BY SPE

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

“DOMESTIC DRONES ON PATROL”
(New York Times, March 18 – Mathew Wald)

“The sky’s going to be dark with these things” said Chris Anderson…who now runs a company, 3 D Robotics, that sells unmanned aerial vehicles and equipment. He says it is selling about as many drones every calendar quarter – about 7,500 as the United States military flies in total.”

“NO WORDS …JUST YOUR BRAIN AS THE CONTROL PAD”

“Soon, we might interact with our smart phones and computers simply by using our minds [implants necessary now, but not for long].” (New York Times, April 29)

“NEW CLUES INTO MYSTERIES OF DARK MATTER”
(New York Times, April 4 – Dennis Overbye)

“Dark matter…Caltech astronomer Fritz Zwicky deduced in the 1930s that some invisible ‘missing mass’ was required to supply the gravitational glue to hold clusters of galaxies together… 27 percent of universe, by mass, is composed of some unknown form of matter unlike the atoms that make up us and everything we see.”

“THE MILITARY- FOOTBALL COMPLEX “Sex, Violence and propaganda”

“This year’s half-time star (at the Super Bowl) set a new standard of raunchiness…(and) her relentless hips …served by contrast (to surprisingly restrained beauty of her voice)… to amplify the sexual display of her dancing…don’t get me wrong: I think she’s a terrific dancer, but don’t tell me this is family entertainment. That’s what is so bizarre: in America it is.” (Anderson Valley Advertiser, February 13, 2013 – David Yearsley) 

Warding off bad luck? Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

Warding off bad luck?

In 2009 county officials…of Gansu spent $732,000 transporting a 369 ton boulder six miles to the county seat, a move feng shui masters said would ward off bad luck. “Liu Zhijun the former railway minister…(who built the world’s largest high-speed rail network while consulting a feng shui master) …was charged last month with corruption and abuse of power. In addition to the charges of taking 157 million in bribes and maintaining a harem of 18 mistresses, he is accused of an especially profane crime ‘belief in feudal superstitions’.” (New York Times, May 13, 2013)

“LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL”
(From New York Times, op-ed, April 16)

Martin Luther King: “I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans or passionate yearnings of the oppressed race.”

“AFTER EXPLOSION AT WEST, TEXAS STILL NO REGULATING”
(New York Times, May 10)

Adrees Latif/Reuters

“In chemical fires, the firefighters often bear a heavy toll…this week officials from the state fire fighters association said the 50 foot tall memorial to the volunteers killed in the line of duty…had no room left for new names, not even those from West [in the gigantic explosion at an unregulated fertilizer manufacturing plant].”

Heat trapping gas [carbon dioxide]…
“AT LEVEL NOT SEEN IN THEE MILLION YEARS, WHEN THE EARTH WAS MUCH WARMER”
“Mark Pagani a Yale geochemist who studies climates of the past (said) ‘I feel like the time to do something was yesterday.’ ”

(New York Times, National Edition, May 11)

“HEART RATE AND LIFE SPAN”
(Science Times, April 23)

“A study published in Heart suggests that a higher resting heart rate is an independent predictor of mortality – even in healthy people in good physical condition.”

“Compared with individuals with rates of 50 beats a minute or less those at 71 or 80 beats had a 51% greater risk. At 81 to 90 beats the rate of death was doubled and over 90 it was tripled.”

“HOWEVER “OWNING A DOG IS LINKED TO
REDUCED HEART RISK” “Their [the Dogs'] presence blunts the owners’ reaction to stress and lowers their heart rate.”

“VALUABLE AS ART PRICELESS TO ‘LAUNDER’ MONEY”

(New York Times)
“Banks must report all transactions of $10,000 or more… the art market lacks these safeguards. Roll up a canvas and it is easy to stash or move between countries…”

“HOW AUSTERITY KILLS”
David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu (New York Times, May 13)

“…Iceland avoided a public health disaster (people looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs) even though it experienced in 2008, the largest banking crises in history, relative to the size of its economy… Instead of bailing out banks and slashing budgets, as the I.M.F. demanded, Iceland’s politicians took a radical step… Icelanders voted overwhelmingly to pay off foreign creditors gradually, rather than all at once though austerity. Iceland’s economy has largely recovered, whicle Greece’s teeters on collapsed. No one lost health care coverage or access to medication and there was no significant increase in suicide. Last year, the U.N. …ranked Iceland as one of the world’s happiest nations.”
…There are warning signs for (for the U.S. ) – beyond the higher suicide rate – that health trends are worsening. Prescriptions for antidepressants have soared. Three quarters of a million people (particularly out of work young men) have turned to binge drinking. Over five million Americans lost access to health care… The 85 billion “sequester” that began on March 1, will cut nutrition subsidies for approximately 600,000 pregnant women, newborns and infants by year’s end.
Public housing budget’s will be cut by nearly $ 2 billion this year, even while 1.4 million home are in foreclosure…”

Click here for link to entire article…

From Spring Wills
“OUR GAL ON THE ROAD” -
HITCHHIKING ALL THE AMERICAS,
with little English and no Spanish.

May 1, Puno, Peru. Rebeca and her family host me.

I take bus 60 sols to Santa Ross , then take another bus to Oropesa , 1.50
Sol. It totally crowded in the bus. The woman are unhappy for me, they push me in their anger because I squeeze them. God, what pleasure we live on this life?

A nice truck stop , a nice couple are going to Puno.

His name is Yefrain, her name is Bertha,
I know this is not common in Peru that someone can have so nice truck, take wife for vacation. They are blessed and would like to share blessing with a stranger.

“MOST OF US ARE WANDERING GYPSIES”
Crains morning 10

Joe Tirone, a realtor on Staten Island, got the idea for the buy out of flooded properties from the U.S. small business administration. Agency personnel told him about FEMA …grant program that had been used in Tennessee and upstate New York… . Two weeks after Sandy, Mr. Tirone brought the idea of a buy out to a group of about 200 home owners of the Oakwood Beach section of the Island. When he asked for a show of hands of those interested in such a program the response was nearly unanimous. ‘I was not ready for that answer,’ Mr. Tirone admitted. “What helped was Oakwood Beach history. Over nearly a century, the area has endured a series of natural disasters, from repeated brush fires in the tall grass in the nearby wetlands. (Tinder dry in the summer) In the wake of the latest calamity, some of the areas original inhabits, flocks of geese and a handful of deer have already reappeared. The death and destruction caused by Sandy has persuaded many residents to take Albany’s cash and move on. Today many of the dwellings of the buy out area are abandoned.”

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BY SPE

Did You know??

The Gulabi Gang (meaning pink gang) is a gang of women in India that go after abusive husbands and fight to stop child marriages.

Read full details on: http://www.gulabigang.in/

Patriots Day

Waco raid photo courtesy of Wikipedia

April 15 was Income Tax Day, Massachusetts Patriots Day, somewhat near the anniversary of the fire at Waco, Texas, which immolated the besieged Branch Davidians, also the anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which, as the New York Times on April 27 said, “was conceived in part a response to the Waco raid.”

The long shots on television of bare legged runners crumpling to the ground from the blast of explosively propelled ball bearing and nails tearing off bare skin and entire legs made visible what is usually hidden in the blurry news paper photos of what usually appears as piles of garment (and exotic ones at that).

The headline of the front page article in the Times on April 16, immediately below the Boston horror, read…

“U.S. practiced torture after 9-11 NONPARTISAN REVIEW CONCLUDES”

“It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practices of torture,” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. The report says in every war we too have gotten down and dirty but never before engaged in, “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 involving a president and his top advisors on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on detainees in custody.”

The top Republican on the review was said by one of his staff, “for sure no bleeding heart,” but someone who had more than a few words to say about Bill Clinton’s playing leap frog in the oval office with Monica and others.

These guys want to get the country at least talking about what it really means to get down and dirty. “As long as the debate continues [whether or not torture is really torture] so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture.”

Asa Hutchinson said, “he took convincing, but he was,” and he said, “The United States has a history and unique character, and part of that character is that we do not torture.”

And, Obama’s administration is part of the problem, as it keeps details of rendition and torture from the public and blocks lawsuits by former detainees, “What was once generally taken to be understandable behavior can later become a case of historical regret.” (New York Times, April 16)

But we don’t see it that way

In an interview Mr. Bush expressed no regrets and said his record, “would stand the test of time.”

In the same paper

‘OFF-DUTY OFFICER KILLED BOYFRIEND THEIR YEAR -OLD SON AND THEN HERSELF POLICE SAY’
“The officer used her (off duty) gun, a 9 millimeter Glock.

Monument erected at the site of the 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek by the U.S. 7th Cavalry. Photo courtesy of Indiancountrytodaymedia.com

Joseph Brings Plenty wonders

(April 12, N.Y. Times) Joseph Brings Plenty wonders why President Obama can’t make the site of the massacre of unarmed Lakota’s [at Wounded Knee] by the Seventh Cavalry survivors of Custer’s “Last Stand” at Little Big Horn a national monument, otherwise it is in private hands, “through the process known as allotment begun in the late 1800s, by which the federal government divided land among Indians and non-Indians the idea was to shift control of our land from the collective to the individual and teach Lakota and other Native Americans the foreign notion of ownership…”

From Spring Wills

“OUR GAL ON THE ROAD”
HITCHHIKING ALL THE AMERICAS,
with little English and no Spanish - March 31, San Jose, Costa Rica.

Sleep outside.
Birds singing bring the new day, I open eyes, see two birds float through the sky.

 The clouds between ocean and sky are getting thinner and lighter. The sun will rise from there.

It is amazing beautiful. Palm trees and my neighbors make perfect shapes on my camera with rising sun from sea.

I watch it, I fall in love this view. I think I may stay one more day, just because of my this beautiful bedroom.

I need keep going my way.
In Costa Rica, asking for ride in gas station does not work out for me. Their respond drives me crazy if I forget God at that moment.

After serious damage heart, I thumb on roadside . I get a ride from a man, he is going to Alajuela, that is close to San Jose. I am happy that I get a ride so soon and close my distination.

A suprising thing happened: he let me out at a Conner after he turn to the road to San Jose. I tell him , we are exaltly go same direction same place, he can give me a ride. He decisively let me out . He takes our my bag. Does not listent my “begging ” reasons. My God, what a crazy man ! I am thinking . Did I say or do any thing wrong in his car since I got in? No. I don’t think so. We even did not talk much because of language. Why he let me out? His looking is normal.

“GITMO IS KILLING ME”

SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL – photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel was somehow able to get into the Times the last day that it would be possible to print, and that was the morning of the day, April 15, that the Boston Marathon Bombing later occurred.

He says,
“I’ve been on a hunger strike since February 10, and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity. I have been detained at Guantanamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime, I have never received a trial. Lat month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the (E.R.F.) – extreme reaction force – a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in.”

“They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an I.V. into my hand, I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.”

“I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way, as it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit but I couldn’t…I am still being force fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell…I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, when I am sleeping.”

“There are so many of us on hunger strike that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force feeding…they are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.”

 ”IF CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE”

James Livingston suggests on filling date for income taxes, (April 15)
…”why not tax corporations as if they were natural persons in accordance with their newly discovered rights of free speech? That move would solve any impending fiscal crisis.”

“I will say we used to do just that, for most of the 1950′s corporate income at large companies was taxed at 52%.

…The federal government…collected about a third of its revenue from this source. Today, thanks largely to the reforms ushered in by President Ronald Reagan… The corporate – tax share has fallen to about 9% of federal revenue.”

 ”HEDGE FUND TITAN GET MIXED RETURNS AND LAVISH PAYDAY”

(New York Times, April 15) Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalo…whose “Principal” manifesto discusses the virtues of hyenas killing wildebeests, also could not quite beat the market. Yet he ended the year $1.7 billion richer…”

“IMMIGRANT DETAINEES”

(New York Times, March 31) “On any given day, roughly 34,000 immigrants are held in a patchwork of local jails and prisons awaiting court hearings … 300 immigration detainees are being held in solitary confinement – conditions that the United Nations special reporter, can constitute torture…”

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BY SPE

Mendocino County, in California, has more than twice the alcohol outlets per capita as any other place in California. (The Press Democrat, April 8, 2013)

This impact assessment shows a correlation between the density of alcohol outlets and arrests per aggravated assault, drinking and driving and underage drinking.

(April 1st) My kid in Korea sent birthday greeting to be read me while he is still safe from nuclear attack because Kim Jong-un is in the midst of a speech.

Song Hyun-Young said in the Times (The New York Times, April 6) Korea is in the most dangerous place in the world, but we are numb to it… If something happens, we will all die together, so I don’t really think about it.

Anti-nuclear power plant rally on September 19, 2011, at the Meiji Shrine complex in Tokyo courtesy of Wikipedia.

FUKUSHIMA AGAIN

(NY Times, April 6) Rats have been disrupting the cooling system for nuclear fuel rods by gnawing on power cables. But, Tepco has installed mouse traps and, “promises to plug holes…”

“We were installing wire nets to keep the rats out. But the end of one of the wires may have momentarily come into contact with a live terminal,” said Masayuki Ono, General Manager at Tepco’s Nuclear Power and Plant [Siting] Division. “The next moment, there were [sirens].”

SPARKS STEAKHOUSES

The reporter works for Don Sparks when he had a pub on the upper east side of the New York, see “Last Days of the Empire” (Eureka Productions. TV). Before his subsequent Steakhouses where mobsters are assassinated and politicians bribed.

Michael Wilson (The New York Times, April 6) said, “The link between corrupt politicians and steakhouses would appear to be so obvious that corrupt politicians would avoid them altogether, especially since there are apparently as many hidden microphones as shrimp cocktails at a given table, but still they come…”

(Wall Street Journal, April 10)

“U.S. regulators said Tuesday that banks wrongfully took away homes from 1,082 borrowers who were members of the U.S. Military. Another 53 borrowers were found to have lost their homes despite not actually defaulting on their loans… (90% of wronged borrowers will get $300 to $1,000) …some of the biggest banks were on pace to find a higher rate ___ past foreclosure errors than regulators disclosed when they (the regulators) stopped the review… Those who qualified for the smallest payments include many who lost their homes but weren’t offered help by banks or weren’t offered help by or… or were placed into foreclosure despite asking for assistance.”

EVOLUTION THEN ROADKILL

(The week of April 5) “In Southwestern Nebraska the number of cliff swallows (Petrochelidon) killed by cars and trucks has declined over the past 30 years. The birds have evolved shorter wings, which allows them to pivot away from oncoming traffic—this from researchers at The University of Nebraska—Lincoln.”

(April 11, CHRIS HAYES SHOW ON MSNBC)

Senator Sherrod Brown (D.-Ohio) says about the wrongful foreclosures of homes by the big banks – after they were bailed out – there is such a back and forth by the same people employed by the banks, government regulators and so called independent auditors that the same people who write the complex regulations when employed outside the government then become the only ones who can understand them.

(April 8—Neil [Genzlinger] review of HBO documentary) “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus: a child rescued from Nazi occupied Austria in 1939,” [Henry Wenkaut] said: “What people don’t understand is that at the beginning you could get out. Everybody could get out. Nobody would let us in. Everyone could have been saved – everyone.”

LARRY PRATT

Ex. Director of Gun Owners of America told Chris Matthews (MSNBC) that he, “doesn’t trust people like you (Chris),” which if he is carrying can be interpreted as a threat or, at the very least when sitting across the table from the person he is saying it to, an unacceptable personal insult.

BROKEN BOLTS

(Sacramento Bee, April 11) “Transportation officials said that they still do not know whether the new Bay Bridge will open as scheduled, or how they will solve the problem of broken bolts that were used despite having failed some quality tests.”

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Masters on the Mountain is the West Coast’s premier martial arts seminar. It is held twice a year in the Sierras. Thanks to all who attended!

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BY SPE

Chris Matthews of MSNBC received the statistic from polling that 78% of Black Americans want gun control, responded a U.S. Representative on the condition of anonymity – With those kinds of numbers, of course white homeowners need high capacity magazines. It’s been the right of homeowners since the Declaration, and it’s not necessarily because they’re mostly white.

Representative Gohmert (R) of Texas stated, “Why, a limit on the size of gun magazines is EXACTLY like condoning Gay marriages and bestiality.” (Daily News, Wednesday, April 3, 2013)

I Am a Man image courtesy of Wikipedia

 I Am a Man…I Am a Woman

The slogan of the striking Memphis sanitation workers that Martin Luther King went to support in 1968 was, in indignation at the conditions, “I Am a Man.”

The same slogan, or “I Am A Woman,” was used in New York City, April 4, 2013, on the anniversary of Martin’s murder, by fast-food workers striking McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and other fast-food corporations paying the minimum wage of $7.23. The minimum wage of 1968 is now equivalent to eleven dollars an hour (thanks Chris Hayes!).

As the economy recovers from the recession, fast food corporations are making record profits in the billions (McDonald’s 575 billion in 2012), most new job growth is in the minimum wage industries, while skilled labor jobs come back at a fair lower rate.

Martin Luther King said in 1968, “It’s a crime in the world’s richest country to be paying starvation wages.”

A representative of the fast food trade group did point out that the response could be a hunger strike, like that being staged at Guantanamo by detainees cleared to go, but being held anyway (the courts have no power over ‘detainees’ under military jurisdiction). They could also, like them, be strapped into what resembles an early model electrical execution chair (see eurekaproductions.tv for, “The Great Electric Light War,” or soon, “Grandstand Play”), and have tubes inserted up their noses to ensure forced feeding and the nourishment of a fast food of their choice…

But, there is a brighter side, our gal hitchhiking around America by herself took off a few weeks ago from her home in Mendocino, California, to hitch ALL the Americas. A couple of days ago she texted from Panama City:

“A man stole my shoes while I lay on a bench in a park this morning, police caught him. I feel that was my wrong. I travel the world by grace and gratitude. I should not send anyone to jail. I gave my shoes to him and several dollars, and cried a lot because he had no shoes.”

- Spring Wills, our gal hitchhiking around the Americas

War’s Anniversary

About the ten year anniversary of the “War on Terror” now called “The conflict against Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” Steve Coll writes in the March 4, 2013, New Yorker, “A franchise is a business that typically operates under strict rules laid down by a parent corporation to apply that label to Al Qaeda’s derivative groups today is false, if Al Qaeda is not coherent enough to justify a formal state of war, the war should end…the amorphous threats they pose will require adaptive security policies and, occasionally, military action… BUT…a war against a name is a war in name only.”

Taliban Karachi’s New Gang in Town
(Upsetting Eve Alligators…)

New York Times, March 29, 2013, “In joining Karach’s street wars the Taliban are up-lending a long-established network of competing criminal, ethnic and political armed groups in this combustible city…The militant drive has even distressed Manghopir’s most revered residents: the dozens of crocodiles who inhabit a pool near a Sufi Shrine here, The Muslim Pilgrims who come here to pay homage to the Shrine’s Saint have long also brought scraps of meat for his reptile chargers, but lately, as visitor numbers have dwindled from hundreds per day to barely a few dozen, the roughly 120 crocodiles here have grown hungry, very hungry.”

On Sandy aftermath

From Joe Tirone, the Sandy video – “Return to the Past”

How’s this for an example? The Mayor of New York City. I think everyone was in denial, and perhaps he was too. The New York City Marathon was scheduled November 2nd or 3rd. The Mayor’s mentality was, hey this is New York, we’re tough and we’re going on. I think that people we’re just so bent up at that point that they couldn’t focus on the idea that he, Mayor Bloomberg, wanted to have the Marathon. Then the date came closer, and the reality was setting in that they might have the Marathon, and people became angry. And, it was that outcry that stopped it. People just did not want to see that, and it was how dare you, we’re all in pain, we’re all suffering. New York has an issue. New Yorkers try to lead the nation, like after 9-11, “We’re tough, we came back, and nothing stops us!” But, there’s a time to mourn. There’s a time to stop and realize what happened.

Actually, in my opinion, 9-11 is coming back to bite us as well, because they renamed the victims as heroes…and we’re going back in there, and they started the reconstructions…weeks after that! First it was taking everything to the dump, and then everyone went back to work within two weeks in lower Manhattan. You knew it was poison – you knew it was horrible – but everyone was not only encouraged but forced to go back to work, because “we’re New York, we’re tough!” How you look at all the people who are sick – everything – is because of that mentality, but “we’re gunna go forward!” Certainly we’re going to go forward, but there is a time to stop, to think and to mourn.

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Our Man on the Spot #2

Modified AR-15 courtesy of Wikipedia.

As for the marketing of the AR-15, semi-auto rifle made famous in recent days, Tom Diaz author of “The Last Gun” says, ”It speaks to the fact there are a lot of young men in the U.S. who will never be in the military, but feel that male compulsion to warrior-hood.”

On the other hand, Ted Nugent, who said of the President Obama’s ideas about curtailing gun violence, to Pierce Morgan of MSNBC (Jan. 4, 2013) that he wouldn’t give credence to anything at all “The scammer in chief,” had to say but he knew, “that an armed society is a police society.” (Polite society, he said he meant to say.)

Fight Night at Colusa Casino can be found in Sam Edward’s Highway 20
Love Songs.

Another way of describing the protagonists in this debate can be found in the narrative “Fight Night at Colusa Casino.” As County deputies at the venue box office checked for weapons and correctly dated tickets. Inside were the tattooed camp followers of The Generation Kill invasion force, perhaps too smart to volunteer, but more than able to levitate to America The Beautiful.

OPEN CARRY

One of the “Open Carry”- affiliated salesmen, a Glock on his hip at the MSNBC event with Pierce, was overheard at a gun range in Texas, to say to a cameraman:

“You better be armed for the next cataclysmic weather event you people in The East like to predict because we’re keeping immigrant pythons downs here and sending you two-legged immigrants. You’ll find in the next hurricane it will be nice to have a Bushmaster (AR-15) riding shotgun and keeping the ‘emotionally diverse,’ as you like to call them – we call them mobs – on the street, or as in Katrina, on their side of the river – and not in your showroom or your storeroom.”

A FROG TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

Alexis de Tocqueville said about America in 1830, “Though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not exist, for these rich individuals have no feeling or purposes, no traditions or hope in common… (however) if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter.”

Alexis de Tocqueville courtesy of Wikipedia.Alexis de Tocqueville said about America in 1830, “Though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not exist, for these rich individuals have no feeling or purposes, no traditions or hope in common… (however) if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter.”

MITT AGAIN

Mitt Romney, who did time in France proselytizing for Latter Day Saints, is reputed to have said in passable French,

“One Frog I’ve read is de Tocqueville, who knew that the USA is a nation of merchants you can’t count on to vote, even if a shopkeeper, so you’ve sometimes got to herd them toward their own self-interest. Of course herds need to stick together. It’s natural selection, my friend, and forgive my French, but you don’t fuck with mother nature.”

A PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY

The Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., says,

“There’s a culture of fear in America, a perversion of Christianity which has turned it into a religion of fear, which it of course is not.” (Times, Dec. 14, 2012)

Even Mitt was heard to say off the record, and off mic, that he thought that the heavy hitters of “Born agains” would inevitably drive the most weak and disabled – those who usually have government subsistence – into the open arms of modern day LDS.

AND GUANTANAMO AGAIN

The Times reported that Col. James L. Pohl, the military judge at Guantanamo who is overseeing the prosecution of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and four others accused of conspiring in the September 11th attack, granted a request by prosecutors to treat anything the detainees say about the CIA interrogations as classified. (Dec. 14, 2012)

Off the record he said to reporters,

“It’s that old Vegas maxim: What’s said or done here, stays here.”

BUSINESS AS USUAL

The business sections of major newspapers, as they drop foreign correspondents as fast as the Dow, have become good reading. Check out Gretchen Morgansen and many others.

“We can learn there are many institutional investors who have so perfected the art of looking the other way, that they make bystanders at a New York subway platform standing by ‘when shit happens,’ look like the models of social responsibility.”

MANNY’S LAST FIGHT

However, there’s still the sports section. Greg Bishop wrote on Dec. 30, 2012:

“Juan Manual Marquez ended his fight with Manny Pacquiao with a concussion and a broken nose. He climbed into the ring looking less like a boxer and more like a body builder.”

“He recently has been trained by Angel Guillermo Heredia, an admitted steroid dealer. But Marquez has long been an experimental kind of boxer – early into his career, he drank his own urine during training.”

Romney, never to miss an opportunity, visited Pacquiao, a member of the Philippines legislature, before the fight and told him: “I ran for President. I lost, but it was one of the best nights of my life.” (Times) He never clarified which night, his or Pacquiao’s.

STEUBENVILLE OR DELHI

Asked about a rape case involving several Stuebenville High School football players, at an out of control party (Times, Dec. 16, 2012), Police Chief William Macafferty said about the numerous do-nothing bystanders: “If you could charge people for not being decent human beings, a lot of people could have been charged that night.”

THE DAILY BUREAUCRAT

As to the role of paperwork – files and such – Matthew Hull in “government of paper,” says, “to control the movement of the files is to control the issue.”

He cites an example of this as positive effect when Charles Hippolyte de La Bussière, a French government cleric, who, in 1794, purportedly saved hundreds of people from the Guillotine by dissolving the relevant paperwork in Paris public baths, or as one version of the story has it, eating it.

TURN IN GUNS FOR CASH?!

Oakland, Calif. residents, on Saturday, December 15, 2012, waited in a long line of cars (SF Chronicle ) to turn in guns, some with flowers in the muzzle, for Christmas cash.

READING IN BED RISKY BUSINESS

Reading in bed probably does not rank with fishing in the Bering Sea, but it has recently qualified as a risky activity because “bed bugs have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds – in library books.” (Times, Dec. 6, 2012)

ROBOTS AND ROBBER BARONS

Paul Krugman (Dec. 10, 2012), said:

“The economic pie isn’t growing the way it should … capitol is doing fine by grabbing an even larger share at labor’s expense. Technology has taken a turn (robots) that places labor at a disadvantage … robber barons on one side, robots on the other.” (Times, Jan. 27, 2013)

START THEM YOUNG

In an interview Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said it’s necessary to bring young people into shooting sports.

“Start them young,” one report concluded. “Manufactures should target programs toward youth 12 years old and younger.”

In another report, according to the Times, the authors warned against using human silhouettes for targets when trying to recruit new shooters. “Bait and switch,” one official said to the reporter. “You guys with all your firearm safety stuff and not pointing a firearm at another human, unless you intend to shoot, take a lot of the fun out of shooting sports.”

“If the industry is to survive…” Junior shooters editor Andy Fink, wrote, “gun enthusiasts must embrace all youth shooting activities including ones using semi-automatic firearms with magazines holding 30-100 rounds.” (Times)

SHOOT ANYTHING THAT MOVES

Tammy Duckworth, newly elected U.S. representative and double amputee after the helicopter she was flying in Iraq crashed, called them “chicken hawks” – those, who in this day and age, say it is not necessary to have served in the armed services to be a patriot and know when we should go to war.

For, as they, the chicken hawks, told this reporter, “You only have to read ‘Kill Anything That Moves‘ to know that, of the hundreds of thousands U.S forces killed in Vietnam, the vast majority was from high altitude bombing, Agent Orange, napalm runs, or agitating a farmer or fisherman to reveal himself, by running from the helicopter hovering overhead proving he or she had something to hide, and deserved to be one more gook gone. Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

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BY SPE

(Photo): Adnan Farhan Latif, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif apparently accepted psychiatric medications, casually left as a potentially Guantanamo assisted suicide, which rescued prison authorities of responsibility, just as Athenian justice had required Socrates take the hemlock himself, so that the Athenian body politic could keep its hands clean – other than those grating mortar and pestle in lethal preparation. Socrates had been a pain in the ass to the body politic as Adnan was to become, though ordered freed several times by generals, panels and judges. Adnan said he came to Afghanistan to seek services of a medical charity before the war, not realizing he would end up as one of the one of the first captured to become a tenured citizen of Guantanamo Bay.

As Socrates never yielded to the political persuasion of dutiful submissive citizenship so Adnan never, it’s said, submitted to the terms of his Guantanamo imprisonment, even in his last days when they put him into a cell echoing from the generator anchored to the intervening wall – a cell he dreaded. Instead, he would determine his incarcerated fate even unto the gates of hell. “He would not let them [the guards] set the terms of his imprisonment” (New York Times, November 28, 2012). Adnan regularly was placed in a restraining chair and forced fed while attempting hunger strikes.

Socrates said the same thing all those years ago; people don’t like it when you think for yourself. Bruce says that’s why he honored Alexander Cockburn so much, he was among the few who did think for himself. Socrates said all could as well, if they sought the light he had found inside himself, instead of seeing only that which can be bought or sold, or in Adnan’s case told.

It must be said here that one guard looking over these unclassified notes said, “what a huge pile of bullshit – Adnan was no fucking Socrates, just a raghead determined to take the little space we gave him and make it into a mile of official ‘better look into this one’ before some crinkle head in the ACLU makes a federal case out of it. But don’t worry, the Queda Brotherhood has no autopsy truck, so let’s freeze his ass as a Yemeni iced pie and send him home.” The New York Times November 28, 2012 says that’s what they did.

Nelson Mandela says in his book, Conversations with Myself, “ …and you found, you know, the resistance, the ability of the human spirit to resist injustice right inside prison… there were many men…who would prefer punishment and even assault rather than give in.”

Now about Bradley Manning

(Photo): Bradley Manning, US Army, courtesy of Wikipedia.

But that not what the boys at Quantico did to that little piss-ant stoolie, Bradley Manning. They kept the light on the little mother fucker even when he was taking a shit – and he had to jump up and stand at attention “Ten-hut,” when he needed something to wipe his ass with (Democracy Now, December 3, 2012). If the little fuck face turned his head away from the light even when asleep, they said ‘wake up you little fuck, and turn over.’ And, that came from the top, where they could care less about that Hippocratic Oath thing – let the boy tell something useful – forget what the commissioned MDs say, they work for us. Then Manning could squirm one eye around, and see the light of day reflected off a petty officer’s used Suburban parked out by the main gate, the car of choice shipped to San Salvador for the “unfairly” termed death-squads, shipped directly from Michigan with tinted windows and escape-proof doors (the prototype for child-proof locks).

Radioactive Promises

On the other hand, hemlock’s modern offspring- like birds evolving from dinosaurs – come with radioactive promise.

That’s why they dug up Yasser Arafat, to find out if the Israelis had sent him a “get-well snack” (and it wasn’t dates and almonds), when he was in that French hospital (Huff Post, March 19, 2013).

It’s also said that if you get on the wrong side Putin (even if you have done a stint in KGB before becoming an independent contractor) don’t drink tea with friends of his, unless you bring your own sugar. And, if you are a journalist, they won’t waste something the Iranians want so badly on a pencil pusher, just an ounce of lead – a bullet.

Bloomberg Knows

Mayor Bloomberg proved to the world he was no one-trip-pony when he raised the ante on the “Occupy” movement, and proved it could not stand up to having its gourmet food kitchen removed, along with heating stoves for the freezing cold nights and have its library shut down. So his decision to let the nursing homes in the Rockaways ride out Supper Storm Sandy, and give the first responders practice in rescuing frail and ancient people, was something in the bank for the next catastrophe which the mayor, as a spokesman for the threat of Global Warming, knows is coming for sure. “Global Carbon Project” researchers say that if emissions continue to grow so rapidly that the goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees is probably unattainable (New York Times, December 2, 2012). The city can’t afford to build seawalls like the Dutch around its thousands of miles of exposure and maybe this will wake the Feds up to ‘parting with more than chump change.’

The mayor is supposed to have stated – off the record – that maybe this will show Hillary that being Mayor of the Big Apple is ten times the trick of a land-locked presidency. She should run for bleeping mayor if she wants to show the world that she has the balls to be where the rubber meets the road. Delete that last he said. Anyway, Bloomberg Associates would probably be the only ones to find the finances for such a project.

Words of Wisdom

“Obama proved himself to be imperial to the core…I do not hate the person because he has the potential to change…” (Cornell West, Booneville Advertiser).

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