May 2010 archive

Too many of us hold back from community involvement because we think we don’t know enough to act on our beliefs, or don’t have the standing or confidence to take a public stand. When we see a woman who begins with no money, no power, no education and no status in the community, and then becomes a powerful voice for change, it should inspire us all.

Virginia Ramirez, of San Antonio, Texas, could easily have lived out her days without ever discovering her ability to speak out. She left school after eighth grade to get married. “That was what most Hispanic women in my generation did. My husband, who drives a taxicab, went to work after sixth grade.” Although dropping out seemed normal at the time, she felt frustrated when she couldn’t help her five children with their homework.

When Virginia was forty-five, she realized that an elderly neighbor was getting sick every winter. The neighbor was a widow who lived in a house so dilapidated that it couldn’t retain heat. “She was one of those people who always paid her taxes on time, always faithfully making out her little money orders. But she couldn’t afford to repair her house, and everyone around here was just as poor. So I went with her to city agencies trying to get help. They kept sending us from place to place, from department to department. Finally she died of pneumonia. The paramedics said she’d never have died if her house hadn’t been so freezing cold.

“I’d never been so angry in my life,” Virginia recalls. “This woman had done everything she was supposed to, and now she was dead because no one could help her fix her house. Someone said there’s this community organization called COPS, and maybe they could help.”  

Cool, being a life-long Science fan, I have always liked Experiments …

But I generally prefer those of the ‘Controlled Experiment’ variety.  Those fly-by-night Variety, like combining a jet of Hair Spray with a tiny Lighter flame, always left me a little frightened.

Funny, I’m starting to feel that way again …

As the oil gushes from the broken well head at the sea floor, Rader says it has the potential to contaminate each layer of the water column that, “directly exposes those animals to toxicity, at the surface including the very sensitive surface zones where not only sea turtles and marine mammals and sea birds can be oiled, but also where the highways for fish larvae exist. And then as it rains back into the abyss over a much wider area carrying toxicants back into the deep sea where ancient corals and other sensitive ecosystems exist.”

One response strategy has been to use dispersants or anti-freeze-like chemicals to break the oil up into smaller globules.

[…]

It is a choice, he says, between two bad options. While the chemicals may protect birds and other wildlife by dissipating the slick before it reaches shore, their toxicity in the Gulf could harm fish and other marine life.

    I am greatly saddened to report the following . . .

    Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that US forces in Afghanistan are carrying out what he referred to as “battlefield executions” of prisoners.

   “One of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan,” Hersh said during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last month in Geneva, where he was also the keynote speaker. “They’re being executed on the battlefield.”

HuffingtonPost.com

Bold text added by the diarist

    Video and more below the fold

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you.

Republicans have a Tambourine Man.  His name is Limbaugh.  He’s a psychopath, but that doesn’t bother Republicans, they admire psychopaths.   Democrats have a Tambourine Man.  His name is Obama.   He panders to psychopaths every chance he gets, but that doesn’t bother Democrats, pandering to psychopaths is what they do.  They call it Centrism.

I remember Election Night 2008, I remember the hope so many progressives had that evening, but that evening’s empire of hope has turned into sand, vanished from our hands, left us blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.  Who can sleep?  Who can sleep when war crimes won’t be prosecuted, when Gitmo won’t be closed, when there’ll be no withdrawal from Iraq, when the war in Afghanistan will go on and on and on, when we’re all on a one way trip on Wall Street’s magic swirling ship, when our senses have all been stripped, when our hands can’t feel to grip, when our feet are too numb to step, when there’s nothing left to do but watch the boot heels of Karma grind what’s left of this country into dust.    

My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet.  I have no one to meet, and this ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming . . .

Independence Hall is just a relic from America’s forgotten past.  Democracy is gone, it’s vanished into the foggy ruins of time.

   “In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America:  the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a spiritual idea  embedded in a political reality — one nation, indivisible — or merely a  charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and  privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.”–Bill Moyers

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP readies new bid to contain Gulf of Mexico spill

by Alex Ogle, AFP

52 mins ago

NOTE to admins/editors: I could probably use a little help with the pics formatting! 6PM: thanks ek! 😉

OTW = Off The Wall, is my Thursday ongoing series

Davidseth’s essay last night made me cry: “But BP’s not pouring oil directly on me, or my family, or my house, or my land.” (excellent essay, & he says it much better than me… my sentiments)

Yes, yes they are. They are pouring oil on us… My house, my beach, my land, my Gulf, my ocean, my planet. And yours too.

“We came to the beach just in case we can’t come next week or in the next 20 years…”

{Dad, family of 4}

The winds Sunday gusted to 25 mph, blowing from the Gulf toward the coast, but coming a bit from the east. That helped keep the huge oil slick from coming closer to Florida.

“Currently, there are no impacts to the state projected through Wednesday,” said Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Amy Graham. “Florida continues to make preparations to safeguard the state’s shoreline.”  

“We wait for summer so we can go to the beach,” {16 year old boy, Pensacola Florida}.

“This could ruin our summer.”

source

Ya think…?