINE ROUTE
4th rectangle, next to the one above, shows a cartoon of a gas station with a gas price sign.
The top caption says: THE TALIBAN OPPRESS WOMEN. THEY SHOULD BE OVERTHROWN!
Below, in the cartoon, the gas price sign says: UNLEADED 1.89 9/10 PLUS TAX - Source
Addendum: For FUN, click HERE to listen to a MP3 predicting a future Gulf Coast disaster recorded during 1974.
Background: While participating with an amateur radio network during 1974, I heard a high speed Morse code message that repeated three times, without identification, and went silent. The message stated a time, date, frequency, and requested the broadcast be recorded. The broadcast was on high frequency radio and starts off with poor sound and gets better a few minutes after the start. Even though some of the information is 'off', it is important to remember this was 1974 and that some things mentioned, in some cases, pertain to today. Of interest are claims the government is being taken over, references to oil crisis, and a disaster on the 'Gulf Coast'. - Source
ASIFA-SF NEWSLETTER - MAY 2010 - SF'S MARK FIORE WINS A PULITIZER PRIZE FOR HIS WORK DOING ANIMATED SYNDICATED POLITICAL CARTOONS SEEN ON THE INTERNET His work is presently seen on the Internet at SFGate.com, Mother Jones.com, CBSNews.com and on other sites. His submissions for the Pulitzer included "Science-gate" (run 12/09/09) that lampoons skeptics of global warming, "Obama Interruptus" (12/02/09) that portrays his trying to stay focused despite the distractions of the world around him, and "Credit Card Reform" (10/28/09) that takes on the fabulous mumbo-jumbo double-talk offers of the credit card industry.
I wrote the following in 2008. Mark Fiore - The Guru of Political Internet Animation
The political cartoonist/animator who rises above all others on the web is Mark Fiore. In 2000 Mark taught himself Flash, found two customers and started to turn out Flash cartoons. Then the "dream job" he had always wanted was offered to him, the San Jose Mercury News hired him as their political cartoonist. Being on their staff was great until he discovered his editor was under tremendous pressure to keep circulation and ad revenues up. Mark says, "It was awful." He lasted 6 months with the paper due to their restrictive editorial policy. (That translates as their not allowing him to kick ass and say what he wanted because of his editor's fear of losing income if he really allowed his staff to speak freely.) Since leaving the paper in 2001 he has been syndicating his weekly animated cartoons online. [continue]
Introducing AT&T's New "iTap" Network
Our data (telephone) line went dead during early February and the above TAP was discovered February 18, 2010.
There are two different cables running from the above pole, onto the ground, into the woods, across fire roads, and animal trails, for over a mile. I have seen several young, limping, deer coming from that area.
The wires also run across several areas that need to be cleared before the end of May and that can not be done with them on the ground.
Worst of all, we have nothing else available for Internet access, except DIAL-UP, and this TAP caused our access speed to drop to 300 baud (1978 access speeds) and this page currently takes thirty (30) minutes to load = making the Internet NOT FUN.
This incident was reported to AT&T who said they would have it "repaired by Friday, April 23, 2010."
On May 15, 2010 the line is still tapped and our 'regular' phone no longer works properly (We've only gotten about five (5) phone calls during the past week).
I really didn't want to get into this, but the TAP was performed by those who knowingly broke the law during the Republican Bush Administration and got away with it!
The Telecoms also had a lot of help from a Republican and Democrat Congress with an approval rating less than the tolerable amount of rat feces allowed in the Human food supply; the same politicians one can (sic/tic) thank for passing an illegal Patriot Act without reading it!
The CPUC was alleged ??? to have said, "It was obviously an act of God?"
FREE TELEVISION,
Is A Promise, NOT A Threat
This is a promise: If the AT&T ILLEGAL TAP is not removed by April 26, 2010 a detailed one page Exploit, with photographs, is in position to be automatically generated throughout W3 on how to compromise any pay TV service; including AT&T's U-verse TV; allowing anybody to obtain FREE Television (because THEY forgot something)! ;-)
p.s. Dahbud suggests reading April Flashbacks and Denialist page for related sources.
Addendum
Most of you did not see the above post... and the reason why is because, most who do know me do not understand the humor presented on these pages. In other words, Nobody reads the DISCLAIMER.
So...not wanting to fall short on my word (see above), I (snicker) listed the following hack under the title FREE TV [PDF file from Make TV] in places of interest, and later removed them. ;-)
Your Move!
Happy 74th Birthday Wavy Gravy
(May 15th) Love Flying Snail & Friends
Doctors
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians, per year, are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.
Guns
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is eighty million (80,000,000).
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths, per gun owner, is .000188
Statistics courtesy of FBI
So...
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT, almost everyone has at least one doctor.
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
We, the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers Ask you to join us:
MAY 18, 2010
CONSCIOUS PARTICIPATION IN HEALING OUR PLANETARY WATERS
OUR MOTHER EARTH NEEDS YOUR HELP! Along with many peoples all around the globe, and many water prayers this spring, we are calling for a MASSIVE GLOBAL EFFORT
Our main intention for this healing is to return the waters to their original pure crystalline blueprint, and to add to their abundance for the nourishment of ALL living things on the planet.
Pray in your local waterways, at the rivers or lakes or streams. Or pray with a bowl of water in the middle of the cities.
"We are Water Babies.
Do not to forget to say thank you every day for the water you drink,
the water you bathe in.
Without our Mother water we would not survive."
Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim, Takelma Siletz, Oregon
The specific ceremonies being conducted on May 18, 2010:
Grandmothers will be holding Water Prayers in the following places:
African Rainforest, Gabon - Grandmother Bernadette Rebienot
Great Lakes, USA - Grandmother Rita Blumenstein
Mountains of Oaxaca, Huautla de Jimenez - Grandmother Julieta Casimiro
Desert of the American Southwest - Grandmother Mona Polacca
France - Grandmother Flordemayo
Black Hills of North America - Beatrice and Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance
Plains of North America, Montana - Grandmother Margaret Behan
Hood River, Oregon - Agnes Baker Pilgrim
Nepalese Himalayas - Aama Bombo
Brazilian Amazon - Grandmothers Maria Alice Freire and Clara Shinobu Iura
Tibetan Ceremonies in Canada - Tsering Dolma Gyaltong
Mahia, Aotearoa, New Zealand - Ambassador Pauline Tangiora
At the same time, people will be praying at Nine specific bodies of water around the planet using crystalline energy
· Lake Tahoe, California
· Lake Titicaca, Peru
· Lake MacKay, Australia
· Lake Chad, Africa
· Lake Bikkal, Russia
· Lake Kissyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan
· Lake Geneva, Switzerland
· Lake Superior, Minnesota
· Colorado River Complex (Healing and Purification Ceremonies for this vital USA waterway)
"Water reflects the human soul. If you say, 'thank you' to water, it will be reflected in the form of beautiful crystals overflowing with gratitude in return." Masuru Emoto, The Secret Life of Water
For more information: www.goldeneagleceremonies.comvia Prez, USA-Exile
Memories of Mount St. Helens on the 30th Anniversary
by Erik Klemetti
May 18, 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Now, rather than recount the event when the USGS and the Cascade Volcano Observatory have done such an excellent job, I turn it over to all the Eruptions readers and their memories of the eruption. [continue]
Pesticides on Produce Tied to ADHD in Children
Organophosphates may alter chemistry of developing brain, researchers say
by Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, May 17 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests that exposure to high levels of organophosphate pesticides, commonly found on berries, celery and other produce, could raise the odds for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.
At this point, though, there is no evidence that pesticide exposure can actually cause ADHD, stated the authors of a paper appearing in the June issue of Pediatrics.
Certainly parents and children shouldn't swear off fruits and veggies, said study lead author Maryse Bouchard, an adjunct researcher in the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Montreal and at Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre. However, "I think it's safe to say that we should as much as possible reduce our exposure to pesticides," she said.
That would meaning going organic, buying at farmers' markets and washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly before consuming them, she said.
"I always encourage my families to embrace healthy lifestyles in general," agreed Dr. Nakia Scott, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and a child psychiatrist with Lone Star Circle of Care. "I think it's much more important that they're eating fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains instead of sodas and fast foods and I'm not saying that they're not going to eat any produce because it might contain pesticides."
Previous research has shown an association between both prenatal and postnatal organophosphate exposure and developmental problems in young children.
But most prior studies have focused on excessive rather than average exposure to organophosphates.
"Organophosphates are one of the most widely used pesticides in agriculture to protect crops and fruits and vegetables," Bouchard noted. "For children, the major source of exposure would be the diet -- fruits and vegetables in particular."
In their study, Bouchard and her colleagues analyzed data on pesticide exposure and ADHD in more than 1,100 American children aged 8 to 15.
Children with higher pesticide levels in their urine were more likely to have ADHD, the team found.
"The analysis showed that the higher the level of exposure [as measured by metabolites in the urine], the higher the odds of having ADHD," Bouchard added.
Just how might pesticides harm brain development? According to the authors, high doses of organophosphates may inhibit acetylcholinesterase, a nervous system enzyme. Lower doses of the pesticide may affect different growth factors and neurotransmitters.
The findings, if replicated, may provide another clue into the causes of ADHD, a condition which affects three to seven percent of school-aged children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We do have a fair amount of evidence about other causes of ADHD," Scott said. "We know that ADHD is a highly heritable disorder. At least one-third of fathers who have had ADHD in their youth have a child with ADHD."
"There are also prenatal risks such as tobacco exposure and alcohol exposure," she added. "There's also a possibility that children who are exposed to high levels of lead prior to the age of six may develop ADHD."
For Personal Reference Only 201005.17 12:00 utc
There are a similar set of 'patterns' that caused this posting happening; however, there is something new, for me, as, there are 2 extra 'things', where they do not belong, and any 'new' 'swarm' activity (Alaska) would raise my interest. I do not have time to list the earthquakes, at this moment, so if one monitors this page, go to (dated) USGS World (dated) for verification.
Steve Bell
Republican "Contract With Lie to America"
October 3, 2005 by Balz
As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.
This year's election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.
Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act "with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.
On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:
- FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
- SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
- THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
- FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
- FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
- SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
- SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
- EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny.
1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out- of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in- sentencing, "good faith" exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT: Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children's education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.
5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.
7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.
8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.
9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT: "Loser pays" laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.
10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT: A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.
Further, we will instruct the House Budget Committee to report to the floor and we will work to enact additional budget savings, beyond the budget cuts specifically included in the legislation described above, to ensure that the Federal budget deficit will be less than it would have been without the enactment of these bills.
Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.
Masters of War
by Bob DylanCome you masters of war, You that build all the guns, You that build the death planes, You that build the big bombs, You that hide behind walls, You that hide behind desks, I just want you to know I can see through your masks.
You that never done nothing', But build to destroy, You play with my world, Like it is your little toy, You put a gun in my hand, And you hide from my eyes, And you turn and run, farther, When the fast bullets fly.
Like Judas of old, You lie and deceive, A world war can be won, You want me to believe, But I see through your eyes, And I see through your brain, Like I see through the water, That runs down my drain.
You fasten the triggers, For the others to fire, Then you set back and watch, When the death count gets higher, You hide in your mansion, As young people's blood, Flows out of their bodies, And is buried in the mud.
You've thrown the worst fear, That can ever be hurled, Fear to bring children, Into the world, For threatening my baby, Unborn and unnamed, You ain't worth the blood, That runs in your veins.
How much do I know, To talk out of turn, You might say that I'm young, You might say I'm unlearned, But there's one thing I know, Though I'm younger than you, Even Jesus would never, Forgive what you do.
Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good, Will it buy you forgiveness, Do you think that it could, I think you will find, When your death takes its toll, All the money you made, Will never buy back your soul.
And I hope that you die, And your death will come soon, I will follow your casket, In the pale afternoon, And I'll watch while you're lowered, Down to your deathbed, And I'll stand over your grave, Until I am sure you are dead
Free Gary McKinnon
FreeGary.org.uk is intended to support British citizen Gary McKinnon, who is facing "fast track" extradition to the USA (after over five six seven years since his initial arrest !).
Gary was indicted by a US court in November 2002, accused of "hacking" into over 90 US Military computer systems from here in the UK.
The unjust treatment of British citizens (and others) when facing the might of the US Military "justice" system, which practices detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and stands accused of making use of torture by allied regimes ("extraordinary rendition") is an ongoing scandal. It cannot be excused even by a "war on terror".
It seems only just that Gary should face any charges in a British court, and to serve any sentence, if he is found guilty, in a British prison. - freegary.org.uk
Apple 1984 vs. Present
Jail U.S. Telecom Executives
& Bush Regime War Criminals
Telecom Crimes
Telecom Crimes & Punishment
Violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution
Violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution
Unlawful electronic surveillance or disclosure or use of information obtained by electronic surveillance in violation of 50 U.S.C. §1809.
Unlawful interception, use or disclosure of Class communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2511
Unlawful solicitation and obtained disclosure of the contents of communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(1) or (a)(2)
Unlawful solicitation and obtained disclosure of non-content records or other information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(3)
Violation of the Administrative Procedures Act
Violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers
Telecom Punishment
Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize ...
Jul 9, 2008 ... It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment." EFF, the other non-profit organization behind the telecom lawsuits, announced the same, ...
The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly. [Continue Reading]
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/09/fisa_vote/
Senate Approves Telco Amnesty, Legalizes Bush's Secret Spy Program ...
That amendment got 57 votes, but due to an agreement by Senate Majority ..... It's also not in violation of the constitution, as it only applies to non-citizens. ..... 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives ... [Continue Reading]
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/senate-approves.html
Wiretapping, Telecom Companies, and You | The Legality
Feb 20, 2008 ... Discussion of warantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, ... Warrantless wiretaps violate the Fourth Amendment guarantee of freedom from ...
The telecom companies have a powerful ally in the U.S. federal government: officers of the federal government who approved wiretaps without a warrant may face widespread civil or criminal liability if any wrongdoing comes out in court. The law takes abuse of power very seriously, and under 50 U.S.C. § 1809, an agent of the government who monitors an illegal wiretap or uses information obtained from unlawful surveillance can be punished with a fine of $10,000, five years in jail, or both. [Continue Reading]
http://www.thelegality.com/archives/26
Extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon put on hold
Theresa May agrees adjournment of judicial review to consider whether Gary McKinnon is fit to be extradited to US
by Mark Tran, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 May 2010 12.51 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/20/computer-hacker-gary-mckinnon-extradition-on-hold
This Multiverse's Blog
Fashion and culture in this particular multiverse.
http://thismultiverse.wordpress.com/
The Legends of Wilmington Jazz
Steven Leech writes: The Legend of Wilmington Jazz covers 70 years of jazz produced by such artists from the past and present as Clifford Brown, Lem Winchester and Betty Roché to Ernie Watts and Matthew Shipp. Works of others who had produced jazz in Wilmington will be heard, along with some rare recordings. The Legends of Wilmington Jazz will be broadcast every Friday at 6pm, beginning on June 4th.
Boysie Lowery
Boysie Lowery not only was Clifford Brown's music teacher, but he mentored nearly every jazz artist to have come from Wilmington. A rare recording of Boysie and Clifford Brown playing together will be heard as part of The Legends of Wilmington Jazz.
Betty Roché
Betty Roché was born in Wilmington in 1920. She was a member of Duke Ellington's band in the early 1940s and early 1950s, and first performed with Ellington at his Carnegie Hall concert in 1943. Because she recorded only one commercial recording with Ellington, all other Ellington sides will be rare recordings. She also recorded three solo albums in the 1956 and the early 1960s.
Image: Ball Lightning, 1886./G. Hartwig, NOAA Photo Library collection.
Lightning May Cause Hallucinations
By Alexandra Witze, Science News May 20, 2010 | 4:05 pm | Wired Science
Talk about a flash of insight. Lightning strokes could stimulate people’s brains and cause them to hallucinate bright blobs of light the same way a medical procedure that applies magnetic fields to the brain does, two physicists propose. The findings could help explain some reports of “ball lightning,” mysterious floating orbs that have been reported for centuries but are poorly understood. A paper describing the idea will appear in Physics Letters A.
“We don’t claim to have a solution for the mystery of ball lightning,” says study co-author Alexander Kendl, a plasma physicist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “But this is a possible hypothesis.”
Lightning forms when electrical charges become physically separated in a storm cloud and build up electrical potential between them, which is then discharged in the sudden bolt. Strokes typically come in clusters. In some cases, Kendl says, they can come extremely rapidly: something like 20 to 60 lightning strokes, each on the order of 100 milliseconds long, raining down over the course of several seconds.
These rare repetitive strokes, Kendl’s team found, generate magnetic fields that are very similar — in strength and in how they rise and decay over time — to those used in a brain-stimulation technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS.
TMS applies magnetic fields to the brain to treat neurological and psychiatric conditions like stroke and depression. While the stimulation is being applied to the visual cortex, some patients report seeing blobs of light in their field of vision. Such experiences, of seeing light when light is not actually entering the eye, are known as phosphenes. (The patterns of light you see when you rub your closed eyes hard are another type of phosphene.)
Working with Innsbruck graduate student Josef Peer, Kendl calculated that repetitive lightning strokes would trigger phosphenes “astonishingly well.” A person would need to be within about 200 meters of the lightning to experience the effect.
But Thomas Kammer, a TMS expert at the University of Ulm in Germany, isn’t convinced. Patients report seeing many different kinds of TMS-induced phosphenes, but they don’t generally mesh with descriptions of ball lightning. “I cannot imagine that long-lasting visual phenomena as described with ball lightning might be based on induced phosphenes,” Kammer wrote in an e-mail.
Scientists have proposed before that ball lightning reports could be ascribed to visual hallucinations, but the new study is the first to quantify the phenomenon in such detail and relate it to a known phenomenon. In 2008, researchers in Sweden proposed that magnetic fields associated with lightning could affect neurons in the part of the brain known as the occipital lobe, setting off epileptic seizures and inducing visions later described as ball lightning.
“Evidence is mounting that most, if not all, of ball lightning observations are created by the interaction of lightning-generated magnetic fields with the human brain,” says a co-author of that study, electricity expert Vernon Cooray of Uppsala University in Sweden.
Scientists have struggled for centuries to explain ball lightning, in part because reports of it are so varied. It is often described as a yellowish ball that hovers around eye height for a couple of seconds before vanishing. But other reports describe ball lightning of various colors moving rapidly, fizzling or even exploding; some say it is accompanied by a sharp smell or sound.
The diversity of descriptions, Kendl says, suggests ball lightning may be a catchall term describing many different types of experience.
Humanity will thank heaven that this creator of synthetic life is playing God
Spare us the parade of ethicists and clerics. This is a moment in evolution, as radical an invention as agriculture or industry - Martin Rowson, The Guardian, Saturday 22 May 2010 - Source
US appoints first cyber warfare general
Pentagon creates specialist online unit to counter cyber attack amid growing fears of militarisation of the internet
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, The Observer, Sunday 23 May 2010, Article history - Disclaimer
The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare – despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.
The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.
The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".
The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.
James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.
Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.
In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.
Plans for Cyber Command were originally conceived under President George W Bush. Since taking office Barack Obama has embraced the theme of cyber security, describing it last year as "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges [the US faces] as a nation".
During his confirmation hearing, Alexander said that the Pentagon's networks were being targeted by "hundreds of thousands of probes every day" adding that he had "been alarmed by the increase, especially in this year".
Cyber warfare has increased rapidly in scale and sophistication with China accused of being at the forefront of prominent recent attacks, including the targeting of Google and 20 other companies last year as well as "Titan Rain" in 2003 – a series of coordinated attacks on US networks. Russian and North Korean hackers have also been accused of large-scale attacks.
Moscow was accused of being behind a massive cyber assault on Estonia in 2007 – the second largest cyber warfare operation ever conducted.
While Alexander has tried to play down the offensive aspects of his command, the Pentagon has been more explicit, stating on Friday that Cyber Command will "direct the operations and defence of specified Department of Defense information networks [involving some 90,000 military personnel] and prepare to, when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, [to] ensure US allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."
The complex issues facing Cyber Command were thrown into relief earlier this year when the Washington Post revealed details of a so-called "dot-mil" operation by Fort Meade's cyber warfare unit, backed by Alexander, to shut down a "honeytrap website" set up by the Saudis and the CIA to target Islamist extremists planning attacks in Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon became convinced that the forum was being used to co-ordinate the entry of jihadi fighters into Iraq.
Despite the strong objections of the CIA, the site was attacked by the Fort Meade cyber warfare unit. As a result, some 300 other servers in the Saudi kingdom, Germany and Texas also were inadvertently shut down.
Of equally concern to those who had opposed the operation, it was conducted without informing key members of the Saudi royal family, who were reported to be "furious" that a counter-terrorism tool had been shut down.
The issue of cyber warfare – and how to combat it – has become an increasingly fraught one.
The need to have electronic warfare capabilities, say those who support them, has been proven repeatedly by the apparent success of hostile attacks on government networks, including last year's massive denial of service assault on networks in both the US and Korea.
Last year, hackers also accessed large amounts of sensitive data concerning the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter programme.
The difficulties facing the new command were underlined in March by former CIA director Michael V Hayden, who said that the Saudi operation had demonstrated that cyber warfare techniques were evolving so rapidly that they were now outpacing the government's ability to develop coherent policies to guide its use.
"Cyber was moving so fast that we were always in danger of building up precedent before we built up policy," Hayden said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/us-appoints-cyber-warfare-general
Manipulation Accomplished
BP Oil Spill Live Feed: VIDEO Of 'Top Kill' Attempt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/bp-oil-spill-live-feed-vi_n_590635.html
British Petroleum Visionaries
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com, Tuesday, May 25, 2010
(NaturalNews) The Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe, now in its 35th day, has struck land, coating tourist beaches, marshes and shorelines with a greasy black filth that metaphorically represents the corporate greed that now dominates the U.S. economy. We are all awash in the dark slime of corporations gone bad, and now we're paying the price for allowing these companies to dominate our media, our government and our entire economy.
You might think government regulators could have prevented all this, but that's hardly the case. This disaster isn't merely about a government regulation failure; it's about what happens when you let corporations rule Washington.
Reporters threatened with arrest by U.S. Coast Guard under orders from BP
British Petroleum has been steamrolling both the federal government and the press over this oil catastrophe in the Gulf. For starters, the U.S. Coast Guard is now threatening to arrest journalists who try to cover the story by invoking "BP rules" that forbid journalists from conducting investigative journalism.
(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010...)
As reported by CBS News: "When CBS News tried to reach the beach, covered in oil, a boat of BP contractors with two Coast Guard officers on board told us to turn around under threat of arrest."
In other words, the U.S. Coast Guard is now protecting the financial interests of corporations by trying to censor a story the public needs to know.
At the same time, BP thumbed its nose at the EPA and flatly refused to use less-toxic chemical dispersants in its cleanup efforts. So yesterday, the White House ordered BP to cut its use of chemical dispersants by half. The chemical in question is called Corexit, and so far BP has dumped 650,000 gallons of the toxic chemical in the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet, as the Guardian reports, "Scientists told congressional hearings last week that Corexit was more toxic and less effective than other dispersants on the market. Conservationists fear the chemical could further jeopardize already depleted stocks of fish such as Atlantic bluefin tuna or poison endangered species of turtle."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environme...)
Powerful corporations write their own rules
BP, of course, can simply ignore the order to ease off its use of chemical dispersants, just like it ignored rules and regulations about drilling for oil in the ocean in the first place. And that's the problem here: When corporations are allowed to run the show, they will inevitably take shortcuts that compromise the health of their customers or the environment.
The same thing is true with Big Pharma, which basically runs the FDA, FTC and CDC. What BP is doing to the Gulf of Mexico, Big Pharma is doing to the health of the world population. And yet because it is so incredibly profitable to poison people with dangerous prescription medications, the pharmaceutical industry has the financial influence to dominate the actions of government regulators.
Similarly, the meat and dairy industries basically run the USDA. That's why healthy raw milk is being outlawed while pasteurized, processed dead milk is heavily pushed by the USDA (and the FDA).
(http://www.naturalnews.com/028757_r...)
Time and time again, powerful corporations corrupt the system and turn it to their own advantage: Military contractors dictate foreign policy. Monsanto dictates agriculture policy. Wall Street dictates banking regulations. And British Petroleum writes its own rules when it comes to offshore drilling.
It's not even a question of government regulators having too little power, either... regulators have plenty of power. It's just that they are using it against the People rather than to protect the people. They are purposely avoiding holding corporations responsible for their actions that are destroying our health, our economy and our environment.
A crime against our planet
For example, if you or I dumped 650,000 gallons of a toxic chemical in the ocean, we'd be arrested and brought up on criminal charges that would probably include "terrorism" charges under the Patriot Act. But when BP executives do exactly the same thing, nothing happens to them. No arrests. No criminal charges. No consequences.
Heck, you know as well as I do that BP will get off with a slap on the wrist when this is all over. Every major corporation that commits fraud (Big Pharma), steals from the People (Goldman Sachs) or causes an environmental catastrophe (BP) gets off virtually scot-free.
Well why is that? Why can corporations commit the most heinous crimes imaginable and yet never be held accountable? Big Pharma has engaged in so much price fixing fraud, clinical trial fraud and fraudulent marketing that it would make your head spin. Yet the U.S. government continues to do business with Big Pharma, buying up their dangerous drugs at monopoly prices, even though these companies are essentially corporate felons. Read my stories on Merck
(www.NaturalNews.com/Merck.html) or Pfizer
(www.NaturalNews.com/Pfizer.html) if you don't believe me.
Business as usual in the corporate world
The sad truth is that this disaster in the Gulf of Mexico isn't an aberration. It's just business as usual in the corporatocracy known as the United States of America, Inc. The corporations run this country, and they do whatever they want, regardless of how many people are killed, how many laws are broken or how many miles of coastline are utterly destroyed by chemical contamination. They operate with utter disregard for anything resembling ethics or honesty.
Corporate greed knows no limits. If corporate executives could profit another billion dollars by destroying the entire Gulf of Mexico, do you have any doubt they would pursue that course of action? Your life has no value to them. Marine life has no value to them. The health of the world's oceans have no value to them. They only value one thing: The bottom line profit they can produce at any cost.
British Petroleum = Big Pharma = Big Food = Big Agriculture = the Military Industrial Complex.
It's all the same, folks. Do not be surprised that these criminal corporate operators are destroying our planet. They've been doing it for generations, and they absolutely will not stop unless We the People make them stop through force (by having these people arrested and imprisoned, for example).
If you really want to clean up the planet, we should stop tossing chemical dispersants into the Gulf and just start tossing greed-minded corporate executives into the ocean and see how far they can swim when they're coated with oil.
That would be planetary justice, my friends, and it would send a powerful message that corporate executives who cause harm to the world around them may end up swimming in the very same cesspools of greed they themselves created.
Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/028855_British_Petroleum_offshore_drilling.html
Dear Members of Congress:
Do not dare to pull another fast one to bail out British Petroleum (BP) like you did with the Banks.
The U.S. population is sick of you using our monies for private benefits. Besides it is ILLEGAL!
The BP oil disaster and criminal corporate activity will cost more than the assets of the company. The damage will most likely not be under control until the end of this century. So, no one has any idea of the value or cost of the total damages. NOT EVEN THE COURTS.
You should pass immediate legislation in this first round which will (1) order the Federal government to pay for the living and re-location costs of all those people impacted by the disaster; and (2) order the Federal government to seize all the assets of BP under the legal term " for unknown costs of damages, yet to be measured, which will most likely be greater than the value of the company".
Unless you take drastic and rapid measures like this, you can kiss Obama's presidency goodbye. Obama needs to "repair" the damage he and his administration did by fighting in court to exonerate BP from the environmental impact studies, the safety processes and instruments. The cozy relationship between the federal government and BP does not spell a "sweet" future for Obama. Unless there is action as specified above, the environmental movement will pin this oil spill disaster not only on BP but on Obama.
SO LET'S SEE WHOSE SIDE YOU AND HE ARE ON? ARE YOU FOR BP? OR ARE YOU FOR THE PEOPLE?
Thank you for your attention,
David Bayer
To: Senator Boxer-Stacey ; Senator Boxer-Majida ; Senator Barbara Boxer ; Senator Dianne Feinstein ; Senator Schumer ; Senator-Feingold ; Senator-Leahy ; Rep-Sutton ; Rep-Conyers ; Rep-Farr ; Rep-Farr-Ann ; Rep-Grijalva ; Rep-Kildee-Barbara ; Rep-King ; Rep-McGovern ; Rep-Michaud ; Rep-Price ; Rep-Rangel ; Rep-Speaker Pelosi ; Rep-Speaker-Pelosi ; Rep-Tauscher ; Rep-Thompson - via Prez-USA-Exile
Torture inquiry should leave no stone unturned, says Amnesty
Investigation into human rights abuses promised by William Hague needs to be independent and must look at criminal responsibility, says organisation
Ian Cobain, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 May 2010 12.24 BST, Article history
The coalition government should "leave no stone unturned" in the search for the truth about the UK's complicity in foreign torture, the head of Amnesty International has said.
An inquiry promised by William Hague, the foreign secretary, needs to be both independent and able to decide whether any individuals should be prosecuted, said Amnesty's interim secretary general, Claudio Cordone.
"We look forward to an inquiry that is truly independent and looks not only at potential criminal responsibility but also at Britain's co-operation agreements with the United States and other countries," said Cordone. "It should leave no stone unturned."
Launching its annual human rights report, Amnesty was highly critical of the last Labour government for "stonewalling" in the face of repeated calls for an independent investigation into the mounting allegations that UK intelligence officials were complicit in abductions, illegal detention and torture since the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001.
The organisation said it was also concerned about the UK relying on "diplomatic assurances" when carrying out deportations to countries such as Algeria and Jordan.
In London, Amnesty's UK campaigns director, Tim Hancock, said Britain had lost the moral high ground in recent years, and that the new political era offered an opportunity for the UK to break free of the human rights abuses of the past.
"Both parties in the new government have criticised the previous government on human rights grounds and it's vital that they live up to their fine words now they're in office," Hancock said.
"We're stressing that 'justice gaps' – where people are cut off from accessing justice – need to be closed all around the world, and it's only right that the UK delivers on law and order at home and abroad. While dozens of countries in the world have very poor human rights records, the truth is that ours has been nothing to write home about either."
The Foreign Office was taken by surprise last Thursday when Hague said that an investigation would be held, and Whitehall officials later insisted that any such inquiry could not start while a number of court cases are ongoing. Several men who allege UK complicity in their rendition and torture are currently suing MI5, MI6 and the British government.
The same officials said that any inquiry would need to be held in secret – a proposal that has been condemned by human rights groups.
Those organisations say the inquiry should establish:
• who authorised the bilateral agreements with the US that led to Britain offering logistic support for the CIA's rendition programme of kidnap and torture, and whether any other agreements led to human rights abuses;
• who authorised the secret interrogation policy, transmitted to MI5 and MI6 officers, telling them they could interrogate people who were being tortured, as long as they did not participate and were not "seen to condone it";
• what Downing Street knew about the torture of Binyam Mohamed, and about the torture of several British citizens since 2001;
• and what the last foreign and home secretaries, David Miliband and Alan Johnson, knew about the UK's involvement in torture and rendition.
Amnesty's annual report for 2010, covering 159 countries, condemned a number of influential nations that it says attempt to stand above human rights laws. It accused these countries, including the US, Russia and China, of shielding allies from criticism and only taking action when it is politically convenient.
The organisation also criticised the EU for failing to live up to its commitments on human rights, citing the tolerance of the CIA's rendition flights and secret detention program. It added that several European countries had repeatedly violated rulings by the European court of human rights against the return of terror suspects to countries where they are at risk of torture.
Amnesty also recorded torture, unfair trials and restrictions on free speech in dozens of countries, singling out Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia and Sri Lanka for criticism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/may/27/government-torture-inquiry-amnesty
Republican Alberto 'Torture Queen' Gonzales
A Secret History: How Torture Took Root
But while top White House officials publicly talked about trying Al Qaeda leaders for war crimes, the internal memos show that administration lawyers were privately concerned that they could tried for war crimes themselves based on actions the administration were taking, and might have to take in the future, to combat the terrorist threat.
The issue first arises in a January 9, 2002, draft memorandum written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluding that "neither the War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions" would apply to the detention conditions of Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The memo includes a lengthy discussion of the War Crimes Act, which it concludes has no binding effect on the president because it would interfere with his Commander in Chief powers to determine "how best to deploy troops in the field." (The memo, by Justice lawyers John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, also concludes--in response to a question by the Pentagon--that U.S. soldiers could not be tried for violations of the laws of war in Afghanistan because such international laws have "no binding legal effect on either the President or the military.")
But while the discussion in the Justice memo revolves around the possible application of the War Crimes Act to members of the U.S. military, there is some reason to believe that administration lawyers were worried that the law could even be used in the future against senior administration officials.
One lawyer involved in the interagency debates over the Geneva Conventions issue recalled a meeting in early 2002 in which participants challenged Yoo, a primary architect of the administration's legal strategy, when he raised the possibility of Justice Department war crimes prosecutions unless there was a clear presidential direction proclaiming the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. The concern seemed misplaced, Yoo was told, given that loyal Bush appointees were in charge of the Justice Department.
"Well, the political climate could change," Yoo replied, according to the lawyer who attended the meeting. "The implication was that a new president would come into office and start potential prosecutions of a bunch of ex-Bush officials," the lawyer said. (Yoo declined comment.)
This appears to be precisely the concern in Gonzales's memo dated January 25, 2002, in which he strongly urges Bush to stick to his decision to exempt the treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters from the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. (Powell and the State Department had wanted the U.S. to at least have individual reviews of Taliban fighters before concluding that they did not qualify for Geneva Convention provisions.)
One reason to do so, Gonzales wrote, is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." He added that "it is difficult to predict with confidence what actions might be deemed to constitute violations" of the War Crimes Act just as it was "difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism." Such uncertainties, Gonzales wrote, argued for the President to uphold his exclusion of Geneva Convention provisions to the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees who, he concluded, would still be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessarily, in a manner consistent with the principles" of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.
In the end, after strong protests from Powell, the White House retreated slightly. In February 2002, it proclaimed that, while the United States would adhere to the Geneva Conventions in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, captured Taliban and Qaeda fighters would not be given prisoner of war status under the conventions. It is a rendering that Administration lawyers believed would protect U.S. interrogators or their superiors in Washington from being subjected to prosecutions under the War Crimes Act based on their treatment of the prisoners. © 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
![Martin Rowson cartoon of [War Criminal] Condi Rice saying, Isn't democracy wonderful?](http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2005/06/27/rowson512.jpg "Martin Rowson cartoon of [War Criminal] Condi Rice saying, Isn't democracy wonderful?")
Secretary Rumsfeld's Court Filing Argues
Immunity for Responsibility from Torture and Abuse
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/2006_statements/etn_0306_rumsfeld.htm
On March 6, 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld filed a long-anticipated motion to dismiss the case brought by the ACLU and Human Rights First on behalf of victims of torture in U.S. custody. The lawsuit, the first federal court suit to name a top U.S. official in the ongoing torture scandal in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was originally filed in March 2005 on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan citizens, who were tortured and abused at the hands of U.S. forces under Secretary Rumsfeld's command. The suit charges the Secretary and other senior commanders with legal responsibility for acts of torture and abuse against the Iraqi and Afghan torture victims in the case.
Following the filing, ACLU and Human Rights First attorneys rejected the position put forward by Secretary Rumsfeld in his legal papers, which assert that Secretary Rumsfeld is immune from responsibility for acts of torture and abuse committed against civilians detained by the U.S. military at Abu Gharib and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan under his watch.
"Secretary Rumsfeld makes the chilling argument that a government official who authorizes or condones torture is entirely immune from suit and cannot be held accountable for his actions. We believe that the courts must reject that contention to protect the rule of law and the principles of the Constitution," said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the lawsuit and director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.
"Particularly in light of reports documenting how senior command and civilian leadership have escaped accountability for the gross abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, the Secretary's position that ordering torture was ‘within the scope of his employment' is a stunning abdication of the responsibility of command," said Deborah Pearlstein, counsel in the lawsuit and Director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First.
Since filing the original complaint on March 1, 2005, HRF and the ACLU have continued to update and refine the allegations based on independent research and press reports of further evidence of command responsibility in ordering or tolerating detainee torture and abuse. The lawsuit against Secretary Rumsfeld was consolidated last year with three similar complaints brought by the ACLU against Colonel Thomas Pappas, former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski and Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez on behalf of the torture victims who were detained in Iraq. The consolidated cases were then transferred to Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the District Court for the District of Columbia.
The groups are joined as co-counsel in the lawsuit by Bill Lann Lee, Chair of the Human Rights Practice Group at Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy; and Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA), former Chief Judge (IMA) of the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, are also engaged as "of counsel" to Human Rights First.
Defence chiefs gag damning Iraq invasion findings
Exclusive Study by Lt Gen Chris Brown is deemed too harsh and kept secret – but Chilcot inquiry makes clear it expects access
Richard Norton-Taylor, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 May 2010 19.56 BST, Article history
Highly critical comments by a senior army officer asked to conduct a study of the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq have been suppressed on the orders of the country's top defence officials, the Guardian has learned.
The study, by Lt Gen Chris Brown, was commissioned in the light of mounting evidence of the failure to prepare properly for the invasion and its consequences.
Former senior military officers and defence officials have already described their anger and frustration about the failures in damning testimony to the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 Iraq invasion. One of the inquiry's key objectives is to spell out the lessons that should be learned from what is widely regarded in Whitehall as an ill-conceived operation of dubious legality and, in foreign policy terms, a disaster comparable to the 1956 Suez crisis.
Against this background, the Ministry of Defence agreed to conduct its own study. However, Brown's criticisms were so harsh that they have been suppressed following the intervention of Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, and other officials, who considered them too embarrassing even for internal consumption at the MoD.
Defence chiefs also appear to be worried that once Brown's study was passed to Sir John Chilcot to help him with his inquiry, they would lose control of the contents.
An MoD spokesman told the Guardian: "Lt Gen Chris Brown has led a small team in the production of an internal, classified MoD paper examining the Iraq campaign for the purpose of learning lessons for the future. As part of the routine staffing of such an important piece of work, a variety of military officials and civil servants have provided input during the paper's development."
In a comment making it clear it expects to be given the study, the Chilcot inquiry said: "The inquiry is aware of the MoD's internal study of lessons learned in Iraq. We do not comment on specific documents we hold but, as we said before, the inquiry is confident that it will be given access to all relevant government documents."
Whitehall officials made plain tonight that these statements disguise deep sensitivity about the revelation that there is an internal MoD dispute over the study.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and commentator on military matters, said: "Defence is far too important, a matter of life and death, to get too sensitive about potential embarrassment."
Brown was the last senior British military representative in Baghdad in 2009. He was subsequently appointed to the post of "Iraq study team leader". He was previously involved in planning Nato operations in Kosovo and was commander of British troops in Northern Ireland.
Lt Gen Frederick Viggers, his predecessor in Baghdad at the time of the 2003 invasion, told the Chilcot inquiry in December: "We've got huge experience in this country – we're not using it and we're putting amateurs into really, really important positions and people are getting killed as a result of some of these decisions."
He said the invasion of Iraq suffered from a lack of direction from the outset. Individuals at the highest levels of the government did not seem to have a clear idea of the operation's direction. He added: "I am not talking about the soldiers and commanders and civilians … who did a great job … it's the intellectual horsepower that drives these things [that] needs better co-ordination."
Major General Tim Cross, the only UK military official appointed to help plan the invasion aftermath, delivered a severe indictment of Whitehall's failures. "There were serious concerns about legality and over money," he told the Chilcot inquiry. He described the preparations for the invasion as "woefully thin".
The Chilcot inquiry has yet to say which documents Whitehall submitted to it. Departments insist decisions to disclose which documents are up to them. The inquiry is expected to resume public hearings at the end of June or early July.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/27/defence-chiefs-gag-iraq-report
Nobody Gets It The First Time Around
None of the Above
Should Be On Voter Ballots
Nobody for President
US ECO-MOVEMENT'S 40TH ANNIVERSARY - 3
by keith lampe [Listen While You Read? = MP3 = Why Not Try Love Again?]
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Today's installment from my issue number two of Earth Read-Out (ERO) at the end of May '69 gives us an opportunity to understand how much more confidence people had in themselves then than now. For example, do AFT locals talk now the way they talked then? Or do high-ranking U-C officials talk now the way Robert Greenway (all honor to his name) talked then? Or does the despicable Washington Post ever play a positive role at rallies as it did at this one?
And this information is critically important today--especially for our last hope, the campus generation. It helps all of us grok that in fact we've been enormously dumbed-down and intimidated.
Given the intense uncompromising integrity of this teach-in, it's quite easy to understand why the MIAC (Military-Industrial-Academic Complex) thought it necessary a year later to murder four peaceful students at Kent State, then make a point of not punishing the murderers. They needed strong writing on the wall:
We'll kill you whenever we wish and nobody's gonna stop us.
Please note that you can learn hardly anything about this immensely important stuff in the twerpy-hustler Limited Hangout "alternate" histories of Howard Zinn and Carolyn Baker.
I must confess that I hadn't read my material for many years and--though I expected to find it quite significant for our current times--I am blown by just how significant it in fact is. I almost wish I'd let Herder & Herder publish it back in '70. But as you can see from the spirit of the times--so many people (mainly hippies and hardly any leftists) gallantly taking-it-to-the-limit over and over again!--my role as a socalled environmental leader (ERO quickly became the central info vehicle for the movement and remained so till autumn '70) was to try to force the sleazy corporate publishing world to start being transparent about their various immensely negative eco impacts. Today it is even more important that they start doing so.
Now that you understand how much was happening environmentally in the late '60s aren't you at least a bit exasperated when the pimps and whores of CNN, etc, act like they invented TEC (True Environmental Concern) a few years ago? Or when Bill McKibben acts like he invented it twenty years ago?
Yours for waking to the quantum ether,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo
Volunteer and Complete Unknown
EARTH READ-OUT
(#002:29V69)
May 29, 1969
by keith lampe
About 2000 persons attended--off and on--a six-hour teach-in on "Ecology and Politics in America" May 28 on the U-C Berkeley campus.
Idea was to relate the People's Park issue to broader questions of planetary survival.
A lot of language under a hot sun--but hopefully the thing will get made into a book to help people past the old politics and into a root politics of ecology.
Sponsors were American Federation of Teachers locals 1474 and 1795. Their leaflet for the occasion put it succinctly where it's at:
"The battle for a people's park in Berkeley has raised questions that go far beyond the immediate objects of public attention. They are questions about the quality of our lives, about the deterioration of the environment and about the propriety and legitimacy of the uses to which we put our land. The questions raised by this issue reach into two worlds at once: the world of power, politics and the institutional shape of American society on the one hand, and the world of ecology, conservation and the biological shape of our environment on the other.
"The People's Park is a mirror in which our society may see itself. A country which destroys Vietnam in order to liberate it sees no paradox in building fences around parks so that people may enjoy them. It is not at all ironic that officers of the law uproot shrubbery in order to preserve the peace. It is the way of the world! Trees are anarchic; concrete and asphalt are orderly and tractable. Defoliation is Civilization!
"Our cities are increasingly unlivable. The ghettos are anathema to any form of human existence. Our back country is no retreat; today's forest is tomorrow's Disneyland. Our rivers are industrial sewers; our lakes are all future resorts; our wildlife are commercial resources.
"The history of America is a history of hostility and conquest. We have constituted ourselves socially and politically to conquer and transform nature. We measure 'progress' in casualties, human and environmental, in bodies of men or board-feet of lumber.
"Ecology and politics are no longer separate or separable issues. . ."
Biggest mindblow of the day came from Robert Greenway, vice president for academic planning at U-C Santa Cruz. Greenway's contract isn't to be renewed because he's acting up--and the U-C regents got a court order forbidding him to make speeches because he's "inflammmatory".
Greenway told his audience "we have to go down to People's Park Friday with our women, children and neighbors and we have to say we're going to pull up the fence--gently--and then say to the National Guard 'Go ahead and shoot'".
Greenway said the fight for People's Park is part of a larger fight for physical and psychic space: "We must take every shred of university land that's not already built and make it a park."
He invited everybody down to Santa Cruz "where we have 3000 acres for dancing and singing and holding each other--and it would take them a year to fence it".
Prof. Sim van der Ryn, a member of the U-C Berkeley Chancellor's Committee on Environment, explained why we often have heavily polluted air in the Bay Area even during early morning hours: the air-pollution surveillance bureaucrats do only a 9-to-5 thing, so most of the biggest industries release their poisons after dark or in early morning.
Van der Ryn reminded everybody that DDT is killing enormous numbers of crabs on the West Coast, that high concentrations of DDT have been found even in High Sierra lakes--and that lots of people get busted for LSD, but nobody for DDT.
Dr. Tom Bodenheimer warned that DDT may get banned but be replaced by something even worse--that there are certain pesticides in use now (e.g., Parathion) which originally were developed as nerve gases. He said pesticides are the direct cause of about 150 deaths annually in the U.S. He said the nerve-gas leak which killed 6000 sheep in Utah last year might well have wiped out much of Salt Lake City also if it hadn't been for a shift in the wind.
Bodenheimer said the concentrations of CS gas on the Berkeley campus are probably still so great that "next time it rains it'll be like a gas attack." [Ed. Note: he refers here to the spraying of gaseous toxins onto innocent students by the infamous U.S. military.] He said the regime possibly soon may try to control demonstrations entirely from the air. He said the regime considers students, like insects, to be pests.
Cliff Humphrey of (Berkeley) Ecology Action said he plans to turn his auto into a piece of sculpture so it can't continue poisoning the air. "My Rambler is a pig," Humphrey said. "There are all kinds of pigs."
Dennis Maynis, a mountain climber, told the audience he's been watching Yosemite being destroyed. "They've paved trails, ripped out trees and flowers--but we're watched by telescope to make sure we don't break any rules."
Barry Weisberg, of the Bay Area institute, said 95% of all fresh water on the planet is being used faster than it's being replaced. He said Amerika constitutes only 7% of the world's population--but is presently consuming about 70% of the world's resources.
Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who was busted several weeks ago trying to stop Army engineers from wrecking Tamalpais Creek in the name of flood control, equated the creek with People's Park: 'each little blade of grass is important."
Wolf von Eckhart, architectural critic of the Washington Post, sent a wire saying "the city belongs to the people".
Folk singer Malvina Reynolds sang "God Bless the Grass."
Paul Goodman sent a wire from New York expressing outrage at "the vandalism committed by the authorities".
Jane Jacobs sent a wire from New York saying universities traditionally have used parks as a cover-story for land grabs in order to "lull lazy liberals". To those battling for People's Park she said "be brave but be careful: against armor and sadism your weapon must be ingenuity".
Among many other speakers was Stanley Smart, a Paiute who recently was busted for--dig--hunting without a license. "We don't believe in the white man's law," he said.
Forester Don Harkins urged street people to spend some time in the wilderness. He said he knew that some street people thought the wilderness was counterrevolutionary--"but they'll pull a lot of power into themselves by getting out there." He offered to teach street people how to move through snow and storms in mountains.
Poet Gary Snyder said we must "recover gut knowledge of our relationship to nature" through which "nature becomes the supernatural". He called for establishment of an "Earth People's Park because nations and corporations are not going to do anything because it calls for renunciation instead of profit and growth".
He said the Soviet Union, China, Amerika and Europe all are equally culpable.
Of the Amerikan scene he said "the materialistic, exploitative, white-western mentality swept across the continent east to west, destroying the passenger pigeon, the bison, the indian and the topsoil till finally it came right up to the Pacific and polluted the offshore waters there.
"Now it is time for us symbolically to become indians--people of this land--and take Amerika back from west to east. People's Park is the first little piece of liberated territory in Amerika and I hope we keep going and take the whole thing."
Poet Lew Welch said: "My goddess is Mt. Tamalpais and I sit on the rocks of her slopes and ask her questions and she gives me answers. . . the last cliff on the continent. . . This is the Last Place. . . There is Nowhere Else to Go. . . There is Nowhere Else We Need to Go."
via Jay
Mike Wilhelm - New Old Pawnshop Blues - MP3
AUM NAMO NARAYAN
Pranams Ji
I hope and trust that all is well with you !!! Please check out this video from the Kumbh Mela:
Becoming Shri Mahant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9O4cPUpCk4
It is about when myself, Ram Puri ji and Vasudev Puri Ji were made Mandal ka Shri Mahants by the Juna Akhara in March !!!
Here also is a link to some of my photos from the Kumbh:
http://www.goagil.com/photogallery/kumbh-mela2010
Enjoy, Goddess bless you, AUM NAMO NARAYAN !!! - M. Shri Mahant Mangalanand Puri (Goa Gil)
M. Shri Mahant Mangalanand Puri AKA Goa Gil
REDEFINING THE ANCIENT TRIBAL RITUAL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
www.goagil.com
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA !!!!! HARA HARA MAHADEV !!!!!
[Notes: Sita Ram -> Ram Puri and Goa Gil -> Mangalanand Puri are the only two westerners (non-Indian) to have EVER achieved the highest title of Shri Mahant in the history of the Das Nam Akcharas (10 Names of the original orders)! - Truly an amazing feat & honor. - Amestizo (Crazy Horse)]
Zen Mind Zen Soul
ZENSATIONAL QUOTES FROM WISE AND OTHERWISE
Contributed by Swami Akshara via Amestizo
1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either; just leave me the hell alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
4. Don't be irreplaceable; if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
5. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
6. Always remember you are unique, just like everyone else.
7. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
8. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
9. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
10. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
11. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
12. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
13. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat & drink beer all day.
14. If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
15. Don't squat with your spurs on.
16. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
17. If you drink, don't park; accidents cause people.
18. Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
19. Don't worry, it only seems kinky the first time.
20. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
21. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
22. Timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
23. A closed mouth gathers no feet.
24. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side & a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
25. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
26. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your mouth is moving.
27. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
28. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten. - Cree Prophecy
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear. So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen. The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice. And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know. So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there" Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect.