Down A River with 16 Paddles

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I’ll be in an untethered state until June 10 floating, and sometimes cataracting, down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  No electricity, no cell towers, actually, no toilets but that’s a different matter.  Five oar-boats, two kayaks, plenty of polar-tech (it’s still 48 at the Canyon rim,) 21 days of food packed into enormous coolers – don’t open this one until day 17!!  When I surface I ought to have plenty of good photos –if the solar chargers keep the batteries going– and some good stories to tell….


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Nuns of the Bus Tell it in Texas

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Always like a good story about a demonstration trying to bring dignity and power to the down and out…

 

The Nuns on the Bus, a touring group of activist Catholic nuns, arrived at the Texas state capitol in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, to demonstrate alongside more than 400 others who support the expansion of Medicaid in that state to help the poor. According to the Associated Press, the purpose of the rally was to urge lawmakers to pass a state law that would add more than 1 million working poor people to the Medicaid rolls.


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New Zealand Parliament Breaks into Maori Love Song After Passing Gay Marriage Bill

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Really, this will choke you up.  Human Beans can come out of their shells and sing to others who only decades ago were despised….

Right after the official tally was announced, the crowd of onlookers, joined by numerous members of Parliament, broke into song, singing “Pokarekare Ana,” a love song in the language of New Zealand’s inidgenous Māori people.

 

From AmericaBlog


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Genocide Trial for Reagan’s Man in Guatemala

April 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

…for the first time “anywhere in the world,” according to the United Nations, a former head of state is being tried for genocide by his own nation’s justice system. That man is Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-military dictator who ruled Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. — And, a Pentecostal minister, friends of Pat Robertson and the later Jerry Falwell.

That’s the good news.

Ixil Mayan Indians are standing in court to testify what it was like during the years of Montt’s rule and that is the bad news, the grotesque news

Ixil-CU-600x337

 

 The soldiers killed Jacinto Lopez’s teenage daughter Magdalena by repeatedly stabbing her in the neck.

Then they shot and killed his sons, 13-year-old Domingo and 10-year-old Pedro.

His in-laws were not spared. Barely anyone in the village was.

These atrocities, which took place in the remote Guatemalan town of Santa Maria Nebaj in July of 1982, have never been described in a courtroom.

“They killed my family and destroyed our crops,” Lopez testified. “They took even my cows.”

CNN  and NY Times

“I was 12 years old,” said one woman, whose identity was protected by the court. “They took me with the other women and they tied my feet and hands. They put a rag in my mouth … and they started raping me … I don’t know how many took turns. … I lost consciousness … and the blood kept running. … Later I couldn’t even stand or urinate.”

And how is the United States involved?  Deeply. And this is the news which is floating off, forgotten, the news which shames the leaders at the time, those who knew and implemented or knew and did nothing.

“In ’82 and ’83, as Gen. Rios Montt was sending military sweeps into the northwest highlands, annihilating by their own count 662 rural villages, Reagan went down, embraced Rios Montt, and said Guatemala was getting a bum rap on human rights. The U.S. military general attaché at the time told me the sweep strategy was in large part his idea, and that he was working hand in hand with [the Guatemalan military] to carry it out. It’s hard to overstate the U.S. role, because the U.S. role was so extensive.”

Progressive  and Democracy Now  transcript of Charlie Rose show March 31, 1995

President Bill Clinton offered a rare half-apology for the support the United States had given the killers.


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PG&E Cut Back Inspections Against Own Engineers Advice

April 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Oh let’s hear it for more self-regulation!

PG&E dramatically slashed spending on gas transmission pipeline safety in the three years before the San Bruno explosion — so much so that the company’s own engineers warned that it was tempting fate, newly released documents show.

 

SF Gate/ 


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Torture Continues at Gitmo

April 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In an Op-Ed letter in today’s New York Times, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, held by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2001 — uncharged and untried– asked the American people to read about his life:

 

Last 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 IV 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. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

… The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen.

…The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

NY Times/Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel,

And, the prisoners there, are expressing Moqbel’s desperation by long, shared hunger strikes, and apparently, physical resistance to the way they are being treated.

Weeks of mounting tensions between the military and detainees at the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, escalated into violence on Saturday during a raid in which guards forced prisoners living in communal housing to move to individual cells.

NY Times


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Summer Ice Melt In Antarctica Is At The Highest Point In 1,000 Years,

April 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“Researchers from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey found data taken from an ice core also shows the summer ice melt has been 10 times more intense over the past 50 years compared with 600 years ago.

“It’s definitely evidence that the climate and the environment is changing in this part of Antarctica,” lead researcher Nerilie Abram said.”

 

HuffPo/Reuters

 


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Budget Confusion Everywhere

April 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

From Dean Baker at Center for Economic and Policy Research

The debate around the budget is getting ever further removed from reality. As every budget expert knows, the reason that we have seen large budget deficits in the last five years is that the economy plunged following the collapse of the housing bubble.

Unfortunately, rather than deal with the reality – that we need deficits to sustain demand in a context where the private sector will not do it – the politicians in Washington have gotten hysterical. This is like complaining about our use of water when the school is on fire with the kids still inside.

… In spite of the hysterics coming out of Washington, the interest burden of the debt is near a post-war low. Even if no further cuts are made, it is not projected to get back to its early 1990s level for more than a decade.

In this context, it is unfortunate that President Obama has proposed a budget that has substantial cuts to Social Security. The vast majority of seniors are already struggling. The proposed cuts would be a reduction in their income of more than 2 percent. By contrast, his tax increase last fall cut the after-tax income of the typical wealthy household by less than 0.6 percent.

The budget should be focused on expanding the economy and creating jobs, ideally through more spending in infrastructure, education and research. It should also include funding for state and local governments to reverse layoffs and cutbacks that have slowed growth and raised unemployment.

Unfortunately, President Obama has accepted the agenda of the Washington elite…

In the Bay Area, new congressman Jared Huffman has signed with 35 others that he will not vote for the so-called chained CPI, a prominent feature of the Obama budget that would cut back on Social Security benefits for those who have already contributed during their life times.  Isn’t there an implied contract here?


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Vaitcan Dismissed Reports of Pinochet Murders and Communist Propaganda

April 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“In a 1973 diplomatic cable addressed to Henry Kissinger, then serving as the United States’ Secretary of State, high-ranking Vatican official Giovanni Benelli was quoted as relaying “his and the pope’s grave concern over successful international leftisf campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation.” Benelli dismissed reports of massacre as “unfounded” and “possibly [the] greatest success of Communist propaganda,” while explaining away whatever violence had occurred as “unfortunately natural following coup d’etat.”

The cable was written five weeks after the coup, during the reign of Pope Paul VI, with reports already surfacing that political opponents of the regime were being arrested and killed.”

Ugh

 

This cite is from a new WikiLeaks, unveiling of previously secretized sources….

WikiLeaks has announced the release of a huge archive of U.S. diplomatic records dubbed “The Kissinger Cables.”

The trove of more than 1.7 million documents contains “205,901 records relating to former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.” The massive data collection is part of the launch of the WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, or PlusD,


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OMG! North Korean Medals On Display

April 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

N Korea Generals

North Korean officers. Could be easily defeated with a giant magnet.

We’re on the verge of war … with these Bozos? God help us; look at these medals!

This gives an all new meaning to bling.

It’s by no mere coincidence that their uniforms resemble Russian uniforms of the 1950s, and hats designed to make them look taller.

Most medals and ribbons usually indicate campaigns where one fought, other theaters where one was stationed or wounds received.

Since they haven’t been in any wars since 1950, then in their cases it must mean a lot of good conduct or present at roll call medals.

Very impressive indeed.

Must be much like Hollywood’s awards.

They are always presenting themselves with those awards because no one else will and they desperately need some recognition.

from Phil Butler


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