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[dykeumentary]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Lest it be lost, congratulations to the Libyan people for being once and for all done with their dictator. Well done! I hope they create some kind of a republic. I hope that they can keep it.

Cheers
Aj

As a non-violent person who believes in rule of law, I do not see today as a "victory". A regime change maybe for a short while, through killing.

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by dykeumentary

As a non-violent person who believes in rule of law, I do not see today as a "victory". A regime change maybe for a short while, through killing.

\

the reality of revolution is rarely pretty......death is a common trait....I will only turn the other cheek so far..........then.........mofo......you die and I will deal with my karma

personal responsiblity for my part in some fucking evil bastard's death

Ghandi used ALL tools available to him........just as MLK did in his time

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by dykeumentary

As a non-violent person who believes in rule of law, I do not see today as a "victory". A regime change maybe for a short while, through killing.

I believe in the rule of law. If Gaddafi could be removed by the rule of law, he wouldn't have been a dictator. It may not be a victory but it isn't a loss either. I understand where you're coming from but I just can't shed a tear for Gaddafi, nor can I blame the Libyan people for rising up and overthrowing him. Whatever comes next and I really hope it is some kind of constitutional republic , it won't be Gaddafi and his sons. Given the circumstances it has turned out pretty well. Gaddafi had already proven, by his own orders to his own military, that he was completely comfortable with killing any number of his own people. I think it's okay to kill the person who is trying to kill you. If people *want* to martyr themselves, that's fine but they shouldn’t' *have* to martyr themselves.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I dunno.......how about we think about bombing as something different than those big ass possible UFO bombers flying over northern Africa and think about drones that the US military has been using for more years than will make civilians feel comfortable.

You know me, Toughy. I say we continue to think of bombing as bombing so that we know what we're talking about. Look, I agree with you that the media has gigantic blind spots and the strangest idea of what 'news' is. But I also think that the time when we could pretend that words just mean whatever we might want them to for ideological or partisan ends. The other side does it. They do it to our detriment. So job growth isn't job growth when the government has a hand in it. Tax cuts for the rich aren't tax cuts for the rich if we call them something else. The two issues might seem completely unrelated but I think they are linked. If we're going to insist that Republicans are full of it when they claim that there's no global warming or that tax cuts raise revenues then we're going to have to hold ourselves to the same standard. Otherwise we're hypocrites. I don't want us to be hypocrites. It's not particularly convenient but I think that our country is in enough trouble that we need to inject some hard reality into the discussion, even if that means that we can't just make it up as we go along because it's easier to make our ideological point or tip the partisan balance of power.

So bombing is when someone drops ordnance on something else. Shelling is when someone uses artillery to achieve the same ends.

I also think that the historical record counts. Again, the other side is wholesale pulling things out of a hat to boost their ideological and partisan ends. They are claiming that the men who wrote the Constitution were all fundamentalist Christians but they weren't. If we are going to call them out on making up history, I think we have to not make it up ourselves. Otherwise, we have no ground upon which to stand. Oh, I'm sure we could claim that because we're making it up as we go for good and pure ideological and partisan reasons and they are doing it for malevolent ones, I don't think that's going to convince anyone. I pretty certain that they think they're the ones who are doing it for a higher good.

So if we say that, for instance, we bombed Libya for 36 years doesn't that mean we should actually be able to point to incidents--specific incidents? Shouldn't we also recognize that since every *other* navy in the world is going to defend itself if threatened by fighters in international waters, ours is going to do the same? Shouldn't we also recognize that a dogfight is not bombing?

Daddy Bush killed whatshisface's girl child in a tent somewhere in that northern desert.

I think it was Reagan since it was 1986.

Let us who have served, not contribute to the whitewashing of war. Find a US government that has not been involved in trying to get rid of whateveris the spelling of his name since he took power. Please name me a US government ....other than that assfuckingmonkey who occupied the White House for 10 years bedfore Obama......that was not involved in a lone or NATO action that wanted to change the government of Lybia.

Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford. Bill Clinton.

Don't rely on what the mainstream media tells you is happening.......

Actually, I typically get my information from a variety of sources. You really going to do the "if you weren't listening to the mainstream media" thing with me, my friend? I'm not parroting what one might hear on the mainstream media. Rather, I'm working off of my own readings, my own memories, my library and the sources of information I *do* use. Juan Cole, who is no one's war monger, is one of my favorite sources. The BBC always does a pretty good job as does Al Jazeera.

Cheers
Aj

[*Anya*]

Red Bank, New Jersey (state of my birth): Jon Bon Jovi and his wife just opened up a gourmet restaurant that is "pay what you can".

No one turned away if they can't pay & those that can, can leave what they can afford in envelopes on the table. Those that can't pay, can wait tables, bus tables-if they can help out but it is not mandatory.

No prices on the menu. The restaurant is a beautifully renovated 1100 sq. Foot building.

Name of restaurant: Soul Kitchen.

If you live near there, please patronize to help support this wonderfully giving concept.

PS: Why don't more people with lots of $$$ do this type of giving back to the community?

[Cin]

Here’s an article out today about a new climate change study conducted to prove that global warming exists and that scientists are right, have been right, and continue to be right.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-...b_1021171.html

To me the real news here is not in the actual story content, but in the fact that it is a news story at all. The real news is that we are still in a place where we have to deal with global climate warming denial. It’s like refusing to accept evolution or insisting the earth revolves around the sun. But it has much more dire consequence. If you insist the earth is 6000 years old and a white haired dude in the sky created it in 6 days and made woman from man’s rib well it’s just weird and mildly offensive in a misogynistic sort of way, but has no real impact on the rest of us unless you try to get it taught in schools not as bible study but as literal and scientific fact.

Keeping everyone stuck in a place of consistently trying to prove that the earth is one hurting planet as a direct result of our actions instead of putting all of our collective effort into coming up with ways to alleviate some of the pressure on the environment may ultimately lead to the demise of the human race as we know it. That seems serious to me, but it doesn’t get the kind of attention that one would assume impending doom would.

I know I said that believing in literal interpretations of the bible and in a 6000 year old earth and the refusal to accept evolution doesn’t impact the rest of us the way consistent denial of environmental issues does but it is subtly dangerous in that it is part of the mindset that allows relatively intelligent people to sit on the fence about serious issues that have real concrete scientific proof.

It is the reason why I am so upset when I see people rejecting science in favor of spirituality as though they were mutually exclusive.

Anyway reading about this study this morning prompted me to find an old article I had read about why anti-science ideology is bad for America and I thought I would post it here.


Why Anti-Science Ideology is Bad for America

Anti-science ideology isn’t completely new in the U.S. — there is a dismaying history of irrational, pseudoscientific, or downright anti-scientific thinking and political culture here. But it seems to be gaining momentum — even as it runs counter to America’s scientific and technological strengths. Such strengths, in fact, underpin our economic and political strengths.

I’m not talking about honest scientific skepticism and questioning – indeed, that is the very basis of good science. I’m talking about a disturbing combination of two factors: political cowardice hiding behind scientific skepticism; and political pandering to special interests by rejecting science, knowledge, and reason in favor of ideology, religion, or narrow economic self-interest.

Sadly and with few brave exceptions, some politicians are active and aggressive at using false, misleading, or discredited science, or explicitly ignoring good science, in setting public policy to support ideology. History tells us this never leads to a good outcome. The Soviets let Lysenkoist ideology pollute their biological and genetic sciences in the 1930s, and they’ve never recovered. We saw it with the long, successful effort of the tobacco industry and their allies to confuse the public and delay regulations to protect public health, leading to millions of unnecessary cancer deaths. We saw it with the veto by Richard Nixon of the Clean Water Act (overridden with the help of some brave and influential Republican senators). And we see it now, in full flower, on the issue of climate change.

Here is what the science conclusively tells us: climate change is real, it is already underway, and it is largely due to human activities. These findings are acknowledged by every single major scientific organization in the areas of climate, meteorology, geology, physics, chemistry, atmospheric science, and hydrology, as well as every single National Academy of Sciences, including our own, created by Abraham Lincoln as an independent non-governmental organization to provide the best scientific advice to the government.

To quote from an open letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published in the leading journal Science:

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial — scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

By pretending that the science is bad, some politicians are trying to avoid the truly difficult policy debates that are their responsibility. And they are simultaneously using claims of budget problems to destroy the nation’s climate research capabilities and stop efforts to improve the science. For example, cuts in NOAA’s budget aimed at eliminating anything “climate” related are likely to lead to a gap in satellite coverage of extreme weather events — precisely the satellites that provided the data our meteorologists used to generate advances warnings for the extreme tornadoes and recent Hurricane Irene. For every $1 saved by delaying replacement satellites, society will face an estimated $3 to $5 in higher costs in the form of damages, injuries, deaths, and efforts to obtain data using other approaches — this is a false savings solely due to anti-climate ideology. And because of inaction on climate policy, uncontrolled climate changes are already beginning to impose serious costs on our economies: reductions in crop yields, extra impacts from extreme storm events, drought costs, and more.

Things have gotten so bad that the highly respected scientific journal Nature called these actions “fundamentally anti-science” and an example of “willful ignorance,” and said:

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long.”

The problem is, in part, that acting to reduce the risks of human-caused climate change could lead to policies that are inconvenient for powerful vested economic interests. We thus see a very well-endowed carbon-fuel industry willing to spend vast sums of money to confuse the public, support politicians and organizations whose influence they can buy, malign scientists who speak out, and create alternative “science” that is rejected over and over by independent review and analysis. Rather than have an honest, albeit difficult policy debate about what should be done about climate change, they postpone that debate by trying to discredit the science.

There are some modest signs of a return to rationality and scientific integrity. In recent days, one candidate for President, John Huntsman of Utah, has spoken out on the need for integrity of science. He told ABC’s “This Week”:

“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

He went on to call on the Republican Party to stop being antithetical to science: “I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.” Ironically, this shouldn’t be news: Huntsman’s comments are only newsworthy in the context of the extreme anti-science positions taken by his colleagues.

It is time to reassert scientific integrity, logic, reason, and the scientific method in public policy. The public may have disagreements about matters of policy, but our elected representatives must not misuse, hide, or misrepresent science in service of political wars and ideological positions.
Dr. Peter Gleick



Climate Study Does Not Placate Skeptics
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

As we noted on the blog on Thursday, a new study designed to address critiques of climate science by skeptics has confirmed that “global warming is real” and the world’s average land temperature has risen by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-1950s.
The findings, released by a group of scientists and statisticians at the University of California known as the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, were welcomed by climate scientists and advocates of climate policy action, who had been hoping that skeptics would finally have to cry uncle.
Not so fast.
At least one of those skeptics, Anthony Watts, had written in March on his climate-themed blog, Watts Up With That, “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But neither Mr. Watts nor other longtime critics of climate science reached by The Times seemed satisfied with the report.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

To me the real news here is not in the actual story content, but in the fact that it is a news story at all. The real news is that we are still in a place where we have to deal with global climate warming denial. It’s like refusing to accept evolution or insisting the earth revolves around the sun. But it has much more dire consequence. If you insist the earth is 6000 years old and a white haired dude in the sky created it in 6 days and made woman from man’s rib well it’s just weird and mildly offensive in a misogynistic sort of way, but has no real impact on the rest of us unless you try to get it taught in schools not as bible study but as literal and scientific fact.

Keeping everyone stuck in a place of consistently trying to prove that the earth is one hurting planet as a direct result of our actions instead of putting all of our collective effort into coming up with ways to alleviate some of the pressure on the environment may ultimately lead to the demise of the human race as we know it. That seems serious to me, but it doesn’t get the kind of attention that one would assume impending doom would.

I know I said that believing in literal interpretations of the bible and in a 6000 year old earth and the refusal to accept evolution doesn’t impact the rest of us the way consistent denial of environmental issues does but it is subtly dangerous in that it is part of the mindset that allows relatively intelligent people to sit on the fence about serious issues that have real concrete scientific proof.

It is the reason why I am so upset when I see people rejecting science in favor of spirituality as though they were mutually exclusive.

Anyway reading about this study this morning prompted me to find an old article I had read about why anti-science ideology is bad for America and I thought I would post it here.

Thank you. I hope that people will begin to wake up. Those of us who care about things like climate change, the biological roots of homosexuality, women's health, or any of a number of other issues *need* science. We need it when it's convenient (when we're arguing that humans *are* impacting the climate) and we need it when it's inconvenient (when biologists try to get people to understand that humans are just a large-brained, relatively hairless, African primate). Either climate change is happening or it isn't. If it isn't happening then there's nothing to worry about it. If it *is* happening (and it is) then the discussion should move from 'well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't' to 'since it is happening, what do we do about it?' The climate change deniers, particularly those of a conservative ideological bent, have been stalling. Whether they are stalling knowingly or unknowingly is beyond my ability to discern and doesn't really matter. They're stalling and have been for 20 years now. All the while the clock has been ticking.

If you are, like me, a person on and of the Left, please consider that if you aren't willing to deal with the rules of science when it's inconvenient then you have no leg upon which to stand when you criticize George Bush or the Republican party for being deliberately scientifically ignorant. One thing I would like to impress upon people is that the phrase 'it's only a theory' drives scientists up a wall. Theory doesn't mean guess. A theory is a model. That model is based upon hypothesis which make predictions can be tested or observed or both. So when someone talks about the 'theory of evolution' or the 'theory of gravity' they are not talking about 'the guess that evolution happens' or 'the guess that objects in a gravitational field behave a certain way'. They are talking about 'the model by which we explain why there are rabbits and humans and fruit flies and redwood trees' or 'the model by which we explain *how* objects behave in a gravitational field (Newton's) *and* why objects behave in certain ways in the presence of such a field (Einstein)'. These are not guesses, they are explanatory frameworks.

To me, time is getting short. There's enough simultaneous crisis facing our country any one of which would be a major headache for prior generations of Americans. We have to deal with pretty much all of them in parallel. It is long past time we stopped ceding so much ground to those who would like to hide their heads in the sands, hand wave the dangers away or blame the victims instead of the perpetrators. Long. Past. Time.

Either those of us interested in building a sustainable, more just, more literate society get our act together or our adversaries will get their act together ahead of us. I think that they have made clear what their plans are for the country. I don't want to live in the kind of America envisioned by Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain. Do you?


Cheers
Aj

[Toughy]

I keep looking for that article I read talking about covert and overt military actions in Libya over the last 40 or so years. Haven't found it but will keep looking. Certainly, you can say we did not 'officially' partake in military actions against Libya except on occasion, however I don't believe it. We certainly sanctioned Libya for most of those years in terms of trade. I get my info from a variety of sources also and that's probably why I can't find the article.....laughin...I will keep looking.

It's kind of like how we were enforcing 'no fly zones' in Iraq since the first Iraq War........nobody would admit it yet it was happening.

It's just fascinating to me how the Republicans are reacting to this.

AND Obama says ALL troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.

[AtLast]

[QUOTE=Toughy;443090]I keep looking for that article I read talking about covert and overt military actions in Libya over the last 40 or so years. Haven't found it but will keep looking. Certainly, you can say we did not 'officially' partake in military actions against Libya except on occasion, however I don't believe it. We certainly sanctioned Libya for most of those years in terms of trade. I get my info from a variety of sources also and that's probably why I can't find the article.....laughin...I will keep looking.

It's kind of like how we were enforcing 'no fly zones' in Iraq since the first Iraq War........nobody would admit it yet it was happening.

It's just fascinating to me how the Republicans are reacting to this.

AND Obama says ALL troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.[/QUOTE]

Kind of interesting to consider why this is so-

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-Iraq-554130/1

Obama won't keep troops in Iraq past 2011
The Associated Press is reporting that the Obama administration is giving up plans to keep a residual force of several thousand U.S. troops in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline at the end of the this year, citing unnamed sources.

"A senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy," reports the AP.

The United States and Iraq have a signed agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops at the end of 2011.

In recent months, U.S. and Iraqi officials have discussed a revised agreement that would keep some American troops on the ground to train Iraqi forces.

Now that idea appears to be off, reports AP. The deal breaker: Iraq's refusal to grant American troops immunity in Iraqi courts.

"The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability."



Also from Associated Press:

The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.

In recent months, Washington has been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces. A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday that no final decision has been reached about the U.S. training relationship with the Iraqi government.

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Throughout the discussions, Iraqi leaders have adamantly refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, and the Americans have refused to stay without it. Iraq's leadership has been split on whether it wanted American forces to stay. Some argued the further training and U.S. help was vital, particularly to protect Iraq's airspace and gather security intelligence. But others have deeply opposed any American troop presence, including Shiite militiamen who have threatened attacks on any American forces who remain. ...

The Strategic Framework Agreement allows for other forms of military cooperation besides U.S. troops on the ground. Signed at the same time as the security accord mandating the departure deadlines, it provides outlines for the U.S.-Iraqi relationship in such areas as economic, cultural and security cooperation.

Iraqi lawmakers excel at last-minute agreements. But with little wiggle room on the immunity issue and the U.S. military needing to move equipment out as soon as possible, a last-minute change between now and December 31 seems almost out of the question.

Regardless of whether U.S. troops are here or not, there will be a massive American diplomatic presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

The U.S. Embassy will still have a handful of U.S. Marines for protection and 157 U.S. military personnel in charge of facilitating weapons sales to Iraq. Those are standard functions at most American embassies around the world and would be considered part of the regular embassy staff.

[Nat]

Black Cherokees exercise hard-won right to vote

[Tommi]

Originally Posted by Nat

Black Cherokees exercise hard-won right to vote

Chief Elected...

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I keep looking for that article I read talking about covert and overt military actions in Libya over the last 40 or so years. Haven't found it but will keep looking. Certainly, you can say we did not 'officially' partake in military actions against Libya except on occasion, however I don't believe it. We certainly sanctioned Libya for most of those years in terms of trade. I get my info from a variety of sources also and that's probably why I can't find the article.....laughin...I will keep looking.

Toughy;

So are you saying that we should treat the situation 'as if' it were true that we've been bombing Libya for 36 of the last 42 years because it could be possible that we have been, even though there's no evidence for it? If that's the case then why on Earth should anyone get exercised when someone on the right says something along these lines. "Now, I can't find any evidence that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a biblical literalist and pro-Goldwater Republican who believed that in small government and lower corporate taxes, but let's say that he was. Since he *was* these things, he wouldn't support the Occupy Wall Street movement." Is it true? No. But the Republican party would like to talk about King as if it *were* true and so they assert, for the sake of the discussion, that is *is* true whether there is evidence for it or not. Or, perhaps even closer to what you are saying is this gem from the current Republican party hit parade: "okay, you claim there is ample evidence for climate change. I have no counter evidence. But I reject that what you claim is evidence is actually evidence. Evidence only counts if it shows that climate change isn't happening. Any evidence to the contrary, is just proof that there's no evidence either way, which means that there is evidence that it isn't happening." Because that's pretty close to what you're doing above, my friend.

It may come out, one day, that we were involved in covert actions in Libya but I doubt it. I doubt it for a number of reasons:

1) From 1970 to 1989 Libya was a Soviet client state. While we had conflicts with Libya we did not have conflicts with them that would have provoked the USSR into believing their interests were being challenged. Since Libya was one of the primary suppliers of oil to the Soviet Union, we were going to watch our steps and the Soviets were going to keep a lid on the Libyans. We also had limited trade with ALL Soviet client states because we didn't want to prop them up.

2) If anyone here ever spent time at the CIA I apologize for what comes next. The CIA is and has been pretty incompetent particularly in human intelligence since the late 50s. During the *entire* Cold War the CIA never managed to penetrate the Kremlin. Never. At all. Not even close. Our human intelligence efforts in the Middle East, the Near East and nations surrounding the southern Mediterranean (northern Africa) have never been even as good as what we had in Eastern Europe and we *sucked* in Eastern Europe! We couldn’t develop assets in countries where the CIA had people who had cultural knowledge. We certainly didn't develop any assets in places like Libya. Ever.

3) While the CIA sucked, the KGB was all over the CIA. They managed to put moles high up in the CIA and the FBI and the Brits MI-6. There's a reason why the CIA stopped trying to run covert ops in Europe by the mid-60s and it was because every time they cultivated some spy or dropped some operatives into a country behind the Iron Curtain those people got picked up time and time again because the CIA was leaky like a colander! We couldn't have pulled off a decent operation in a Soviet client state if our lives depending upon it! We certainly didn't have any assets that could have done anything in Libya that would have been at all effective.

Yes, Toughy, we did sanction Libya after they blew up a disco in Germany and then, as an encore, blew up a Pan Am plane while it was 30,000 feet in the air. That seems reasonable to me.

It's kind of like how we were enforcing 'no fly zones' in Iraq since the first Iraq War........nobody would admit it yet it was happening.

What do you mean nobody would admit it was happening? It was all over the news! The only people who didn't know that there was a no-fly zone happening were people who weren't paying attention. Every time the Iraqis locked on to an American aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, that radar got destroyed and there was a news story on all the networks that night. Every time the Iraqis tried to challenge the no-fly zone and sent up a helicopter or one of their remaining fighters and had it shot down, there was a news article. So who wasn't admitting that the no-fly zone was in effect? I remember constant articles in left-leaning magazines about the no-fly zone throughout the nineties so I'm not sure why you think there was a cover up. The US government admitted that there was a no-fly zone. The United Nations kept reauthorizing the no-fly zone. NATO kept supporting the no-fly zone. The Saudi Arabians kept allowing the US to use air bases in that nation in order to enforce the no-fly zone which, as it turns out, was one of the things that Osama bin Laden mentioned in his 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States.

AND Obama says ALL troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.

Yes, because the Status Of Forces Agreement dictates that it should be so. Once hostilities have ended, we can't be in any country that doesn't consent to have us there. If Iraq will only allow US troops on their land under specific conditions (as is their right) and we reject those conditions (as is our right) then there's no agreement and our troops can't stay. If we try to keep them there despite what the host country has stated it wants, then that is an act of war. Before anyone says anything, there will be Marines at the embassy. These do not count because there are Marines at *every* embassy. These are not 'troops in Iraq' they are 'Marines on embassy duty'. And yes, I know that they're keeping a bunch of contractors in-country. These are not troops, they are mercenaries. When they put the uniform back on, I'll dignify them by counting them amongst our troops but until then, they are mercenaries who are loyal to whomever is signing the cheque.

Cheers
Aj

[AtLast]

It's Good News that Hawk With Nail in Head Is Eating, Rescue Group Says

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/red...ry?id=14778708

I am so happy to see that this hawk was found and is now getting care! I so hope the jerk that did this caught!

[T4Texas]

Couple Die Holding Hands
For one Iowa couple, true love lasted until the very end.
Married 72 years, Norma, 90, and Gordon Yeager, 94, died in the hospital holding hands last week, one hour apart.
The couple was hospitalized after a car accident just outside of Marshalltown, Iowa. They were given a shared room in the ICU where they held hands in adjacent beds.
At 3:38 pm last Wednesday, Gordon's breathing stopped. Though he was no longer alive, his heart monitor continued to register a beat.
The nurse told Gordon and Norma's son, Dennis Yeager, that the monitor was beeping "because they're holding hands, and [Norma's heart beat] is going through them," Dennis recalled in an interview with Des Moines' KCCI news station. "Her heart was beating through him."
Norma died at 4:38 pm, exactly one hour later.
Gordon and Norma's children say they're glad the couple passed this way. "They just loved being together," says Dennis. "He always said, 'I can't go first because I have to be there for her, and she would say the same thing.

We should all be so lucky.

[Toughy]

Aj my sister friend.........

It's hard to have a conversation with you sometimes. I completely understand your need to dissect and your need for exactitude; you are a scientist and that is your nature. Those things serve science, but they make back and forth dialogue between people difficult.

The average American has no idea about US foreign (and domestic) policy, about NATO, about the UN, about any of our treaties and alliances or the importance of those things. Just look at the Tea Party and the Republican debates and your blood should run cold and scared. That was my point about no-fly zones in Iraq. Most Americans did NOT know. Michelle Bachman said recently that it wasn't enough the Obama got us into Libya, he is now taking us to Africa (she said this about Somalia).

I believe that every President (except Bush 43) was involved in some kind of military/civilian/spy covert shenanigans in Libya. Maybe it was not planes dropping bombs, but none the less some kind of crap was going on. Libya has oil.

I am reminded of my time in the military during Vietnam. The US military was not (involved) in Cambodia, Laos or Thailand.........big FAT SNORT.......we were and had been since at least the early 50's.

Companies like Blackwater did not spring up like magic. They have been around a long time and the CIA has used them effectively (sometimes not) for decades. The CIA and drugs and arms are generally unprovable facts, with some exceptions. The CIA gets it's money to operate from somewhere and it's not all the US government. Evidence of the CIA (and it's covert operators) actions is difficult to find....for a reason. You surely know the story of how crack cocaine came to Oakland and the rest of the country? Surely you know the opium trade is linked to them?

As to the KGB.....I figure we (and UK, France, Germany) were up their butt as much as they were up ours. I happen to believe the CIA (and it's friends) are not stupid and have been successful over the years, much in the same way as the KGB has been successful.

The need for proof is how covert operations always have deniablity. No proof, well it didn't happen. Our government also relies on the average american's stupidity and ignorance of our history and current events. Watch this hand while the other one is stealing your chickens.

I would love to talk about these issues. I hinted it would be better served around my firepit with a bowl of good bud, than being dissected line by line, paragraph by paragraph. I look forward to that day my friend.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

Aj my sister friend.........

It's hard to have a conversation with you sometimes. I completely understand your need to dissect and your need for exactitude; you are a scientist and that is your nature. Those things serve science, but they make back and forth dialogue between people difficult.

You're misreading me here, Toughy. My desire for exactitude has less to do with my being a scientist and more with my being a leftist. I grew up raised by liberal people who taught us that poverty was an *empirical* question and that racism was an *empirical* question. We were taught that we had to have our facts in order because they assumed--not without justification--that if white people were going to be moved to change the laws because of some deep love of black people, then there would never have been racial discrimination in the first place. So instead, we had to make an argument that discrimination was *actually* happening in the *actual* world and not just in the minds of black people. Those lessons stuck with me. The right-wing may be able to win based upon myths and lies but the left will get nothing done and make no improvements--and for any foreseeable future it's *us* on the Left, folks we can expect no help from the right-wing for at least another generation--without being on the side of truth.

I think we on the left are in a frustrating box of our own making. No better example can be had than global warming. It's happening. It's clear that it's happening and yet, we have a media and intellectual climate that cannot deal with the fact that ~40% of the American populace believe it isn't. Instead of dealing with the false belief as media, popular and intellectual culture all treat the false beliefs as if they might be true and that there is no way of knowing who might be right. It doesn't matter if that is not true, we act as if it were.

What you are saying about the ignorance of the American people isn't an excuse for us asserting things that aren't true, Toughy. How are we going to stand against the right-wing, which has discovered to our detriment that they can lie, on camera, about the fact that the Sun rises in the East and get away with it now? If we don't speak the truth (because people don't know it or might not know it or because we've been suckered into believing that there's no truth) and the right-wing doesn't speak the truth (because it does not serve their ideological agenda to do so) then who will tell the people the truth? Why should they believe us when we are no more interested in accuracy than those on the other side? Why should they trust us if we don't care enough to get it right even when we're only talking to ourselves?

Do I try to use scientific tools in political contexts? Yes, because the tools are powerful. It is extremely potent to ask form a working hypothesis, ask questions designed to see if the real world agrees, and then base explanations off of those observations. But I'm not doing it for scientific reasons, I'm doing it for purely political ones. Look, if the United States has been doing X for 40 years I want to know about it. I also want to look any right-wing apologist for that action (if one exists) square in the eye and be able to say "dead bodies don't lie" and have them not be able to say "well, maybe they're not dead. Or maybe they died some other way just because a bomb was dropped and they were under it when it exploded doesn't mean that they died because of the bomb". Right now, that's where we are, Toughy. Both sides of the American political body are pretty unconcerned about what is *really* happening. They care about that which is happening which fits their narrative and ideological spin but it doesn't matter if it *actually* happened.

Do right-wingers care if Obama was actually born in the United States? No, they don't. The myth that he was born outside of the US serves an ideological purpose and nothing more. They wouldn't *mind* if it were true but the truth of the statement is beside the point. Does it matter to most people of the Left if the United States was bombing Libya? Probably not. What matters is that saying the US bombed that nation for 40 years fits the ideological preferences of the Left and so whether or not it happened is quite beside the point. Everyone likes being right so no one would object if it turned out they were but it doesn't matter if it actually happened.

Caring about whether or not things actually happened probably makes me a dinosaur but I prefer that than to find myself indulging in behavior I think has caused more damage to the United States than ten thousand Bernie Madoffs. If we were still a culture that cared if something *actually* happened then the Bernie Madoffs wouldn't have so many apologists in our country.

The average American has no idea about US foreign (and domestic) policy, about NATO, about the UN, about any of our treaties and alliances or the importance of those things. Just look at the Tea Party and the Republican debates and your blood should run cold and scared. That was my point about no-fly zones in Iraq. Most Americans did NOT know. Michelle Bachman said recently that it wasn't enough the Obama got us into Libya, he is now taking us to Africa (she said this about Somalia).

Do you think that promoting myths will help that? Do you think that we of the Left should *exploit* ignorance that for our own partisan ends or try to alleviate that ignorance through education? I prefer the latter. I don't trust my side enough to believe that our noble lies are any better than the other side's noble lies. While the right-wing may believe that the ignorance of the average voter is there to be exploited, I think that it is one of the tasks of the left--whether we want it to be our job or not--to alleviate that ignorance. We have a long road back to the day when politicians will once again fear being caught out in either a lie or a gross inaccuracy. We have to take that road, though, my friend because whether or not there is a functioning civilization in one hundred years probably depends upon our ability to do so.


Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem....php?ref=fpblg

This is getting so common it's hardly news anymore. If news is man-bites-dog, then 'conservative, anti-gay GOP politician caught in gay hypocrisy' is a dog-bites-man story if ever there was one. That said, I do love seeing these headlines. They amuse me.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

So Michelle (no, my husband isn't gay) Bachmann is now claiming that even though she's on camera saying something doesn't mean she actually said it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1028552.html

It just keeps getting better and better. It used to be that you had to be careful what you said on camera because you couldn't deny it. Now you can say "I hate puppies" and then turn around 2 seconds later and claim "I never said I hate puppies" and get away with it.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

When Pat Robertson thinks you've gone to far to the right, you *know* you've jumped the shark. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/20...me.php?ref=fpb

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Scientists at DARPA have created a prosthetic arm controlled by a brain-interface computer! The arm has 27 degrees of movement freedom (not quite as good as a natural arm but damn good nevertheless) and has sensors that communicate temperature, pressure, contact and vibration. In other words, it's an *arm*!

cheers
Aj