Fareed Zakaria, this week:
Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And if Tehran's aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn't need a bomb to do so. Simply having a clear "breakout" capacity—the ability to weaponize within a few months—would allow it to operate with much greater latitude and impunity in the Middle East and Central Asia.Gwynne Dyer, 2007:
Many countries have similar enrichment facilities to upgrade uranium as fuel for nuclear reactors, and that is what Iran now says it is doing, too. If the Iranian government also knows that, in a crisis, it could run the fuel through the centrifuges more times and turn it into weapons-grade uranium, well, so do lots of other governments. It is called a "threshold" nuclear weapons capability, and it is a very popular option.And he said the same thing in 2006, too.
So how many people want to sign up for the anti-Iranian crusade, against a country that is pursuing only something that it is manifestly, explicitly entitled to under international law?
Perhaps someone can explain how such a man becomes a preacher again working with children.
Story here.
###
This is not a repeat from 1946, 1951 or 1969: Government Experiments on U.S. Soldiers: Shocking Claims Come to Light in New Court Case: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140206/government_experiments_on_u.s._soldiers:_shocking_claims_come_to_light_in_new_court_case/
###
The boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and whose parents wanted to treat him with herbs, is back in Minnesota, and most importantly, in the hospital. The poor kid now has to face a painful chemotherapy regimen on top of having a lunatic for a mother — it's good that he'll get the treatment he needs, but I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.
###
This is what I hate about politics - selling access to them to wealthy individuals
Wednesday, may 27,2009
The Beverly Hilton Hotel
5 PM to 7:30
President Barack Obama
Will be joined by performers
Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Earth Wind and Fire and a few special guests
to benefit the Democratic National Committee
Dinner and photo with the president: $15,400.00
Poor working slobs need not apply.
###
Hypothetically speaking, that sounds like perjury
Alberto Gonzales opted to, during his confirmation hearings to the Attorney General's post in 2005, label questions about waterboarding and torture as "hypothetical" implying by the very use of that word that no such questions had been asked or queries had been made. And in so doing, Gonzales may have perjured himself before congress.
Months before the infamous August 2002 Bybee memo that defined torture down to the intense pain associated with organ failure or death that officially made America an inquisitor torture nation, Gonzales authorized the use of extra-legal interrogations when he was White House Counsel. It was Gonzales who gave the bloodthirsty, sexually insufficient, sadistic thug James Mitchell, a CIA interrogator and embarrassment to the profession of Psychology, the green light to torture Abu Zubaydah in the spring of that same year. - even though an FBI interrogator had already extracted all of the information Zubaydah had without using brutality and torture to do so.
Keep reading: http://theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/2827/hypothetically-speaking-that-sounds-like-perjury
###
After committing fraud, electrocuting soldiers, giving soldiers ice that was tainted with traces of body fluids and decomposing corpses, knowingly exposing troops to toxic chemicals, partaking in human trafficking, gang raping female employees, using shell companies in the Cayman Island to avoid paying taxes, bribing Nigerian officials, etc., the Department of Defense hands KBR an $83 million dollar "performance bonus"
Far from suffering for its shoddy military contracting in Iraq, Congressional investigators have found that KBR Inc. was awarded $83 million in performance bonuses. Even worse, more than half came after Pentagon investigators linked faulty KBR wiring to the electrocution of four soldiers intent on relaxation. One soldier died taking a shower and another in a swimming pool.
And, as we've seen, that's just the tip of the KBR iceberg. And yet our government has no problem with handing out PERFORMANCE bonuses to these people?
Officials of KBR, the offshoot of the Halliburton conglomerate once run so lucratively by former Vice President Dick Cheney, deny responsibility and say the work met the British code used in the war zone. Flat denial is an all-too-familiar refrain from this most favored and most questionable of military contractors. The electrical engineer found most wirers were not experienced in the British code and many were third-country nationals with no electrical training at all.
But of course the fact that they were contractors... even though they were contracted to... wait for it... KBR, not the US government, absolves KBR of any and all responsibility... right?
Confronted with the airing of these lethal findings, the Pentagon at least had enough sense to tell Congress last week that KBR bonuses were suspended pending a full review. Senator Byron Dorgan's description of the Pentagon's performance as "stunning incompetence" is an understatement for such tragic profiteering.
"Pending a full review" is govspeak for "until all this blows over."
The Army continues to investigate the deaths and reports of hundreds of nonlethal shocks suffered by troops. It has ordered emergency repairs, but the electrical inspector found that the building where the showering soldier was electrocuted still was not safely grounded by KBR until last October, 10 months after his death.
So add this in with all the food poisonings, the withholding of potable water to combat troops, the hiring of hundreds of fuel trucks that go nowhere and haul nothing at $2500 a day each, billions just outright LOST or otherwise unaccounted for... and any and everything else that has come... or may come to light... sure, let's give these thieving, murdering, bastards even MORE of our hard earned money.
They apparently need it worse than we do and according to our fearless leaders, they must have done more to earn it than we have.
###
New rules on stem cells threaten current research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402141.html?nav=rss_email/components
###
Appa, sherpa warns Mount Everest glaciers melting from global warming: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/25/appa-sherpa-warns-mount-e_n_207398.html
###
Today Eugene Robinson demonstrates why he won the Pulitzer Prize: Worldviews Collide - Obama or Cheney? It's Your Choice.
###
Worrying about the largely unreal
A few weeks ago, Salon published an interview with an author, Lenore Skenazy, who - horrors! - let her then-nine-year-old son take the subway line, alone, that runs by their safe-as-houses home in a safe-as-houses part of New York City: Thirty years ago, this wouldn't have raised any eyebrows, but now - even though there's actually less violent crime now than there was thirty years ago - she was held up as The Evil Mommy.
The discussion over her heresy became a departure point for discussions of the culture of irrational fears that seem to have America in a death grip: We freak out over possible 'stranger danger' to our kids when 86% of all killings and 70% to 90% of all sexual molestations of children are done by persons known to the victims. We're being told to fear allowing the wretches held without trial or even charges at Guantanamo to be put in super-secure "Supermax" facilities on American soil, while at the same time we're told to shrug our shoulders when women are "inexplicably" killed by men who it turns out were stalking them, or when yet another death is added to the 30,000 per year that are killed in the US by firearms.
When will we learn to fear the right things?
###
Talk about a terror plot! You got your faux jihad, you got your inadequate health insurance (nothing single payer wouldn't fix!) and you got an FBI informant who supplied a motive. Now, I wonder how they thought all of this would play in court? I mean, we were planning to try these people, yes?
I hardly know what to say. What's worse: A healthcare system where someone is so desperate, he'd blow up buildings to pay for his brother's treatment, or homeland security that thinks nothing of setting people up so they can claim they caught some "terrorists"?
Question of the day:
If a government informant gives a would-be jihadist bags and bags of weed to entice him to join his jihad, where does he get the weed?
###
Obama picks first Latino, Sonia Sotomayor, for Supreme Court nominee.
###
Yesterday was Memorial Day, a day to celebrate the sacrifice of veterans who gave their lives in service to our country. A "by-the-numbers" analysis by the Center for American Progress notes that veterans "are still in need of services to improve their quality of life—before, during, and after deployments. This year, the need is even more urgent than ever as the economic crisis hits many veterans and their families hard and these Americans struggle to find jobs, pay their mortgages, and get back on their feet." Some key stats:
– 338,000 or almost one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, or major depression as of January 2009.
– Yet only 53 percent suffering from PTSD or major depression have seen a physician or mental health provider.
– 154,000 veterans were homeless on any given night in 2007, and 300,000 were homeless at some point during that year.
– One-third of homeless Americans are veterans, even though only one-tenth of all adults are veterans.
– Foreclosure rates in military towns were increasing at four times the national average in last year.
###
'God's debt cancellation" donations help evangelist strike it rich
In a detailed investigation of South Carolina's Inspiration Network, the Charlotte Observer reports that the network's on-air promises that viewers can obtain prosperity and "God's debt cancellation" by donating $200 or more have made its CEO David Cerullo a wealthy man and his cable network "one of the world's fastest growing Christian broadcasters."
With a salary that in 2007 amounted to $1.52 million, Cerulla is "the best-paid leader of any religious charity" and earns far more than CEOs of larger non-profits, such as Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. An additional $600,000 was paid in 2007 to his wife and children.
More: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/25/high-flying-evangelical-preacher-comes-under-scrutiny/
###
Ethanol lobby could kill climate bill: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/26/ethanol-lobby-threaten-to-kill-climate-bill/
Why wouldn't they? They're receiving about $8 billion a year in subsidies.
###
North Korea launched tests Tuesday of two more short-range missiles a day after detonating a nuclear bomb underground, a news report said, pushing the regime's confrontation with world powers further despite the threat of U.N. Security Council action: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/05/report-north-korea-fires-two-more-missiles/
Once again, a big shout out to Dubya for this.
###
I heart Russ Feingold. Here's the letter he sent Obama to lay out his opposition to the notion of indefinite detention.
No comments:
Post a Comment