February 27, 2010 archive

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Tsunami hits Chile as Pacific Basin braces for impact

by Talek Harris, AFP

19 mins ago

SYDNEY (AFP) – A tsunami crashed into Chile’s coast Saturday in a potential portent of disaster across the vast Pacific Ocean as nations went on alert for towering waves generated by a killer earthquake.

The ominous sound of evacuation sirens blared in Hawaii and French Polynesia as a tsunami raced around the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire” after the 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile, which left at least 122 people dead.

About 50 countries and territories along an arc stretching from New Zealand to Japan were braced for immensely powerful waves, not long after the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean disaster that killed more than 220,000 people.

Opinion Piece: Hoodwinked

I’ve read some of the speculation about the politics of the Patriot Act renewal happening under all our noses while the HCR spectacle diverted our attention.

AndyS in Colorado hit the nail on the head on what’s very fishy about this political act:

The Patriot Act provisions were set to expire this year.  People who rallied the entire country to vote for Barack Obama, the entire liberal blogosphere was on fire for years at the unconstitutionality of this law and its depredations on the Fourth Amendment among others.

— snip–

Let me remind the reader that provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire this year.  To defeat those Patriot Act provisions required no action at all.

Yet here we are.

Ok.  I’m no political genius, but I would say that doing “nothing at all” politically on an issue all of us were passionate about appears to be an action in and of itself that goes against the latest political style of following the “path of least resistance.”

Are our representatives actually going to try to make us believe this was necessary for our national security?

‘Cause if they do that, I’d suggest buying a lot of stock in anti-indigestion medicine.  It’ll go sky high.

This Week In Health and Fitness

Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.

Many staff members of most NGO’s that work in foreign countries are citizens if those countries. Such is the case with Haiti, where over 85% of MSF’s staff, medical and non-medical, are Haitian. They did so despite the losses they and their families suffered. Geraldine Augustin is one of those who is caring for her fellow Haitians.

Like thousands of Haitians, Geraldine Augustin started helping people just after the disaster. She is a young, passionate and energetic medical student who has just joined MSF. She belongs to the almost 1,500 Haitian staff employed by MSF in the country and who make our medical activities possible. She works in an MSF post-operative structure set in what used to be a girls school. She tells us about her life and work after the earthquake:

“I am Geraldine Augustin and I am finishing my medical studies. On the 12th January I was headed to university for a class. Suddenly the earth started to shake and the next second all the houses were under the earth, there were dead and injured people everywhere. I was lucky enough not to get hurt, but my mother was killed.”

As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can.  

The Patriot Act Extension Backstory

The Bill of Rights

Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Patriot Act was extended for another year this week.  Read this information about it from the ACLU:


http://www.aclu.org/national-s…

Late last year, to avoid expiration on December 31, 2009, Congress extended the provisions through February 28, 2010. Despite bills pending in both the House and the Senate to amend the three expiring provisions and other sections of the Patriot Act, Congress decided instead to move ahead with a straightforward reauthorization.

Since the Patriot Act’s passage in 2001, there have been several consecutive reports (including one released in January) from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General that have outlined widespread and blatant abuse of the statute. FBI agents routinely claimed false terrorism emergencies to use “exigent letters,” or emergency letters, in order to gain private records for investigations when no emergency existed. The FBI also regularly issued NSLs after the fact in an attempt to legitimize the use of exigent letters. Even after today’s vote, there remain bills pending in both the House and Senate that were specifically introduced to narrow the scope of the NSL statute.

Olympic Alternatives XII

You thought I was not serious?

I’m dead serious.  The only way to effect change is through sacrifice (changing your habits) and protest (telling people what you think, publicly).

Plenty of other stuff out on the Hypnotoad.  Just look-

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"
hypnotoad

Afternoon Update.

Early Evening Update.

Early Primetime Update.

Late Primetime Update.

Late Night Update.

Why are you Update.

Chile’s Earthquake: Open Thread

Photobucket

Church In Santiago, Chile

This will be quick and linky.

CNN reports:

A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, killing at least 122 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.

Numerous tsunami waves have been reported in the Pacific, with one reaching as high as 7.7 feet in the central Chile coastal town of Talcahuano, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Sirens sounded at 6 a.m. Friday across Hawaii, warning people of a possible tsunami and telling people in coastal areas to evacuate.

“They’re going to sound the sirens to air on the side of caution and make sure there’s enough time to get people out of the evacuation zones, which are the coastal areas that may be affected,” Brian Shiro of the Pacific Tsuanmi Warning Center said.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said she expected the death toll in her country to rise.

You can get streaming Chile TV here.  News and pictures, updates.  Death toll now more than 120 people.

Live coverage from Hawaii via MSNBC is here.  Threat of tsunami has caused evacuation of beach fronts.

The planet is doing what it is capable of doing.  My thoughts and prayers go out to all in Chile and the Pacific.

——————

Updates (2/27/10, 12:45 pm ET): New photos from WaPo.

Large FP diary by Darksyde at GOS.  Also, first person recc’d diary.

Fighting the Continued War on the Homefront

Forced to clean up what was left and wasn’t even considered as we sent our soldiers, not into one more failed policy War and long Occupation of others but a second one as well, both still ongoing, both still creating soldiers and veterans, as well as families of, who are owed, more then any previous as they serve in both theaters and multiple tours, adding to all those that preceded and the numbers grow even as us older vets pass on, some getting the help some not and being fought for every step of the way!

Wounded Veterans’ New Fight: The VA

Read this Slowly and Carefully – This is Who We Are. This document Belongs to Us.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separate.

The corporations and broken government are not connected to us and haven’t been for some time.This time it’s not separation from another nation, but from the predators in our own nation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

life = healthcare for all, freedom from want, respect for the working class

liberty = privacy rights

pursuit of happiness = where to begin….

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

It’s a grand document which mentions happiness more than once in its founding papers.  A grand document.  Sadly, ignored by people presently in charge of our lives, in government and corporations and corporations’ slithering hangers on.

Prudence, indeed, will dicatate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

…while evils are sufferable.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

A government presently in the control of a ruling class (not only national corporations, but transnational corporations) unconnected to its citizens.    

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.  The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

King of Britain is just the ruling oligarchal class now.  And we are living through the repeated injujries and usurpations –  

Relevant News

When you assume a worst cast scenario you can prepare mentally for things that may not turn out as bad as they look.

Unplug the signal:The truth will not be televised

You are a slave to the government

Woman, 61, arrested for asing why

Leaked UN documents reveal plan for Green World Order by 2012

That is the beauty of the internet.  I can choose news over being told why the whale should be killed.

http://www.informationliberati…

http://www.wearechange.org/

Still has a video of Bilderberger Rick Perry grabbing the camera and slinking away back into his limo after being asked real questions.

Also from wearechange.org the Contrail vs Chemtrail video has clips from a mainstream NBC station openly discussing the three purposes of the “secret” chemtrail program.

From lamestream news.  HLN today asked the question do you favor genetic testing.  Do you want your doctor to have that information under the guise of the potential “improvements” big pharma would have in tayloring your specific meds to your specific genetic profile.

Well, hello Dr. Fucking Mengele you sheeple shit moron zombinals.

First off the already have the DNA of my grandson’s.

They will use it to develop the next eugenics plague.

It will get attached to your permanent digital medical records which will never be private.  It will deny you insurance, a job, a position in the evil Illuminati and or living quarters in the underground continuity of government survivalist bunkers.

Docudharma Times Saturday February 27




Saturday’s Headlines:

In Afghanistan, U.S. plans major push into Kandahar

Ex-Jihadist Defies Yemen’s Leader, and Easy Labels

USA

To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case

Senators to propose abandoning cap-and-trade

Europe

Art world swoons over Romania’s homeless genius

Mystery of dead Briton and the right-wing cult

Middle East

Israelis rush to join Mossad after Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killing

Iraq election: Will sectarian divisions limit turnout?

Asia

U.S. is cast as villain in Japan

The seven-hour verdict that cost Thaksin $1.4bn

Africa

Ivory Coast’s opposition agrees to join new govt

Gaddafi vs. Switzerland: The Leader’s Son on What’s Behind the Feud

Latin America

The gun-toting boys from Brazil who rule Rio’s ‘Corner of Fear’

“They are our people”

While the shit-head Army spin-doctors are bellowing about our next great “operation” after “Operation Moshtarak” has completely destroyed the little of Marjah that existed before we arrived with our tanks and artillery and rockets and supersonic bombers and Marines trained to kill with incredible efficiency…

While idiots on the blogs are blathering about the evil Taliban, as if you shit-heads have a right to make life-and-death decisions about Afghanistan…

This man must die, because we say so, we Americans, the stupidest fucking sons-of-bitches on the face of the earth…

We Americans who can’t even find Afghanistan on a map…

We Americans who can’t speak any of the many, many languages of Afghanistan…

We Americans decide life and death in Afghanistan!

While this whole obscene circus was celebrating the murder of at least another dozen children in Marjah and planning our next great “operation” in Kandahar…

While this obscenely stupid dog-and-pony show was repeating itself for the hundredth or five hundredth time in Afghanistan, after nine goddamned years of our obscenely stupid occupation…

One reporter for the Associated Press actually interviewed a couple of actual citizens of Afghanistan, and one particle of truth somehow found its way into the nauseating ocean of bullshit and outright lies that passes for “reporting” in the United States.

“There is no difference between Taliban and the civilian people. The Taliban are the rural people. They are our people,” said Musa Jan, who arrived a week ago from Marjah. He spoke to the AP outside a makeshift warehouse in Lashkar Gah where the government was distributing essentials to war victims.

“The fight was continuing when we were trying to get out,” said Jan, who said he paid about $35 for each of the three taxis. “That was all our money, and now we have to come here and beg.”

Jan said his neighbors house was bombed by an aircraft, killing five occupants inside, including children.

Sultan Mohammed who fled last Friday from Marjah said he had to walk for several hours before a motorcyclist gave him a lift. He said the Taliban fled when the soldiers came to his area.

“But who are the Taliban? They are the rural people,” he said.

Al Qaeda is gone. The “foreign militants” are gone.

Now it’s just villagers, rural people, their people, and us…

Their people and us with our tanks and artillery and rockets and supersonic bombers and Marines trained to kill with incredible efficiency.

 

Massive earthquake strikes Chile

A massive earthquake with an initial magnitude of 8.8 has struck central Chile.

The BBC  Saturday, 27 February 2010

The quake struck at 0634 GMT about 91km (56 miles) north-east of the city of Concepcion and 317km south-west of the capital, Santiago.

Buildings in Santiago were reported to have shaken for between 10 and 30 seconds, with the loss of electricity and communications.

The US issued an initial tsunami warning for Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

That was later extended to Colombia, Antarctica, Panama and Costa Rica.

Japan’s meteorological agency has warned of a potential tsunami across large areas of the Pacific.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said: “An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicentre within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours.”

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