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Mar 07 2011
John Kerry Speaks Out About Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning is now forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in a prison corridor every day, after 10 months of solitary confinement where he isn’t even allowed to exercise in his cell, and all the rest of it.
The Marines claim to be worried that Manning might commit suicide with his underwear, although he can’t be placed under an official suicide watch, because none of the psychiatrists and psychologists at Quantico will certify that Manning is really at risk for suicide.
After 10 months of brutalization, even a few devoted cheerleaders for Obama are getting a wee bit nervous!
UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman — who last year hailed Barack Obama as “the greatest moral leader of our lifetime” — wrote last night:
The United States Army is so concerned about Bradley Manning’s health that it is subjecting him to a regime designed to drive him insane. . . .
This is a total disgrace. It shouldn’t be happening in this country. You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.
And now Senator John Kerry speaks out about the brutalization of Bradley Manning.
“There are concerns about what is happening, but a strong argument is being made that they’re trying to preserve his safety, they don’t want him harming himself, and using his own clothing to hang himself, or do something like that,” said Kerry. “That’s happened in prison before. I think it is possible to protect him, I think, and there are some legitimate reasons to believe that that may be true also. But I think that a lot of people are now reviewing this very, very closely, people have weighed in, myself included, I think that analyses are being made. There was a big article in the newspapers today examining it. And I’m convinced that there will be real scrutiny with respect to that issue.”
“People are reviewing this.”
“Analyses are being made.”
And that’s Senator John Kerry, a Democratic politician right out of the same mould as Barack Obama, with no more principles than a cockroach.
Mar 06 2011
The Bush/Obama Education Agenda for 2012!
Obama praises Jeb Bush on education reform
In his first year as Florida governor, Jeb Bush was vilified by Democrats as a “radical” for an education agenda they argued would undermine public schools. So it was a striking moment when, 12 years later, a Democratic president came here Friday to hail the Republican as a “champion of education reform.”
And just what kind of reform does Jeb Bush have in mind?
Jeb Bush: Class size limits unnecessary
Florida voters recently passed a constitutional amendment capping class sizes. Bush is now actively working to undo that requirement.
“If a Martian came down and analyzed test scores and compared them to how much money is spent per student – a Martian research analyst – they’d have to go back and say it appears to me the closer tie is an inverse relationship – that the more you spend, the lower the outcome,” Bush said.
So it obviously follows that the less you spend on schools, the better!
And that’s the Bush/Obama Education Agenda for 2012!
Mar 05 2011
Old News from Afghanistan
“Children die from tetanus…”
Kandahar, Afghanistan, October 13, 2010…
The Red Cross reported a “drastic increase” in the number of amputations from war injuries, reflecting the nature of the violence.
Reto Stocker, the Red Cross chief in Kabul, said the casualties being seen at Mirwais hospital were only “the tip of the iceberg.”
This was near the beginning of Obama’s “surge” around Kandahar, and because of intense fighting almost everywhere in the district, many people with treatable injuries and illnesses couldn’t get to clinics or hospitals.
“The result is that children die from tetanus, measles and tuberculosis – easily prevented with vaccines – while women die in childbirth and otherwise strong men succumb to simple infections.”
Mar 04 2011
No Change in Unemployment
For some strange reason, Dean Baker decided to paint a smiley-face on the news about unemployment, but there’s really LITTLE OR NO CHANGE in the same grim outlook for millions of Americans, and that isn’t just some amateur interpretation, it’s a phrase that the Bureau of Labor Statistics repeats over and over and over at http://www.bls.gov/news.releas…
“The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) and the unemployment rate (8.9 percent) CHANGED LITTLE in February.”
“Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.7 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (23.9 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (15.3 percent), and Hispanics (11.6 percent) showed LITTLE OR NO CHANGE in February.”
“Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employ-ment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, were UNCHANGED in February.”
“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially UNCHANGED at 8.3 million in February.”
A very few numbers got a little worse, and a very few numbers got a little better, so Democrats and Republicans can spin the news up or down, but it’s not much more than statistical noise or artefacts of the government’s Byzantine arithmetic for counting the unemployed, and the real news right from the source is CHANGED LITTLE, LITTLE OR NO CHANGE, UNCHANGED, and UNCHANGED.
Mar 03 2011
A Where’s Waldo? Presidency
Where’s Obama?
Ruth Marcus has recently posted an essay on Truthdig.com with the strangely evocative title “A Where’s Waldo? Presidency.”
For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action-unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment.
On health care, for instance, he took on a big fight without being able to articulate a clear message or being willing to set out any but the broadest policy prescriptions.
That was not an isolated case. Where, for example, is the president on the verge of a potential government shutdown-if not this week, then a few weeks from now?
Obama has said he agrees with some of his fiscal commission’s recommendations and disagrees with others. Which ones does he disagree with?
Where’s Obama? No matter how hard you look, sometimes he’s impossible to find.
Where’s Obama? One place you don’t have to look is Wisconsin, even though some people interpret Obama’s inspiring “walk the line” 2008 campaign speech as if it was a promise that Wisconsin right now is exactly where he would be.
“If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I’m in the White House I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself – I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.”
Mar 03 2011
Death Penalty Charges Against Bradley Manning (Nauseating Update!)
From CBS News…
The Army said Wednesday it has filed 22 additional charges against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the new charges for the first time formally accuse Manning of aiding the enemy.
And from the Guardian…
Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, said that the most serious of the new charges was the Article 104 offence of “aiding the enemy”. The charge carries a potential death sentence.
And of course the bankers who destroyed the American economy are still raking in record profits and salaries with no fear of prosecution, including the weasels at Wachovia Bank who laundered $378 billion for drug cartels, and the war-criminals Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are still at large.
And would somebody please tell the ignorant sons-of-bitches who wrote the charge about “aiding the enemy” that…
WE HAVE NO “ENEMY” because…
WE ARE NOT AT WAR!
Or did I miss a Congressional Declaration of War in the last few minutes?
Update: From New York Magazine…
This is one for your Wikileaks fan fic: A lawyer for Private Bradley Manning says his client was stripped naked and left in his prison cell in the the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, without clothes for seven hours on Wednesday. And if that wasn’t bad enough, before Manning allowed to get dressed, he was forced to stand naked outside his cell while guards inspected the space. “This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” said Manning’s lawyer David E. Coombs. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.” First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said that the action wasn’t punitive but declined to comment on what motivated the naked episode.
God damn those lying perverts!
Mar 03 2011
22 New Charges Against Bradley Manning, Including Possible Death Penalty
From CBS News…
The Army said Wednesday it has filed 22 additional charges against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the new charges for the first time formally accuse Manning of aiding the enemy.
And from the Guardian…
Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, said that the most serious of the new charges was the Article 104 offence of “aiding the enemy”. The charge carries a potential death sentence.
And of course the bankers who destroyed the American economy are still raking in record profits and salaries with no fear of prosecution, including the weasels at Wachovia Bank who laundered $378 billion for drug cartels, and the war-criminals Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are still at large.
Mar 02 2011
“I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the USA.”
Remember these fine words from the Liar-in-Chief?
“If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I’m in the White House I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself – I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.”
“If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain…”
It’s happening right now Wisconsin!
“I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.”
And it’s really just more of the same, from the sociopathic con-man Barack Obama.
Mar 02 2011
A Tourist Photo from Takhar Province
Kuchi caravan in Takhar Province, Afghanistan
I cropped and rebalanced this image out of yet another idiotic snapshot from yet another tourist in Afghanistan, white balance set to flourescent with a hideous yellow cast all over these Kuchi nomads, and you might think that out of hundreds of thousands of tourist photos from Afghanistan at least a few would escape the mind-mangling combination of idle curiosity and pitiful “artistic” ambition which defines “tourist photo,” just as you might think that after nine long years of slaughter and corruption, the US occupation of Afghanistan would eventually get something right, even by accident, by the law of averages or the law of large numbers or some other brute-force statistical anomaly, like winning five bets in a row at roulette, but the wheel of Afghanistan is infinite, all the tourist photos are junk, and everything about the US occupation is inevitably fucked up.
Mar 01 2011
Picture Worth 1000 Words, 1000 Words Worth Nothing
Monirul Alam has created an archive of spot-news photography from Bangladesh, and he might as well have called it…
Picture Worth 1000 Words, 1000 Words Worth Nothing!
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas on Monday to disperse angry crowds who attacked the train that knocked down and killed three people on their way to an opposition rally at Sirajganj, north of Dhaka.
Picture Worth 1000 Words, 1000 Words Worth Nothing!
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) activists set fire to a bus during a protest in Dhaka on November 13, 2010.
Picture Worth 1000 Words, 1000 Words Worth Nothing!
The horrible grenade attack on AL rally killed at least 24 people, including the wife Ivy Rahman of current President Zillur Rahman.
Picture Worth 1000 Words, 1000 Words Worth Nothing!
Feb 27 2011
An Astounding Success for Grass-Roots Environmentalism
Yacouba Sawadogo was not sure how old he was. With a hatchet slung over his shoulder, he strode through the woods and fields of his farm with an easy grace. But up close his beard was gray, and it turned out he had great-grandchildren, so he had to be at least sixty and perhaps closer to seventy years old. That means he was born well before 1960, the year the country now known as Burkina Faso gained independence from France, which explains why he was never taught to read and write.
Nor did he learn French. He spoke his tribal language, Mòoré, in a deep, unhurried rumble, occasionally punctuating sentences with a brief grunt. Yet despite his illiteracy, Yacouba Sawadogo is a pioneer of the tree-based approach to farming that has transformed the western Sahel over the last twenty years.
Transformed the western Sahel! And I gave up the Sahel for dead 10 years ago! But was there any real basis for this apparently very good news?
Yes indeed!
Feb 25 2011
A Revolutionary Speech by the Secretary of Defense
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point today…
In my opinion, any future Defense Secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wasn’t just cobbling together yet another version of the wishy-washy “Powell Doctrine” enunciated once upon a time by the former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, with all its easily miscontrued conditions: Is a vital national security interest threatened? Do we have a clear attainable objective?
Yes, of course the Vietcong, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, penguins, liberals, and lolcats threaten vital national security interests!
This shit meant nothing, not even to the whore/general who dreamed it up and then turned into a cheerleader for invading Iraq, the Land of Imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction!
But there isn’t nearly as much wiggle-room about a big American army in Asia!
Or Africa!
Or the Middle East!
“Don’t go there!”
And after enunciating the “Gates Doctrine,” Gates launched a full-tilt attack on the bureaucratic imbecility of the Pentagon!
To find inspiring work for its young officers after combat deployments, the Army must encourage unusual career detours, Mr. Gates said, endorsing graduate study, teaching or duty in a policy research institute, Congressional office or other branch of government. The defense secretary urged the cadets to master foreign languages and cultures.
Mr. Gates said his main worry was that the Army might not overcome institutional bias that favored traditional career paths. He urged the service to “break up the institutional concrete, its bureaucratic rigidity in its assignments and promotion processes, in order to retain, challenge, and inspire its best, brightest, and most-battled tested young officers to lead the service in the future.”
Master foreign languages and cultures!
War as a liberal art!
What next? A Department of Peace, and an honest citizen for President instead of a cowardly, sadistic thug like George W. Bush, or a sociopathic con-man like Barack Obama?
