Saturday, June 20, 2009
Facebook and Iran
Friday, June 19, 2009
MORAL COURAGE
THE EVIL LEADER CONGRESS CONDEMNS
The Absurd Times takes this opportunity to commend congress for its display of moral courage in voting to condemn Anti-Democratic actions in Iran.
They really stuck their necks out on this one.
It was sort of like the demonstrations in Chicago 1968, except that the police there did not riot, they were restrained for at least a week now, and the Supreme leader did not give orders to "shoot to maim or kill" demonstrators.
This is a pround moment in United States' history.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
SWINE FLU EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!
I am using this as a public service announcement -- keep an eye out for sneezing pigs. You can see the results all about you.
For example, and all of this took place in the South where pigs are rampant: one cop recently pulled out his taser and tased a 72 year old Grandma -- some reports are that she is a great-grandma.
Another cop pulled over an ambulance, with its emergency signals on, and assaulted the EMT in charge. The patient was screaming all the time. The EMT was black, the cop white. Probably didn't make much difference.
For a long time I had been warning about the bird flu. Well, this is not just swine flu. No, part of it is Bird flu. And part is human. The way that worked was the virus mutated (in other words, evolved) so it could spread. Is this a part of intelligent design?
NitWitYahoo says there can be a Palestine so long as the settlements continue, Jerusalen remains Israel's, and all the Palestinians have no weapons. Our government welcomes this "progress." Yes, there are pigs loose in Washington D.C.
A rash of attacks on health care proposals. See, if the government pays your doctors fees, you will suffer. Insurance companies have your welfare in mind. Hell, they can't even sustain their own investments. And people believe this crap. I warn you, there is a pig near you with your name on it.
A man named Von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot a black guard. This gave the museum much-needed publicity. He is described as a "neo"Nazi. He is also 88 years old. Isn't that a bit old to be a NEO-Nazi? Brains gone -- too much NyQuill.
There are alot of pigs in Kansas, but the birds mainly just pass through. Still, one person, to prove how much he believed in the sanctity of life, murdered a doctor in Kansas. His apartment was in Kansas City, newly rented, from someone who was obviously either a bad judge of character or also suffering from Swine Flu. It should be pointed out that Kansas was the first state after Texas to announce case of Swine Flu. I think I can find out the address for you, but I don't think any of you are contemplating renting in Kansas City just now.
The famous adage goes "The blues went from New Orleans to Chicago, but they stopped in Kansas City on the way." (Obviously, this was before the interstate highway system of Eisenhower.) There are pigs on the highway as dash-cams attest.
The AMA is an association of Swine against health care. They stopped national health care during borth Roosevelts, Truman, and Clinton. (Lyndon Johnson threatened them with napalm and they relented on Medicare.) They are fighting the idea.
The WHO (World Health Organization) has announced that it is a "Pandemic," obviously having something to do with orgys. But it affects the brain, makes it coarser and its blood vessels expand. This helps explain all the stupidity.
Sarah Palin is afraid David Letterman is going to rape her fourteen year old daughter, "Willow". Great name, eh? Letterman actually apoligized. Maybe he hopes she will come closer to him? Since he apologized, pigs will demonstrate in front of his theatre. She said the fighting men and women overseas is the reason he apologized. Never apologize to a pig.
How did pigs get to Alaska, anyway? I'm trying to imagine a pig-sled. Muhush Y'all!
Since we are on swinish behavior, have you tried Twitter yet? Forget it. There is a great deal of publicity over it because of Iran right now (the idiots think they can block the internet). Well, you are limited to about 147 characters, including spaces, commas, apostrophes, etc. Moreover, many people keep send the same bit over and over again -- I guess they use a macro. Fortunately, you actually have to choose to view those threads. Some have about 120 per second -- messages, that is. Our state department actually asked them to postphone maintainence until a later time so the Iran bashing can continue. Oink!
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Here is a review of the film "PIG BUSINESS":
Film review: Pig Business
June 16, 2009
By Ian Sinclair
Source: Morning Star
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Originally due to premiere on Channel 4 in February, Pig Business - a documentary about intensive pig farming - was cancelled because of fears of legal action from Smithfield Foods, the world's largest producer of pork. Subsequent screenings have also ran in to difficulties, with a recent showing at the Barbican only going ahead once the director, Tracy Worcester, signed an indemnity taking personal responsibility for its content.
So what are Smithfield Foods so afraid of?
Four years in the making and just over 70 minutes long in its current form (the version I watched may be cut down for future broadcasts), this cogent documentary argues that intensive pig farming is "bad for our food, our health and the livelihoods of our rural communities."
Initially focussing on the
Housed in superstore-sized sheds in cramped conditions with little natural light, the stressed-out hogs produce a staggering amount of waste (pigs defecate ten times the amount a human does), often contaminating the local water table and emitting an illness-inducing stench. Tom Garrett, from the Animal Welfare Institute, argues this is nothing less than "the application of industrial systems that were designed to build car and machines, to living creatures."
Tired of being steamrolled by large corporations, in the 90s a grassroots movement of farmers and environmentalists won a number of small, but significant victories, leading to greater regulation of pig farms in the
In response to this popular protest and increasingly restrictive laws, Smithfield Foods relocated much of its business to countries such as
A long-time environmental activist working on a small budget,
Frustratingly, like much of the coverage of animal welfare in the mainstream,
But while the debate continues about how best to improve the lives of pigs and those people - workers, local residents and consumers - who are most affected by the industry, it is clear Smithfield Foods only has one interest: profit. As Joel Bakan notes in his seminal study of the corporate world "the corporation's legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause others."
Seen in this light, the legal threats from Smithfield Foods are a logical response to this illuminating and absorbing documentary. In short, there is no doubt that if Pig Business receives a wide audience, it will be very bad for Smithfield Foods own pig business.
"It's a battle about who is going to control our resources", Kennedy, Jr sums up at the film's close. "Are our resources going to be controlled by a corporate-feudal system or are they going to be controlled by the people?"
Pig Business is directed by Tracy Worcester: http://www.pigbusiness.co.uk/.
*An edited version of this review recently appeared in the Morning Star. ian_js@hotmail.com.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
A New Name
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
The Insane Right
Illustration: Now flaying at a TV near you, he now supports Lesbian Marriage -- his own daughter's proclivities have nothing to do with it.
As reported here some time ago, the Bush-Cheney administration used torture only in an attempt to obtain falso confessions as to links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, links that I pointed out were patently absurd given the characters of the individuals. Now Connel Lawrence Wilkerson, a Deputy to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State, has confirmed this fact.
Is it possible that Jessie Ventura is right? He stated that the only reason the Democrats do not prosecute or investigate war crimes on the part of the pervious administration is that some of them were "in on it".
Obama is traveling to the Middle East to make an address to the people. He will first stop in Saudi Arabia, then speak in Egypt, and then visit German and France. He will not stop in Israel (been there, done that). NitwitYahoo has not sounded very helpful. Israel holds the all time record of violation of United Nations Resolutions and this is quite an achievement since the United States can be counted on to Veto almost any resolution that remotely criticizes Israel.
In a remarkable display of the thinking of pro-life activists, one of them assassinated a doctor in Kansas just a few days ago. Nothing displays ones committment to life more vividly than murder and execution, as the former and current Governors of Texas have shown.
The Governor of Texas, as should be well-known by now, has mentioned the possibility of succession from the Union, thus joining the Governor of Alaska's husband in the successionist movement. Many observors have expressed outrage, but it seems more sensible to encourage compliance. There are many fine, worthwhile people in Texas, people such as Kinky Friedman who started the group Kinky and the Texas Jew Boys, and also Jim Hightower who is a great commentator, but I would extend the right of immigration to them and the others of their ilk. Furthermore, we could then dismantle the wall between Texas and Mexico (after all, we paid for it) and reconstruct it on the northern border.
I have to thank one of you for an interesting discovery. Try typing in "French Military Victories" in Google and click on "Feeling Lucky".
Finally, the most obese radio rable-rouser I know of attacked the recent Supreme Court nominee and stated that it was akin to naming David Duke to that position. Mr. Duke was asked for a comment and the gist of it was that we should give no heed to a "drug addict". (Just to clarify, there is no such thing as an ex-addict until the person's death. I could explain further, but you'd have to pay me first.)
Some new information:
Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank
Palestinians losing out in access to vital shared aquifer in the occupied territories
June 03, 2009
By Rory McCarthy
Source: The Guardian
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Jerusalem -- A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.
The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.
Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.
In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.
The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings.
Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli head of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said there was a clear failure to meet basic water needs for both Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israelis were taking "the lion's share".
"The bottom line is there is a severe water crisis out there, predominantly on the Palestinian side, and it will be felt even worse this coming summer," Bromberg said at a conference on the issue in Jerusalem.
He said the Joint Water Committee, established in 1995 with Israelis and Palestinians as an interim measure under the Oslo peace accords, had failed to produce results and needed reform.
The World Bank report said the hopes that the Oslo accords might bring water resources for a viable Palestinian state and improve the life of Palestinians had "only very partially been realised".
It said failings in water resource and management and chronic underinvestment were to blame. In Gaza, the continued Israeli economic blockade played a key role in preventing maintenance and construction of sewage and water projects. In the West Bank, Israeli military controls over the Palestinians were a factor, with Palestinians still waiting for approval on 143 water projects.
"We consider that the efficiency of our aid in the current situation is compromised," said Pier Mantovani, a Middle East water specialist for the World Bank, which is an important source of aid for the Palestinians.
Most went on short-term emergency projects with limited long-term strategic value. It was a "piecemeal, ad hoc" approach, he said.
Yossi Dreisen, a former official and now adviser at the Israeli water authority, disputed the Bank's findings and said many remarks in the report were "not correct". He produced figures suggesting Israeli water consumption per person had fallen since 1967, when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, while Palestinian consumption had risen.
Israel argues that the water problem should be solved by finding new sources, through desalination and water treatment.
"There is not enough water in this area," said Dreisen. "Something must be done. The solution where one is giving water to the other is not acceptable to us."
However, Fuad Bateh, an adviser to the Palestinian water authority, said Israel continued to have obligations under international law as the occupying power and should allow Palestinians water resources through an "equitable and reasonable allocation in accordance with international law".
He accepted that there was a lack of institutional development and capacity on the Palestinian side, but he said the Palestinians were caught in an unequal, asymmetric dispute. Palestinians had not been allowed to develop any new production wells in the West Bank since the 1967 war.
"Palestinians have no say in the Israeli development of these shared, trans-boundary, water resources," he said. "It is a situation in which Israel has a de facto veto over Palestinian water development."
From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21592 |
Thursday, May 28, 2009
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Sotomayor, the nominee for the Supreme Court, has provoked the most idiotic reactions from the right wing. They used to be better than they are now. One objection is that she pronounces her name with the accent on the last syllable. She should either pronounce it on the syllable before that or withdraw her nomination. Another that she said "I would hope that a hispanic [whatever] woman would have greater insight than a white male." Well, I should hope so too. Unfortunately, a black, Justice Thomas, has shown no insight whatsoever, so it is no guarantee of anything. Scalia is certainly not a WASP, but his decisions are certainly pro-WASP and anti-constitutional.
Tom Dispatchposted 2009-05-28 10:19:24 Tomgram: William Astore, Educating Ourselves to OblivionCan there be any doubt that education matters not just in how we view the world, but in what kind of world we create -- or simply accept? And can there be any doubt that, despite a massive educational infrastructure (admittedly now fraying badly), Americans remain remarkably poorly informed about the world? Last year, Rick Shenkman, the editor of the History News Network website, published a book (now out in paperback), Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, excerpted at this site. Stupid enough (or ill-informed) was the answer. Since Barack Obama's election, many readers wrote Shenkman asking him if he still believes that "the voters are uninformed. Didn't Obama's election mean they were pretty smart?" In a recent post, he answered regretfully in the negative and here's just a little of what he had to say: "The highlights of the 2008 election included controversies over Obama's bowling score, his middle name Hussein, and Hillary's crying. These were not exactly issues of much weight at a time when the financial collapse of the country was happening before our eyes. And yet they drew extended media commentary… The media was to blame for the deplorable low quality of much of the campaign. But I am firmly convinced that you get the campaign you deserve… It's sobering to consider just how many Americans can't sort out propaganda (or simply fiction) from fact in the media madness that passes for our "information age." It's no less sobering to consider a corollary possibility: that we get the society we deserve; that, in fact, our youth in college today are being prepared, as TomDispatch regular William Astore (who has taught at both the Air Force Academy and the Pennsylvania College of Technology) suggests, to enter a world in desperate shape, but not to challenge it. Tom
Copyright 2009 William Astore |