August 8, 2009 archive

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Fighting erupts between Taliban rivals and Pakistan government

By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters

2 hrs 1 min ago

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The Pakistani government has received reports that shooting broke out between two rivals for the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban, and one of them may have been killed, the interior minister said Saturday.

Pakistani news channels were carrying unconfirmed reports that Hakimullah Mehsud, one of the movement’s most powerful commanders, had been killed at a shura, or council meeting, held to decide who would succeed slain leader Baitullah Mehsud.

“The infighting was between Wali-ur-Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Reuters. “We have information that one of them has been killed. Who was killed we will be able to say later after confirming.”

Sibel Edmonds’ partial testimony via liveblogging

Dandelion Salad’s got the skinny:  http://dandelionsalad.wordpres…

Help Save the Mint Farm!

Crossposted at La Vida Locavore and Daily Kos.

The Crosby Mint Farm in St. Johns, Michigan is the oldest working mint farm in the country.  The owners are facing foreclosure on Friday, 8/14/09, unless they can sell enough product.  

They have enough mint essential oil on hand to raise the money to stave off foreclosure, they just need to sell it.  The onwers have been fighting foreclosure for several months, and this is the last big push.

The URL is http://www.getmint.com/

I am a customer of the Crosby Mint Farm and I really like their mint essential oils.  I am not an employee, nor do I personally know anyone associated with the farm.

The Angry Left

Centrists bemoan the Angry Left. Establishment Dems blame them for every setback. Pragmatic Moderates insult and belittle them and dismiss their concerns. Routinely, and at every possible opportunity. They treat The Left with disdain and are, as Rahm Emanuel might say, fucking assholes to the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them “f-king stupid.” This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.

Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say – which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly.

“He started out with, `We’re 13 and 0 going into health care,'” one source at the meeting said, meaning that Rahm was touting the White House’s string of pre-health care legislative victories.

They are FAR more interested in sucking up to their enemies. They are polite and accommodating and bend over backwards if they think they can get even one Grassley vote…..while telling The Left to Fuck Off again and again, over and over, ad nauseum. They take their votes, activism, and contributions for granted and then wipe their feet on their concerns and positions.

Even though those positions are the very heart of the ideas of the Democratic Party. Even though those positions are the very ones that they have ‘stolen’ and are in the midst of capitulating away in their endless sucking up to people that hate them.

They take advantage of the fact that The Left actually cares about advancing society, about helping people. The Left actually cares that real people die in wars, that real people are getting tortured, that real people are out of work, that real children are hungry and that real people need Health Care. That The Angry Left, you see, actually cares about the issues, about the suffering that the issues cause. The Angy Left cares more about people than politics.

They PRE-compromise on every issue. They cave at the first opportunity. If a republican asks for a can of peas they give away the store. If someone on the Left asks, they are told they are “fucking stupid.”

They tell us they need a majority in the House, we get em one, they tell us they need 60 in The Senate and we get em it. They are up against a Republican Party that is as weak as it has been in memory, and yet they STILL capitulate at every opportunity. They WILL NOT take a stand, they WILL NOT draw a line in the sand…to get what We The People REALLY need. They wouldn’ know integrity and backbone if it bit them in the ass. They seem to revel in compromise, rather than resisting it.

They call it purity. We call it principle.

We fight for those principles. They fight to trade them away. And then insult us when we object. And then ask us for money.

They take our money, our energy, our efforts and our ideas and then piss on us. In public. On purpose. With no decency or restraint.

And then they have the nerve to wonder why the Angry Left is Angry.

No one likes a Bully!

Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation.

[…]

In colloquial speech, bullying often describes a form of harassment perpetrated by an abuser who possesses more physical and/or social power and dominance than the victim.

[…]

The harassment can be verbal, physical and/or emotional.

[…]

Bullies hurt people verbally and physically.

[…]

There are many reasons for that. One of them is because the bullies themselves are or have been the victim of bullying.

[…]

Bullying can occur in any setting where human beings interact with each other.

[…]

Bullying can exist between social groups, social classes and even between countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B…

The Brownshirts are Good News

Crossposted at Agent Orange, ~7pm EDT, Saturday

This short essay started as a comment on a Docudharma Diary,  but its something that’s been percolating in my head for a while, now.

First, yes, of course, the Administration is acting like a representative of the moderate wing of the Corporate Party, because after all … that’s what they are. That is, after all, what they ran on … if they had pivoted to act as progressive populists, they would, indeed, have given substance to the radical reactionary lies about running as a moderate while secretly yearning for a radical agenda.

Instead, it turns out that the radical reactionary charge is more of the same projection … since they have for such a long time been running as more moderate than their actual radical agenda. The marketing genius of labeling a program of ripping out not just the New Deal of the Democratic Roosevelt but also the Square Deal of the Republican Roosevelt “conservative” … the tagline of the Fox Noise Channel as “Fair and Balanced” is just a pale shadow of that rhetorical trick.

Still …

Meltdown – The demise of America’s glaciers

 

America’s three “benchmark” glaciers are melting and over the past two decades they have been shrinking at an accelerated rate because of global warming.

The glaciers in Alaska and Washington have undergone a “rapid and sustained” loss of mass since 1989. Scientists at the U.S. Geologic Survey think this “decline could be the result of recent climate changes” overcoming seasonal fluctuations that impact the glaciers’ size.

These findings, “Fifty-Year Record of Glacier Change Reveals Shifting Climate in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, USA“, were released in a report by the USGS on Thursday.

The southern-most glacier in the study, South Cascade Glacier in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, has lost almost half of its volume and a quarter of its mass since the USGS began collecting data in 1957.

This picture sequence shows the retreat of the South Cascade Glacier during the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st century. This glacier is melting at a rate that may cause it to disappear in 50 years.

Dark Soul Chapter Ten

Happy Saturday and welcome to the Dog’s serialization of his novel Dark Soul. This is a work in progress, so if you have any thoughts or suggestions, don’t be shy about offering them up.

If you have just started reading this, you can find the previous chapters at the following links:

Dark Soul – Chapter One

Dark Soul – Chapter Two

Dark Soul – Chapter Three

Dark Soul – Chapter Four

Dark Soul – Chapter Five

Dark Soul – Chapter Six

Dark Soul Chapter Seven

Dark Soul Chapter Eight

Dark Soul Chapter Nine

This serialization is only available here at Docudharma!  

The Supreme International Crime: Pre Iraq Invasion Paper Trail Shows Intelligence And Facts Fixed

Crossposted from Antemedius

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

In this interview McGovern talks with Real News Network CEO Paul Jay about the paper trail on the Iraq war, as revealed in the British “Downing Street Memo”.



The Real News Network – August 08, 2009

The Downing Street Memo – Pt.1

McGovern: “It’s there in black and white – The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy”

Christian “Blackwater” values…

Selling children into prostitution

The latest horror show from the Blackwater saga illustrates how absolutely dangerous white supremacy is when empowered with federal dollars and the power to kill.

Instead of being run out of all civilized society, Erik Prince’s huge donations to the GOP earned him massive federal contracts and the backing of the US government as his employees raped children under the banner of an American flag.

White power politics is not a matter of free speech when used by the state as a tool of war. It is a war crime. Erik Prince is a war criminal…………..Rest Here

Docudharma Times Saturday August 8

U.S. and Britain Again Target Afghan Poppies

Farmers Would Be Paid Not to Grow Crop

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, August 8, 2009


The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country’s most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption.

By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan’s harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.

Interest in organic food on the rise in China

A small group of Chinese farmers is devoted to growing natural foods. But gaining consumers’ trust is an obstacle.

By Joshua Frank

August 8, 2009


Reporting from Beijing — Unlike most farms in China, no heaps of blackened sewage sludge are piled on the fields at the Green Cow farm. No workers spray pesticides from pumps strapped to their backs. No animals are in quarantine.

An oasis in a Beijing suburb, the organic farm’s modest 6 acres boast pepper and tomato plants, fields of corn and wheat, and sunflower patches that pop up in between. Two rotund cows chomp on grasses; under a grove of fruit trees, three young pigs slurp water.

Restaurateur and environmentalist Lejen Chen started Green Cow with her husband in 2004, fearful of the pesticides, chemical fertilizers and sewage sludge used in the cultivation of most domestic produce.

In China, the organic food movement is growing steadily, led by Chen and a small, dedicated group of like-minded farmers. It’s a battle in a country of recurring food scares, loosely enforced regulations and skepticism about paying more for produce that looks the same as regular market fare. But interest in natural food is on the rise.

Late Night Karaoke

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