Tag: crime

Live Video Panel of Gulf Floor

The Environmentalist’s Climate page has a live feed panel of all twelve cameras from the Gulf floor. The page may take a while to load, but it’s worth looking at all cameras at once.  Most feeds only show the one BP sends out – rather than the entire working ROV cameras.  It shows the impact, the amount of oil and gas and the dispersant they’re shooting into the well head.

The feed panel is at this link: http://climate.the-environmentalist.org/2010/06/live-video-feeds-of-gulf-oil-disaster.html

You may need Windows Media Player’s plugin to view it (that’s the format the ROV subs use).  There’s also a link to a plugin for Macs on the page.  

Let’s Be Very Clear About The Criminal Reality We Are Facing

While it is important to point out the inconsistencies and lies that are the hallmark of most of our public institutions we also need to start with some firm foundations to future essays and comments. I feel one of the first things we need to face is that the situation we face today is no longer a political struggle between conservatives and liberals or even reactionaries and progressives. As has been brought out by several people here at DD the struggle is between criminal entities (most large corporations, big banks, traditional organized crime, the military (yes I believe much though not all of the military has become a criminal enterprise), the covert ops part of the intel agencies, the MSM (the worst of the lot), the federal government and many state and local governments. No, it is not a matter of “incompetence” that has brought us to this situation but of what I consider criminal behavior.

There are two aspects of criminal behavior. The first, obviously, is the breaking of laws on the books–well, in this country with more laws (I’m sure) than any entity that has ever existed, it is pretty easy for anyone to break the law but still even if you look at major statutes the fact is that major corporations and the elites escape the law while the poor do not. The Federal government now no longer even pretends to follow the law, for example, the Geneva Conventions and protocols are routinely ignored despite the fact that they are the law. Of course, laws against fraud were ignored during and after the financial crisis. Disappearance of trillions from DOD elicited no action and no response from the media, criminal fraud by contractors in Iraq almost completely ignored by any agencies and, generally, underreported in the MSM. The list can go on and on and this blog has at one time or another reported on nearly all of them. These aren’t arguments over policy but clear criminality that, in a healthy society, would have been prosecuted. This criminality and corruption has rapidly increased in recent years.

The second aspect of criminal behavior I would like to describe as follows:

The deliberate attempt by private interests to undermine public welfare, public spaces, public health and the future of the species for financial gain.

This aspect of criminality is far worse than simply breaking particular laws. It is about the deliberate destruction of society and government itself. I suggest to you that this has been the conscious and deliberate intention of most (not all) of the ruling elite for the past few decades but particularly since the stolen election of 2000. I believe their intention was then and is now the looting of the entire world and the destruction of American society and any other society for the purpose of instituting a New World Order based on a global imperial system on the macro-level and various modes of neofeudal social arrangements at the local level with most of the population either expendable or in a state of serfdom. This system is not in place yet and can be stopped but this is the agenda of most of the power players.

As has been made abundantly clear on this blog, the Obama administration is only cosmetically different than the previous administration. The differences are largely cultural rather than political. We can mostly agree here that we are no longer fooled by the Kabuki of Obama and his allies in Congress. Obama simply is beside the point.  

Tired of being chipper about endless criminality?

Tired of being exuberant about pregnant mothers being gut-shot in the middle of the night in  Afghanistan?

Fatigued of your joyous tirades when government ships a bazillion more dollars out the door?

Exhausted from infectious laughter about who among you can’t find jobs?

Experiencing burnt-out lassitude from cheerleading massively corrupt malfeasance?

Enervated by enthusiasm?

Fagged out by optimism?

Feeling the oats of listless insignificance?

Pfizer presents Despondex:

Veterans Courts are Only Part of What’s Needed

This isn’t rocket science, if the country had paid attention as we were returning from Vietnam and recognizing what that did to many of our brothers, thousands then, as we tried for decades to push the issues into the public conscious we’d be much more advanced in the understanding of what war and extreme trauma does to the human mind, especially from wars of choice. And it wasn’t only as to our brothers! There also would have been a better understanding as to the civilian populations of these conflicts as well as those anywhere who live through the extreme trauma’s, of many descriptions, that affect individuals in their own lives

Super Bowl Rant Of The Day

Erick Erickson plays stupid

Crossposted at Daily Kos

What I do is called speaking truth to power.

What Erick Erickson of RedState.com does is called speaking lies for rich people.

    For a refresher, dkos blogger pinback found that RedState (was) trying to jam Coakley phone banks, and I questioned the legality of those actions yesterday. Erick Erickson, mature adult that he pretends to be, decided to respond. Bad move.

The not so very bright readers of Kos want to send Martha Coakley and me to jail.

Why us?

Well, I published the list of union organized phone banks for Coakley on Friday night.

Some genius who probably thinks Joe Stalin was just misunderstood now is convinced I must go to jail. WITH A POLL!!!!

I assume s/he (that covers everything including transgendered I hope) also wants to send Martha Coakley to jail. She did the same thing I did, but offered up even more details, including the phone numbers of the locations and email address of the contact person.

Idiots.

By the way, points off to the Koskidz for misspelling my name.

http://www.redstate.com/erick/…

Them’s fighting words.

More below the fold.

Should Erick Erickson go to jail for this if the law was broken?

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   First off, I strongly encourage anyone who is reading this to go check out an article titled RedState trying to jam Coakley phone banks by dkos user pinback for more information on this story.

    So, as for the title of this article, my question is, should Erick Erickson of RedState.com go to jail the same way the last Republican hack who pulled this phone bank tampering scam did?

    Federal law prohibits making interstate calls “without disclosing the caller’s identity and with the intent to annoy . . . or harass any person at the called number.”

Rawstory.com Jan 10, 2006

    A hat tip to dkos user inland for the RawStory.com link.

More below the fold . . .  

The Sad and Sorry State of Justice in America

Previously posted elsewhere.

It’s been pointed out to me that I haven’t written a diary in a long while advocating for reform of the criminal justice system. The reasons for that are many. I don’t believe we will see meaningful reform of prisons or the Criminal Justice system until we first reform government and society. If our politicians are overwhelmingly corrupt, and they are, and if you can’t get people to care about bombing innocent people for no good reason or torturing people who may or may not have done anything wrong, and apparently you can’t, what are the chances of getting them to care about the systematic mistreatment of ‘criminals’? I have considerable experience in this matter and I can tell you the chances are slim. I guess I am guilty of feeling a certain amount of despair over the issue. Nevertheless, it is worth a try, and it is fair to say that I am remiss in not having done more to advocate for reform of what is a horrendously screwed up system.

exercise-yard-holman-prison

Media neglects to mention gym shooter was right-winger and racist

Found this over at Rawstory.com:

How many people realize that the fitness club killer in Pittsburgh was a right-winger and a racist?

I’ll bet almost nobody.

That’s because the media isn’t telling you.    


George Sodini, the man who took the lives of four women, and then his own, at a Pittsburgh-area fitness club Wednesday, leaves behind a long history of right-wing anti-government militancy.

In political rants on the Internet, going back to the early days of the Web, Sodini showed a consistently anti-government attitude. As first reported by Greg Mitchell at his Huffington Post blog, in the mid-1990s Sodini posted to a newsgroup titled misc.activism.militia, where right-wing libertarians and survivalists compared notes on the state of politics, and made plans for upending the “socialist” policies of the Clinton White House. Sodini appeared to support a violent overthrow of the US government in order to return the country to its “Constitutional order.”

(snip)

The Associated Press and other news outlets have omitted references to President Barack Obama, the election of “The Black Man” and remarks that black men have “their choice of the best white” women when republishing excerpts of the diary by a Pittsburgh-area man who killed three women and himself at an LA Fitness gym Tuesday evening.

In fact, the Associated Press’ primary story contains no reference to Obama at all, even though the first entry of the killer’s diary came the day after Obama was elected and references Obama’s election directly.

The omission was noted by the blog of Editor and Publisher.

Is Obama a Criminal?

I am thinking of sending this to the local letters to the editor red newspaper so give me your best shot. Content,style, punctuation hell even spelling. Have at it.

We managed to get through two world wars and some others without having any state secrets or at least if we did then we did not withhold evidence upon that basis until 1953. This is the precedent upon which all future state secrete claims for withholding evidence is based. In this landmark case the judge was not allowed to see the evidence and ruled in the blind. After release of the classified documents, new litigation was attempted, based in part, on a complaint that the classified material contained no secret information. It appears the government lied to the court. Who would have thought it? Disgraceful! The president in 1953 was Eisenstein who won WWII with some help, lied to the court. Presidents relying on this precedent, well draw your own conclusions.

Destruction of evidence of a crime is its self a crime. Now suppose instead of burning or shredding the evidence it were made unavailable, say sealing in a container and dropping in the Marianas trench. How is that different from declaring the evidence a state secret and thus unavailable? What if the hidden evidence contained information of a serious crime, say a war crime. The president claiming the state secrete privilege would for certain be a criminal on the one hand but the criminally would be in theory justified by preventing damage to the nation, said damage theoretical –  unproved and unprovable.  

A judge would have to determine whether the evidence should be put at ocean bottom or made public. In many cases the judge is not given access to the material in question and must rely on affidavits submitted by DOJ attorneys, who as in the 1953 case have been less than truthful. He would have to weigh whether a serious criminal, or band of criminals, should be allowed to go free against the theoretical damage to the nation, said damage theoretical –  unproved and unprovable. The damage could be the destruction of an aircraft carrier or merely nonexistent. What should he do? Being a judge is hard work.

Of course if said president were invoking the state secret for a  reason other than to protect the nation, then assuming the evidence had information about a crime then he would just be in my opinion an uncommon criminal. Even the thought of having a criminal for president, especially since I worked so hard to get him elected is hard to take. But then again after eight years a fellow gets used to it, but it doesn’t make the next four easier.  

This discussion concerns the torture evidence and President Obamas efforts to pretend it never happened. He is disobeying court orders, using state secrets privilege where it cannot be justified, he is trying to get congress to pass a law making the information public illegal and lastly he is fighting a losing battle. The photos and other evidence are coming out either legally or otherwise. The demand for accountability cannot be ignored.  It is scentless to pretend that Al’ Queda, those tortured, those torturing, those watching and taking pictures of torture, those in charge of torture, those who ordered torture, those who tried to legalize torture, peoples around the world and you and I are ignorant or uncaring about torture.

It is hard for me to imagin how in six short months I have gone from reading progressive internet blogs which boil down to Obama = JFK to blogs boiling down to Obama = Bush. How in hell did that happen so quickly? I cannot grasp the idea supporting ” The way to a successful presidency and reelection is to do what Bush did.”.

The Medical/Insurance Complex

    HMO’s, Big Pharma and other special interests have made America a place where getting sick equals getting poor for the massive majority of our citizens. While we struggle to pay for prescription medicine and health insurance that does not cover our needs, the wealth CEO’s and their political allies are fighting harder than ever to deny us the most basic of human rights, the right to see a doctor.

    Why? So they can make a bigger profit, of course.      

Burris: IOKIYAR!

Also posted at Kos

Roland Burris spoke to Rod Blagojevich! Name a Politician in Illinois who hasn’t? We all knew he was lying…but in the matter of lies…this was a tiny one.

Heck Bill Clinton lied too and he got Impeached!

George Bush lied….so what.

The difference was, “under oath”!

Bush testified, but not under oath, with no transcripts and with Cheney to help him out.

Burris got videotaped.

Maybe he needs to change parties.

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