29 years later, Lennon's words still hit their mark

Spokane

 

by Chris Greenwood

 

It was outside this entrance to his apartment where John Lennon was shot and killed 29 years ago.

Photo by David Shankbone.

As the United States said good by to the '60's and entered the '70's, the country as a whole was in the process of turning the page.  The Vietnam War was beginning to work to a close, President Nixon hadn't faced Watergate yet, and the hippies and flower children were putting away the tie-dye shirts and shaving their beards.  It was during this time John Lennon penned one of the most timeless songs in history, Imagine.

29 years ago today, a psychotic gunman robbed a generation of their voice, but when you look at the lyrics to Imagine, they are just as relevant today as they were 38 years ago.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

With war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ever growing involvement of Pakistan, the nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea, we seem to find more and more reasons to be divided. 

The seemingly coordinated bombings in that region today show how increasingly hard it is to imagine living life in peace.

During the last presidential election, much was made of Barack Obama's religious affiliation, strange in a country founded on freedom of religion.  It was as if our country would come to a grinding halt if someone professing another faith were to become president. 

I guess when it comes to electing our leaders, we are a long way from a point where we imagine no religion.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Wall Street, can you hear this?  It seems we have taken the right of personal property to about as far an extreme as we can.  When you talk of the good of the country as a whole, or, to quote Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek II, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one", you are immediately labeled a socialist or jealous of the wealthy.  But what is wealth truly worth if it comes at the expense of society?

http://www.examiner.com/x-32067-Phoenix-Independent-Examiner~y2009m12d8-29-years-later-Lennons-words-still-hit-their-mark

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John Lennon's Death Still Resonates 29 Years Later

by Kyle Anderson

As was mentioned this morning, today is the anniversary of the murder of rock legend John Lennon, who was killed outside his apartment building just before 11 p.m. via five gun shots. The killer, Mark David Chapman, had been stalking Lennon for months and even had contact with him earlier in the day (Lennon signed a copy of Double Fantasy for the guy who would take his life only hours later)...

It's been a big year for Lennon's songs, as they were featured on the extremely well-received video game "The Beatles: Rock Band" and the complete catalog was remastered in both stereo and mono versions of a deluxe box set. Lennon's solo career is constantly being re-evaluated as well, with albums like Imagine and Mind Games getting deluxe re-issues and critical praise. But his best work remains his first. Check out the video for "Love," from Lennon's solo debut John Lennon/Pastic Ono Band.

http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/12/08/john-lennon-death/

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Baucus Caucus

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Rupert Murdoch Presents...

 

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All That

All That

by David Foster Wallace

Once when I was a little boy I received as a gift a toy cement mixer. It was made of wood except for its wheels—axles—which, as I remember, were thin metal rods. I'm ninety per cent sure it was a Christmas gift. I liked it the same way a boy that age likes toy dump trucks, ambulances, tractor-trailers, and whatnot. There are little boys who like trains and little boys who like vehicles—I liked the latter.

It was ("it" meaning the cement mixer) the same overlarge miniature as many other toy vehicles—about the size of a breadbox. It weighed three or four pounds. It was a simple toy—no batteries. It had a colored rope, with a yellow handle, and you held the handle and walked pulling the cement mixer behind you—rather like a wagon, although it was nowhere near the size of a wagon. For Christmas, I'm positive it was. It was when I was the age where you can, as they say, "hear voices" without worrying that something is wrong with you. I "heard voices" all the time as a small child. I was either five or six, I believe. (I'm not very good with numbers.)

I liked the cement mixer and played with it as much as or more than I played with the other toy vehicles I owned. At some point, several weeks or months after Christmas, however, my biological parents led me to believe that it was a magic and/or highly unusual cement mixer. Probably my mother told me this in a moment of adult boredom or whimsy, and then my father came home from work and joined in, also in a whimsical way. The magic—which my mother likely reported to me from her vantage on our living room's sofa, while watching me pull the cement mixer around the room by its rope, idly asking me if I was aware that it had magical properties, no doubt making sport of me in the bored half-cruel way that adults sometimes do with small children, playfully telling them things that they pass off to themselves as "tall tales" or "childlike inventions," unaware of the impact those tales may have (since magic is a serious reality for small children), though, conversely, if my parents believed that the cement mixer's magic was real, I do not understand why they waited weeks or months before telling me of it. They were a delightful but often impenetrable puzzle to me; I no more knew their minds and motives than a pencil knows what it is being used for. Now I have lost the thread. The "magic" was that, unbeknown to me, as I happily pulled the cement mixer behind me, the mixer's main cylinder or drum—the thing that, in a real cement mixer, mixes the cement; I do not know the actual word for it—rotated, went around and around on its horizontal axis, just as the drum on a real cement mixer does. It did this, my mother said, only when the mixer was being pulled by me and only, she stressed, when I wasn't looking. She insisted on this part, and my father later backed her up: the magic was not just that the drum of a solid wood object without batteries rotated but that it did so only when unobserved, stopping whenever observed. If, while pulling, I turned to look, my parents somberly maintained, the drum magically ceased its rotation. How was this? I never, even for a moment, doubted what they'd told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt's complete absence. They have forgotten.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/14/091214fi_fiction_wallace#ixzz0Z1yth6wY

 

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Yoo Hoo! Mr. Polar Ice Cap!

http://www.gocomics.com/stevesack/2009/12/04/

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Millions' worth of gear left in Iraq

PENTAGON EASES RULES
Officers air concerns, citing Afghan effort

By Ernesto Londoño

 

BAGHDAD -- Even as the U.S. military scrambles to support a troop surge in Afghanistan, it is donating passenger vehicles, generators and other equipment worth tens of millions of dollars to the Iraqi government.

Under new authority granted by the Pentagon, U.S. commanders in Iraq may now donate to the Iraqis up to $30 million worth of equipment from each facility they leave, up from the $2 million cap established when the guidelines were first set in 2005. The new cap applies at scores of posts that the U.S. military is expected to leave in coming months as it scales back its presence from about 280 facilities to six large bases and a few small ones by the end of next summer.

Some of the items that commanders may now leave behind, including passenger vehicles and generators, are among what commanders in Afghanistan need most urgently, according to Pentagon memos.

Officials involved say the approach has triggered arguments in the Pentagon over whether the effort to leave Iraqis adequately equipped is hurting the buildup in Afghanistan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/06/AR2009120602689.html

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Having hope gives me hope

 

At Hopenhagen there's a map of the world showing a quote from each of the 1,745,537 concerned citizens who have signed a petition begging the United Nations Climate Change Conference to come to their senses, and a good petition it is, well worth signing. The form shows a blank space before the words "gives me hope," hoping people will create phrases like "beauty gives me hope" or "Viagra gives me hope" but the vast majority of submissions don't quite get the concept, creating things like "Let's gather together in peace gives me hope" and "what countries will get submerged gives me hope."

 

LOL

 

Come to sign the global warming petition. Stay to make fun of others.

 

MD

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Emails Show bin Laden was Bush Talking Point, not Target

Millions of Messages Sent, but Only Handful Mention Al Qaeda Leader

By Margie Burns

"Missing" White House emails retrieved from Bush administration records indicate that top Bush Justice Department officials had little interest in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar, head of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), prolonged correspondence has pursued "missing" emails between the Bush White House and Bush's attorney general, deputy attorney general, associate attorney general, Office of Public Affairs, Office of Legal Counsel and Office of the Inspector General, in the Justice Department.

After a lengthy search, President Obama's Office of Information Policy, which handles FOIA requests, found emails pertaining to Osama bin Laden or to Mullah Omar only in Attorney General and Office of Public Affairs records from the Bush administration. Alberto Gonzales, previously Bush's White House counsel and then Attorney General, did not use email.

White House emails from the Bush years, often reported as missing, numbered in the millions. Thousands of emails were sent between the Bush White House and top Justice Department officials, through both government email accounts and private accounts including the Republican National Committee.

FOIA inquiries have produced two emails, totaling four pages, between the White House and Justice under the former administration relating to Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The FOIA requests produced 26 emails, totaling 119 pages, relating to Osama bin Laden.

The first internal reference to Mullah Omar, according to email records, occurred Dec. 7, 2001. White House staffer Edward Ingle forwarded a series of talking points titled "Meet Mullah Omar" from Deputy National Security Adviser James R. Wilkinson to a distribution list of several dozen government personnel in Cabinet offices and the Pentagon including Paul Wolfowitz. Omar has continued to evade capture and is believed to be living in neighboring Pakistan. There is no reference in the emails to Omar dating from the period when he was evading US forces. The next, and only other, mention of Omar's name was an incidental reference in a Sept. 23, 2004, New York Times article on Afghanistan forwarded the same day by White House staffers...

Fifteen emails mentioned bin Laden in 2004. Some were in response to criticism of the White House after disclosure of the famous Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." All email references are forwarded press briefings and other press releases, forwarded newspaper articles, or talking points related to bin Laden.

The Department of Justice represents the US government in enforcing the law in the public interest. According to the official definition of responsibilities printed under a photograph of then Attorney General Ashcroft, "Through its thousands of lawyers, investigators, and agents, the Department plays the key role in protection against criminals and subversion ... It represents the government in legal matters generally, rendering legal advice and opinions, upon request, to the President and to the heads of the executive departments. The Attorney General supervises and directs these activities, as well as those of the U.S. attorneys and U.S. marshals in the various judicial districts around the country."

Either top Justice Department personnel under the previous administration were not a set of bloodhounds, or documents have been suppressed. The email archives contain no indication that inside circles in the Bush White House and DOJ were paying attention to capturing Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Mentions of bin Laden and Omar come strictly in the context of public relations.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=102573

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more war... more surges!

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Pattie Maes: Unveiling game-changing wearable tech

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Do as we say, not as we do

The Republicans have been making a big stink about the health care bill paying for abortions. But Politico has found that the insurance plan that the Republican National Committee offers to its employees pays for elective abortions. Their health insurance company, Cigna, says that the RNC has the option of not covering abortions, but has covered them since at least 1991

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New Beatles album from a parallel universe where they never broke up

 

The Beatles "Everyday Chemistry"   On Sept. 9, 2009 I experienced something that I still am having trouble believing happened to me.  I came into the possession of a cassette tape containing a Beatles album that was never released. I don't expect you to believe what happened to me, I sure wouldn't, but that's why I grabbed the tape as proof that my experience was real. The Story of the Tape If you want to download the album use the links to the left or grab the zip file!   Email me at:  thebeatlesneverbrokeup@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Main Menu Home The Story Pictures FAQ The Album The Beatles  "Everyday Chemistry" 1. Four Guys 2. Talking To Myself 3. Anybody Else 4. Sick To Death 5. Jenn 6.  I'm Just Sitting Here 7. Soldier Boy 8. Over The Ocean 9.  Days Like These 10. Saturday Night 11. Mr Gators Swamp Jamboree   Download The Entire Album Zipped (70mb)

http://thebeatlesneverbrokeup.com/ Sphere: Related Content

The Festering Fraud behind Food Safety Reform

By Nicole Johnson

"The general public must recognize that only after the demystification of U.S. agriculture will family farmers, labor, and consumers see beyond corporate agribusiness' manipulations to the point where they will recognize that both their mutual interests and the future of agriculture can be best decided through a system that not only practices political democracy, but economic democracy as well.

-- Ingolf Voegler

Introduction

Readers of the New York Times were recently treated to a rarely glimpsed view of how the globally-sourced industrial food complex assembles the raw ingredients of the omnipresent hamburger. In his startling expose entitled "E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Ground Beef Inspection," Michael Moss provides a window from which to witness well-hidden meat industry practices that most people, judging from some six hundred comments left on the New York Times website within 24 hours of the article's publication, find thoroughly repulsive.[1]

Moss's article tracing the processing history of the E. coli-contaminated hamburger consumed by Stephanie Smith, which left her body ravaged and permanently disabled, has much to commend it. While detailing how Cargill shaves costs by scraping together its "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties" from trimmings and mash-like products sold to it by no less than four suppliers, Moss uncovers how the company failed to follow its own safety plans without facing any interference from the USDA until some one got very, very sick.

However, the article leaves out critical information from its analysis that would help us understand why so much is wrong with the meat inspection process today. Filling in these gaps is important if we want to take the correct measures to improve the safety of our meat supply. Furthermore, if we don't gain a fuller understanding of how and why the meat industry's inspection process became an essentially unregulated, privatized affair, we are likely to repeat the same mistake and allow Congress to pass food "safety" legislation that will serve to make the world a safer place for the cartels controlling the global produce trade but do nothing at all for the safety of our food supply.

The vested interests behind the creation of the 2009 Food Safety Enhancement Act and its Senate companion bill S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, are the same vested interests who were behind the earlier deregulation of the meat and poultry inspection process. They aim to minimize the regulatory obstacles faced by transnational corporations engaged in international trade, which is increasingly becoming the movement of goods from one subsidiary affiliate to another subsidiary affiliate. And they're using the issue of food safety to con us into consenting to their wishes.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Festering-Fraud-behind-by-Nicole-Johnson-091109-384.html

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What Chinese Currency Manipulation Looks Like

By Eric Lotke

As President Obama packs for China, I thought I'd draw him a picture of how China is manipulating its currency.

 

Source: Federal Reserve: Yuan, Broad dollar index.

The dollar stays flat against the Chinese Yuan, even as it loses value against other major currencies. The dollar is down to $1.50 per Euro, compared to $1.27 at this time last year (sorry to folks daydreaming about summer in Italy). But the dollar is unchanged against the Yuan (unless one considers 6.836 to 6.827 a drop).

 

Everyone knows this is happening. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner even used the word "manipulating" with the Senate Finance Committee mere hours before it voted to recommend his confirmation.

The dollar exchange with China "defies the laws of monetary physics." During this U.S.-led global recession, dollars aren't worth as much as they once were. The natural physics of exchange makes U.S. goods relatively less expensive for others to buy, but makes foreign goods more expensive for Americans to buy. In a free market for currency, that would help bring accounts back into balance.

But China doesn't obey those laws. China's deliberate policy of pegging the Yuan to the dollar makes American imports of Chinese goods artificially cheap and gives American companies opening factories in China an artificial subsidy. That's good for China but bad for America, and helps explain our soaring trade imbalance with China. An extraordinary 83 percent of America's non-oil trade deficit is with China. During the downturn, our trade deficit with other countries has been shrinking — but not with China.

 

The wheels of change are starting to turn. The Obama administration stood up to China when it imposed tariffs on Chinese tires and pipes dumped in the U.S. markets. The chattering class called it a trade war, but it's not. It's just applying the same rules of free trade that other countries respect, and that China agreed to when it entered the G-20 and was granted permanent normal trade relations with the US. Obama just blew the whistle.

The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September concluded with a joint statement to seek "more balanced growth as part of the global economic reconstruction." The entire G-20 signed on — including China — but China's name was in bold in the quest for "balance," and everyone knew it.

 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Chinese-Currency-Mani-by-Eric-Lotke-091112-554.html

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Job opportunity of the week

Grateful Dead Archivist

Institution:	University of California, Santa Cruz
Location:	Santa Cruz, CA
Category:	Admin - Libraries
Posted:	11/06/2009
Application Due:	Open Until Filled
Type:	Full Time
Salary:	$52,860 to $68,892 USD Per Year

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

Grateful Dead Archivist

The University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz, seeks an enterprising, creative, and service-oriented archivist to join the staff of Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) as Archivist for the Grateful Dead Archive. This is a potential career status position. The Archivist will be part of a dynamic, collegial, and highly motivated department dedicated to building, preserving, promoting, and providing maximum access both physically and virtually to one of the Library's most exciting and unique collections, The Grateful Dead Archive (GDA). The UCSC University Library utilizes innovative approaches to allow the discovery, use, management, and sharing of information in support of research, teaching, and learning.

Under the general direction of the Head of Special Collections and Archives, the GDA Archivist will provide managerial and curatorial oversight of the Grateful Dead Archive, plan for and oversee the physical and digital processing of Archives related material, and promote the GDA to the public and facilitate its use by scholars, fans, and students.

MINIMUM Qualifications:
* Master's degree from an ALA-accredited program or equivalent accredited graduate archives management program.
* Significant, demonstrated experience working with books, manuscripts, photographs, recordings, or other material in a special collections & archives environment.
* Knowledge of the access tools for special collections and archival material and the standards and procedures for their preservation and conservation.
* Demonstrated experience developing processing plans and creating finding aids in accordance with national standards.
* Knowledge of and ability to maintain awareness of developments in archival processing, digital information technologies, and their uses in special collections and archives.
* Expert knowledge in the history and scholarship of contemporary popular music, or American vernacular culture, preferably the history and influence of the Grateful Dead.
* Excellent analytical, organizational, and time management skills.
* Demonstrated oral, written and interpersonal communication skills sufficient to promote and present the archive to multiple audiences.
* Prior experience directing the work of others.

Strongly Preferred Qualifications:
* Demonstrated experience working in public services in an academic environment.
* Demonstrated experience working on outreach and other donor related activities.

 

http://www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?JobCode=175401318

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Flesh of Your Flesh

Should you eat meat?

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Americans love animals. Forty-six million families in the United States own at least one dog, and thirty-eight million keep cats. Thirteen million maintain freshwater aquariums in which swim a total of more than a hundred and seventy million fish. Collectively, these creatures cost Americans some forty billion dollars annually. (Seventeen billion goes to food and another twelve billion to veterinary bills.) Despite the recession, pet-related expenditures this year are expected to increase five per cent over 2008, in part owing to outlays on luxury items like avian manicures and canine bath spritz. "We have so many customers who say they'd eat macaroni and cheese before they'd cut back on their dogs," a Colorado pet-store owner recently told the Denver Post. In a survey released this past August, more than half of all dog, cat, and bird owners reported having bought presents for their animals during the previous twelve months, often for no special occasion, just out of love. (Fish enthusiasts may bring home fewer gifts, but they spend more on each one, with the average fish gift coming to thirty-seven dollars.) A majority of owners report that one of the reasons they enjoy keeping pets is that they consider them part of the family.

Americans also love to eat animals. This year, they will cook roughly twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, sliced from some thirty-five million cows. Additionally, they will consume roughly twenty-three billion pounds of pork, or the bodies of more than a hundred and fifteen million pigs, and thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, some nine billion birds. Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know—barbaric. Broiler chickens, also known, depending on size, as fryers or roasters, typically spend their lives in windowless sheds, packed in with upward of thirty thousand other birds and generations of accumulated waste. The ammonia fumes thrown off by their rotting excrement lead to breast blisters, leg sores, and respiratory disease. Bred to produce the maximum amount of meat in the minimum amount of time, fryers often become so top-heavy that they can't support their own weight. At slaughtering time, they are shackled by their feet, hung from a conveyor belt, and dipped into an electrified bath known as "the stunner."

For pigs, conditions are little better. Shortly after birth, piglets have their tails chopped off; this discourages the bored and frustrated animals from gnawing one another's rumps. Male piglets also have their testicles removed, a procedure performed without anesthetic. Before being butchered, hogs are typically incapacitated with a tonglike instrument designed to induce cardiac arrest. Sometimes their muscles contract so violently that they end up not just dead but with a broken back.

How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert

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Fw: Obama And Afghanistan

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Janet Leigh

To: dare2b

Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:21 PM

Subject: Obama And Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Afghanistan, what's a President to do? All his options are bad ones. Raise the troop levels and give the Taliban a run for it's money? For what? To support a corrupt aristocracy? Bad idea.  So should he keep the troop levels the same? That just places the soldiers already there in harm's way, and for no good purpose whatsoever. So should Obama withdraw? Then after the Taliban win, Al Qaeda will be free set up shop and plot. You can be sure that Obama will be blamed for anything they do, and called a coward for running away from a fight. The people taunting Obama will be the same crowd currently faulting him for supporting a nation that won't lift a finger to help itself.

 

It's clear why the Republicans sent up Mr. Three Time Loser and Lipstick Queen into that Dog-of-a-Fight in 2008. The winner gets to drown cleaning up various Bush-era quagmires, while everyone else stands aside and watches the funny President wave his arms and pitch pails of water over the side.

 

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On Location: Mexico City — Gangster chic

In this major piece of reporting from Global Post, we visit the "Museum of Narcotics" and see how drug lords in Mexico spend their money. Did you know you could get a Versace revolver? Coming next, Gucci waterboards and Faberge land mines.

http://www.globalpost.com/video/commerce/091105/location-mexico-city-decoding-drug-lords-gangster

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Haunted Houses

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OBAMA'S REAL DEATH PANELS

by Ted Rall

Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed two executive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law.

They still do.

The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone--including an American citizen--an "unlawful enemy combatant." A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration--and now to the Obama Administration--he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it--well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.

In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said "enemy combatants"--again, including American citizens.

These two documents first came into play on November 3, 2002, when a CIA-operated Predator drone plane violating Yemeni airspace fired a Hellfire missile at a car containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly Al Qaeda's #1 man in Yemen at the time.

U.S. officials didn't know that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, was riding along. (You know what they say about hitchhiking.) "The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal...this is legal because the president and his lawyers say so--it's not much more complicated than that," CBS News reported at the time. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here," said Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, after the CIA assassinations. "He's well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority."

It's right there in the Constitution between the right to tax and the repeal of Prohibition.

Anyway, Congress tried to clarify matters in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, part of which--the section that eliminated the writ of habeas corpus--got struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. But the rest of the MCA remains in force, including a passage that defines an enemy combatant as anyone who provides "material support" to the "enemy." And who is the enemy? The enemy is anyone the president says it/he/she/they is.

Again, there is no distinction between foreigners and U.S. citizens.

Jose Padilla, the so-called would-be "dirty bomber" held in a Navy brig since 2002, was tried and convicted of such "material support" charges in 2007. (The government couldn't prosecute Padilla for their original dirty bomb charges because they had tortured him so severely that he had been reduced to mental mush.)

Now that times have supposedly changed, it's time to ask: why hasn't President Obama abrogated Bush's controversial executive orders? If Obama truly seeks a break with the lawlessness of the prior administration, what better way to enact it?

Simply put, no one man--not even a nice, articulate, charismatic one--ought to claim the right to suspend a person's constitutional rights. Not in America. Certainly no one man--not even a young, handsome, likeable one--should be able to have anyone he wants whacked. Even in dictatorships, the right of life and death is reserved for judges and juries operating under a system purportedly designed to support impartiality and a search for the truth.

But that's not the case here in the United States. In 2002 Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University asked: "Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under [the Bush] theory? The answer is yes, you could."

http://www.rall.com/

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Have you seen these smug bastards?

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Jack Herer Kidnapped?!

 

Jack had a heart attack in Portland, Oregon on September 12. I was in California waiting for him to come home. I flew to Portland, went to the hospital and was told that a woman named Joy Graves had come to the hospital with a Medical Power of Attorney that Jack had allegedly signed, naming her and Chuck Jacobs as the people in charge of Jack's medical care. It wasn't complete and looks like someone forged his signature. The hospital's legal team determined it was no good.

Jack is now in a skilled nursing facility in Eugene. Joy Graves has taken the paper to them and they have accepted it until their legal team decides what to do. In the meantime, I am not allowed to see Jack or even get news about his condition over the phone. Jack has already been neglected in the nursing home. He fell out of bed there and hit his head shortly after being admitted. He had lumps on his head from it and bruises on his upper eyelids.

I've had to hire an attorney to deal with this. I don't have much money but I'll do what I can. I love Jack very much and can't believe this is happening to him now, when he needs me the most.

Jeannie Herer
jeannieherer@yahoo.com

 

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/international-cannabis-news/104950-jack-herer-kidnapped.html

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Even Lieberman’s Ancestors Betrayed the Public Option

By Don Davis

C'MON MOSES, LET'S LEAVE THE POOREST AND UNINSURED ISRAELITES BEHIND TO DEAL WITH THE TEN PLAGUES, WHILE WE RIDE OUT ACROSS THE DESERT ON OUR PRIVATE CAMELS."

http://satiricalpolitical.com/2009/10/28/even-liebermans-ancestors-betrayed-the-public-option/

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Halloween Meat Hand

 

I made something gruesome and delicious.

No, really, it was good.

This is meatloaf.

Meatloaf with cheese on top.

And some ketchup.

The nails are made of onion.

http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2009/10/27/meat-hand/

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When the tough should really get going

 

by Garrison Keillor

 

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he's gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent) government of Kabul, and the role of the Taliban and al-Qaida is not central -- the real issues are tribal and cultural.

American families, he said, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

It is rare that a high-level official -- he was the senior State Department guy in Zabul province -- resigns in protest, and in all the to-do about his four-page resignation letter, nobody had a single bad thing to say about Matthew Hoh.

Americans tend not to admire quitters, which is maybe why protest resignations are so rare. You can get up on your high horse and talk about your principles, but we suspect you're just another slacker looking for an easy way out. Your old football coach told you that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and by "get going" he didn't mean "write a four-page letter about your disillusionment with his coaching and the split-T offense in general" -- he meant, Toughen Up, Assume the Three-Point Stance, Hit 'Em Hard, Eat Some Turf, Get Up and Hit 'Em Again.

On the other hand, you don't want to be the last man to believe in the mission after everyone else has seen the light and gone home. Sunday in San Francisco, they set out to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock by gathering 3,000 guitarists in Golden Gate Park to play Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," and 50 showed up and some of them were playing ukuleles. The '60s are over. Time to move on.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped1028keilloroct28,0,6642483.column

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Glenn Greenwald: Lieberman and Bayh Enriching Themselves and Their Spouses with Opposition to Health Reform

By Heather

 

Rachel Maddow talks to Glenn Greenwald about Joe Lieberman's threat to filibuster the health care bill if it contains a public option, Evan Bayh quickly following suit and the financial gain being made by both men and their spouses for doing so.

Maddow: Sen. Lieberman has made it very clear that he plans to oppose health reform that includes a public option. He'll filibuster it in fact which would be historic. What do you think is motivating him?

Greenwald: Well I think you have to look first of all at a Research 2000 Daily KOS poll that was taken last month that shows that a margin of 68 to 21% of Connecticut voters, the people who he's essentially representing, favor a public option. That's a 47 point margin which is almost impossible to find on almost any other issue. So when you ask why he's doing this, it's clearly not because the people he's supposed to be representing favor it.

I think clearly what it's about is primarily that fact that the industry that he's serving by doing this—by preventing competition with the public option—is an industry from which he receives very substantial benefits. He's drowning in campaign contributions from the insurance industry, the health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry—more than $2.5 million.

In early 2005 his wife was hired by a large P.R. firm, Hill & Knowlton, in the pharmaceutical division, which at the time was representing the health care giant Glaxo in major legislation before the Senate. And several months later Joe Lieberman was on the floor of the Senate offering legislation that would directly steer huge amounts of incentives to that company in order to develop vaccines.

So I think what you're seeing here is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery that runs the United States Senate; only in this case it's particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.

Maddow: In doing so, using a procedural tactic that he's in part made his name by opposing is the thing that's so dramatic. Sen. Lieberman of course—he made this big announcement yesterday—today Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana followed suit saying that he reserves the right now not only to filibuster the final vote, but even to filibuster earlier than that any debate on a bill that he's not happy with. Sen. Bayh—we had thought that other conservative Democrats might follow Lieberman's lead here, he sort of threw the door open and now presumably Bayh and maybe even others will follow. Can you say anything about what may be motivating Bayh.

Greenwald: Well, let's look at Sen. Bayh. His wife sits on the Board of Directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health insurance companies in the nation. They own by their own disclosures between $500,000 and a million dollars just of WellPoint stock alone. And as I think you reported yesterday when Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster to the public option as one would expect the value of the stock of the health care industries and the health care companies skyrocketed—which directly benefited, personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.

Let me just quickly reference this column two weeks ago by Dan Carpenter, a columnist for the Indianapolis Sun, who knows Sen. Bayh the best. He talks about how his wife is benefiting directly from the very actions Sen. Bayh is taking in the Senate to block health care reform—financially benefiting his family. And he wrote "after it became clear he was going to be a Senator, Susan Bayh started stacking up memberships on the board of health care corporations. Susan Bayh got paid a little over $2 million for her service between 2006 and 2008. Her husband had a good 2008 also, collecting more than $500,000 in campaign donations from the health care industry.

And now these very same people who receive enormous amounts of benefits, in Lieberman's case from camp contributions and through his wife and also in Bayh's case are not ignoring their constituents and the interest of their country to serve the very industries that enrich them. It's really clear corruption.

They went on to discuss the promises made by Joe Lieberman when he was allowed to keep his chairmanship and the way these corporate Democrats have been allowed to do anything they want while liberal Democrats have been threatened with loss of support unless they voted for the war supplemental bill.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/32353

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Daily Show under fire for covering Israeli-Palestinian conflict

 

By Daniel Tencer

 

Jon Stewart's comedy news show The Daily Show is reportedly under fire from pro-Israeli groups for giving airtime to two pro-Palestinian figures on Wednesday night.

 

Stewart hosted Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti and human rights activist Anna Baltzer, author of A Witness in Palestine, who explained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of the Palestinian side.

According to a letter reportedly written by Baltzer and circulated by blogger Eric Johnson, the show "was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel."

"During the taping the show had its only heckler in 11 years," Baltzer wrote. "The entire staff were very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired."

At one point during the interview, Barghouti asserted: "We [Palestinians] are struggling for liberty, we are struggling for justice. It's Palestinians who have been subjected to the longest occupation in history and a system of segregation that is totally unjust."

At that point, a voice in the audience could be heard shouting: "Liar!"

"Apparently we have Joe Wilson with us tonight," Stewart quipped, referring the US House representative who yelled "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress last month.

The segment drew criticisms from a number of pro-Israeli activists and commenters.

"Jon Stewart [had] a couple of disgraceful guests on his show on Wednesday night for a night of Israel bashing," wrote blogger Israel Matzav. "No, there's no pro-Israel counterpoint (perhaps he will try to convince us that ISM activist Baltzer - who is Jewish - is meant to provide balance). And I thought Stewart's was a comedy show. What if no one watched him?"

Not all pro-Israeli voices were as critical.

"It doesn't actually seem that groundbreaking," wrote Rafi G. "He has a Palestinian talking about Palestinian rights and he has an Jewish leftist talking about Palestinian rights. They are advocating a non-violent approach, both from a Palestinian point of view."

But the blogger noted that "nobody said a word about Palestinian terror or their not accepting peace deals that were offered."

Baltzer is now urging Daily Show viewers to send letters of support to the show, in an effort to keep the show from being dissuaded from covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the future.

And some commentators are praising Stewart for taking on the issue. TalkingPointsMemo blogger M.J. Rosenberg credits Stewart with starting a "sea change" in American media's coverage of the Middle Eastern conflict.

Rosenberg wrote:

Not long ago, no mainstream media personality would ever allow himself to be associated with anyone who suggests that diplomacy, not war, is the way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Being thought of as not 100% down with the government of Israel was a career killer. And, if it wasn't, media and show business figures believed it was and that was the same thing.

That era ended with the rise of Jon Stewart, the most trusted television personality in America (and the only one the kids pay attention to). Stewart is the antithesis of the scared Jew.

The following video was broadcast on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, October 28, 2009.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

 

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/daily-show-israelipalestinian-conflict/

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US Chamber Shuts off TheYesMen.org and Websites of Hundreds of Other Activist Groups

Free Speech, Free Commerce Threatened by "Free Trade" Champion

Hundreds of activist organizations had their internet service turned off last night after the US Chamber of Commerce strong-armed an upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, to pull the plug on The Yes Men and May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with a strong commitment to protecting free speech.

"This is a blow against free speech, and it demostrates in gory detail the full hypocrisy of the Chamber," said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men. "The only freedom they care about is the economic freedom of large corporations to operate free of the hassles of science, reality, and democracy."

After suffering embarrassment at the hands of the Yes Men on Monday, the Chamber immediately threatened legal action, then followed through Thursday by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice to Hurricane Electric Internet Services. In the DMCA notice, the Chamber claimed that the parody Chamber website operated by The Yes Men constituted copyright infringement, and demanded that the site be shut down immediately and that the creator's service be canceled.

But the Yes Men are not served directly by Hurricane Electric, but by May First / People Link. And when Hurricane Electric shut down the fake Chamber of Commerce site (now relocated), they also took down the websites of 400 other organizations.

May First / People Link fought back. They immediately "mirrored" the site, and then quickly negotiated with Hurricane Electric to restore service to their other members.

"The DMCA attacks the critically important right we have to effectively comment and criticize institutions and companies," said May First/People Link Co-Director Alfredo Lopez. "It's an undemocratic, backwards law, a perfect example of how the government shouldn't intrude on our lives. But the Chamber was perfectly happy to use it to stomp on the Yes Men's rights to free spech, and the rights of hundreds of other organizations to operate on the web."

The 400 May First / People Link members weren't the only victims of the Chamber's action on Thursday. Today is the start of the national release of the Yes Men's new film, The Yes Men Fix the World. The film is being released in a number of independent theaters - who, not being part of a chain, are heavily dependent on the Yes Men website for selling tickets to the film. The Chamber's actions thus impinge on the ability of these small businesses to turn a profit.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/10/23-5

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Iowa Republicans wince at Palin fee

 

by Jonathan Martin

 

A conservative Iowa group's effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group's plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician's speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy Center's effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

Were Palin to appear in Iowa on November 21st, it would mark her first trip back to the state since she spoke to a handful of rallies there last fall as the GOP's vice-presidential nominee. She would offer powerful counter-programming to another major political event that night: The Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner with Vice-President Joe Biden as the headliner.

But representatives from other Iowa-based political advocacy groups said they would never consider shelling out money for what many politicians see as a privilege: the opportunity to speak to a room full of sure-fire caucus-goers who often serve as precinct captains and can be instrumental to a presidential candidate's success.

"If somebody tells me they want me to pay an appearance fee, it tells me they're not very serious about running for president," said Ed Failor, Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief and an influential GOP insider.

"I found it really, really odd," Failor said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091029/pl_politico/28873

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FOX News Isn't News. It's a Political Operation.

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Curry spice 'kills cancer cells'

The yellow spice gives curries their bright colour

An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.

The chemical - curcumin - has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.

Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.

Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.

Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

'Natural' remedy

The cells also began to digest themselves, after the curcumin triggered lethal cell death signals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8328377.stm

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7.3 Billion Years Later, Einstein’s Theory Prevails

By DENNIS OVERBYE

 

Astronomers said Wednesday that a race halfway across the universe had ended in a virtual tie. And so the champion is still Albert Einstein — for now.

The race was between gamma rays of differing energies and wavelengths spit in a burst from an exploding star when the universe was half its present age. After a journey of 7.3 billion light-years, they all arrived within nine-tenths of a second of one another in a detector on NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, at 8:22 p.m., Eastern time, on May 9.

Astronomers said the gamma-ray race was one of the most stringent tests yet of a bedrock principle of modern physics: Einstein's proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, or energy; its direction; or how you yourself are moving.

"I take it as a confirmation that Einstein is still right," Peter F. Michelson of Stanford, principal investigator for Fermi's Large Area Telescope and one of 206 authors of a paper published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, said in an interview.

There is no evidence so far that the energy or wavelength of light affects its speed through space. That is important because of what it could say about the structure of space-time. Some theorists have suggested that space on very small scales has a granular structure that would speed some light waves faster than others — in short, that relativity could break down on the smallest scales.

Dr. Michelson and others emphasize that while the new Fermi results do not yet eliminate the prospect, further observations with more gamma-ray bursts could eventually verify or refute the hypothesis. That would have a major effect on physicists' efforts to unify the Einsteinian gravity that governs outer space with the weird quantum laws that govern the inner space of the atom.

Mario Livio, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, called the Fermi results an interesting effect but not revolutionary by any stretch. "The beauty of the experiment is not as much in what it achieves," Dr. Livio said, "as in the fact that you can use astronomical observations to place some interesting limits on very fundamental physics."

Quantum theory, as Einstein discovered to his chagrin, reduces life on subatomic scales to a game of chance in which elementary particles can be here or there but not in between. One consequence is that space-time itself should become discontinuous and chaotic when viewed at very close distances, the way an ocean that looks smooth from an airplane appears choppy and foamy up close.

This, the story goes, could have an effect on the propagation of light — or photons, as they are called in quantum-speak — slowing light with short wavelengths relative to light with longer wavelengths. The higher the energy of a photon, the shorter is its wavelength. One way to think about it is to envision the photons as boats on this choppy sea. The small ones, like tugboats, have to climb up and down the waves to get anywhere, while the bigger ones can slice through the waves and bumps like ocean liners, and thus go a little faster.

Until now such quantum gravity theories have been untestable. Ordinarily you would have to see details as small as 10^-33 centimeters — the so-called Planck length, which is vastly smaller than an atom — to test these theories in order to discern the bumpiness of space. Getting that kind of information is far beyond the wildest imaginations of the builders of even the most modern particle accelerators, and that has left quantum gravity theorists with little empirical guidance.

"What's really lacking," Dr. Michelson explained, "is a laboratory experiment that tells us anything. So we have to use cosmology: we use the universe as the lab."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/science/space/29light.html?_r=3&ref=global-home

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TED WILLIAMS JUST BECAME THE BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME OF THE YEAR

 

 

http://www.unathleticmag.com/2009/10/19/ted-williams-just-became-the-best-halloween-costume-of-the-year/

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In the center ring

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Schwarzenegger apparently tells legislator, ‘fuck you’

 By Raw Story

A Democratic lawmaker who heckled the governor with a "you lie" outburst during an unscripted appearance at a Democratic fundraiser received the following statement from California's colorful Republican governor Tuesday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger typically attaches a message to bills he signs or vetoes telling lawmakers why he took the action.

A Democratic assemblyman who heckled the governor during a recent event in San Francisco actually received two messages: the veto letter itself and a not-so-subtle rebuke creatively hidden within it.

Like a find-the-word puzzle, the second message was visible by stringing together the first letter of each line down the left-hand margin. It consisted of a common four-letter vulgarity followed by the letters "y-o-u."

"My goodness. What a coincidence," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger-apparently-tells-legislator-fuck-you/

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Mattel Has Lost Their Minds

​
Yesterday I bitched about the continually baffling assortment of characters in Mattel's DC Universe Classics line. I thought their insanity was limited to just that line, but now I think that someone high up at Mattel has lost all his fucking marbles. Because you see that Ken doll above? That Ken doll is PALM BEACH SUGAR DADDY KEN.

Never mind his silly clothes or enragingly tiny dog. He is called PALM BEACH SUGAR DADDY KEN. BY MATTEL. THIS IS HIS OFFICIAL NAME. Seriously, look at his Entertainment Earth page. This is like one of those joke Barbies art students do in college to criticize gender roles forced on children by their toys, like Hobo Barbie and Pregnant Trailer Trash Barbie. Except this time Mattel made it. It's official. My world is rocked. (Via Geek Girl Diva)

 

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/10/mattel_has_lost_their_minds.php

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