Tag Archives: citizen

This Is How The Right Will Try to Destroy Chris Christie

by KathieArriola Posted on July 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is crisscrossing Iowa. Officially, the visit is a fundraising trip tied to his side job as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. But like most any big-time politician choosing to spend some of the summer in the first caucus state, the visit is drawing the kind of speculation—and attacks—befitting a potential presidential contender.

Take the Judicial Crisis Network, which has seized the chance to target him with online ads and a website criticizing him for failing to turn the New Jersey Supreme Court into a bastion of right-wing judicial activism. JCN has established itself as significant player in judicial nomination fights and elections over the past several years, and has strong ties to conservative factions that don’t trust the governor’s record on social issues—and who would prefer a 2016 nominee more in line with the evangelical strain of the GOP.

The online ads take Christie to task for reappointing—gasp!—a Democrat as the chief justice of the state’s supreme court, and criticize him for failing to live up to earlier campaign promises to remake the court as a conservative body.

The gripes about Christie’s judicial appointments are pretty bogus. He’s a Republican governor of a democratic state, and he’s been thwarted again and again in his attempts to install conservatives on the high court: only three of his six nominees have been able to get past the Democratic controlled state legislature’s judiciary committee. One of those nominees only got through because Christie agreed to a deal where he re-nominated the aforementioned sitting chief justice, a Democrat.

In a response to the ads, one of Christie’s top advisers has argued that JCN is a Johnny-come-lately to New Jersey’s nomination battles, suggesting that they don’t really care about the composition of the court—but care plenty about dissing Christie. “This group has been noticeably absent from any judicial fight we’ve had in New Jersey, showing up only to criticize after the fights are over,” Mike DuHaime said in a CNN appearance.

As DuHaime’s complaint suggests, the Judicial Crisis Network’s campaign is likely just another shot across the bow by social conservatives who think Christie is too liberal on issues like gay marriage and abortion, and don’t want to see him become the GOP nominee for president in 2016. Indeed, the people behind the organization seem like just the sort who would much rather see a President Rick Santorum than a President Christie.

The JCN was founded by Gary Marx, who wooed family values voters for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, organizing church-sponsored voter drives in Ohio. According to Right Wing Watch, he was encouraged to start the organization, originally called the Judicial Confirmation Network, by Jay Sekulow, a veteran Christian soldier. As president of the American Center for Law and Justice, Sekulow has litigated numerous church-state cases before the US Supreme Court, including a recent one that allowed a Utah park to keep a Ten Commandments statute installed.

In 2004, Marx joined with Wendy Long, a former clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to set up the Judicial Confirmation Network to bolster President Bush’s efforts to install staunch social conservatives on the federal bench. When Obama was elected, the group changed its name and focus to blocking the new president’s nominees. (Marx now leads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative evangelical group founded by Ralph Reed. Long left the JCN in 2012 to pursue an unsuccessful GOP Senate campaign against New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat.)

JCN also has close ties to the anti-gay marriage movement, sharing a treasurer with the National Organization for Marriage. Indeed, in a piece published this week by the National Review Online in coordination with the campaign bashing Christie’s judges, the Judicial Crisis Network’s current director, Carrie Severino, wrote that Christie’s “conservative” justices took part in the court’s unanimous decision last year to allow same-sex marriage in New Jersey. She also contends that Christie’s most recent nominee has a record of being pro-choice. Severino—who is also a former Thomas clerk—concludes, “If these are Christie’s conservative nominees, then Christie’s definition of a conservative sounds an awful lot like a liberal.”

Christie is likely to see similar attacks as he makes further steps towards a 2016 campaign after the ignominy of Bridgegate. He’ll be in New Hampshire later this month.

More – 

This Is How The Right Will Try to Destroy Chris Christie

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, KTP, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Is How The Right Will Try to Destroy Chris Christie

The Huge Campaign Finance Loophole Hillary Clinton Isn’t Using—Yet

by FlorianDeChair Posted on July 7, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Adam Parkhomenko had just spent a week tailing Hillary Clinton, following her halfway around the country in a Winnebago emblazoned with a now iconic photo of the former secretary of state wearing shades and texting, when I ran into him outside an auditorium on George Washington University’s campus last month. Parkhomenko—a baby-faced 28-year-old, wearing a pink button down and baseball cap—blended in amidst the millennial-heavy crowd of die-hard Hillary fans outside the event, where Clinton had just spoken about her new book. Yet Parkhomenko was an outlier. The executive director and cofounder of Ready for Hillary super-PAC—part of a trio of groups encouraging Clinton to run for president in 2016 alongside Correct the Record and Priorities USA—Parkhomenko had remained outside the theater during the entire event, skipping the chance to hear Hillary speak. As Parkhomenko—a campaign aide during Hillary Clinton’s last presidential bid—proudly told me that evening, he hasn’t seen or spoken with Hillary since 2008.

In fact, Ready for Hillary’s staff has scrupulously avoided attending any of her book tour speeches. The group has enacted what Allida Black, the group’s other cofounder, terms a “kryptonite firewall between the PAC and the candidate.” Ready for Hillary’s communications director, Seth Bringman, notes: “With her direct staff or family there is no coordination or communication. Being an independent group that’s always something made clear to everyone and it’s also commonsense.”

But it turns out these politicos don’t have to fully separate themselves from the Clinton machine. In the Wild West of post-Citizens United campaign finance law, there is a major loophole that would allow Clinton to work as closely as she likes with any of the super-PACs that are working to boost her 2016 chances. The same goes for any candidate who, like Clinton, does not hold political office and is not a declared candidate.

Continue Reading »

Visit site – 

The Huge Campaign Finance Loophole Hillary Clinton Isn’t Using—Yet

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Huge Campaign Finance Loophole Hillary Clinton Isn’t Using—Yet

What You Need to Know About the Coming Jellyfish Apocalypse

by Joan Ames Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

More than 50 million Americans swim in the oceans every year (there are actual government surveys of such things). So if your summer plans involves stripping down and bathing in the sun and salt water of your dreams, read on, intrepid beach-goer. There’s something gooey and stingy that’s loving warm waters every bit as much as you are (maybe even more), turning those dreams…to nightmares: jellyfish.

Are there more jellyfish now than ever before?

In some places, yes. One recent University of British Columbia study concluded that “jellyï¬&#129;sh populations appear to be increasing in the majority of the world’s coastal ecosystems and seas,” and blamed human activity for these blooms. The areas most affected are the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student and jellyfish expert at University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Center, and co-author of the report.

The influx of jellyfish can cause big problems. In October last year, a gelatinous swarm plugged cooling pipes for one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors, on the Baltic coast in Sweden, shutting it down. A swarm hobbled a coal-fired power plant near Hadera on the Israeli coast in 2011. Millions of bulging, translucent creatures descended on popular Mediterranean beaches in April 2013, freaking out the tourists. Jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin writes in her 2013 book Stung! that jellyfish caused the collapse of the $350 million Black Sea fishing industry in the 1990s. In 2007, a plague wiped out a salmon farm off Northern Ireland.

A Lion’s Mane, the largest known type of jellyfish, has tentacles that can reach 100 feet in length. Alexander Semenov/REX/AP Photo

North America hasn’t seen as many jellyfish-related problems as Europe, says Brotz. Although some parts of the West Coast—northern California in particular—have seen spikes in jellyfish populations, “they tend to be smaller species that don’t really affect people very much.”

Is climate change to blame for the increase in jellyfish?

While it’s difficult to trace any single jellyfish bloom to climate change—”It’s really tough, there’s a lot of noise in the signal,” Brotz says—warming oceans appear to be playing a role in the emerging pattern. That’s because the warmer the water, the less oxygen it can hold. Unlike other sea life, jellyfish are very good at surviving in these low-oxygen environments, giving them a comparative advantage.

“Warmer water species are going to start to have more and more areas where they can expand their range into,” he says. Scientists have already observed this phenomenon in Australia’s jellyfish. Brotz expects that in the United States, especially on the East Coast, jellyfish will also begin “showing up earlier and sticking around for longer into the fall.”

While jellyfish appear to be really loving global warming, they could also be driving the change, writes Australian scientist Tim Flannery: “Remarkably, jellyfish may have the capacity to accelerate climate change,” he writes. “Jellyfish release carbon-rich feces and mucus (poo and goo) that bacteria prefer to use for respiration,” turning the bacteria into carbon-making factories, accelerating warming. A gelatinous feedback loop.

But scientists are split over the whether global warming is a dominant factor, and are desperate for more comprehensive datasets to fully understand the dynamic. There’s even an interactive website and smart phone apps developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to encourage citizen scientists to submit their own sightings to help with a global tracking effort.

There are other factors driving population booms, of course, aside from global warming: Over-fishing has also killed off the jellyfish’s natural predators: fish. Pollution and ocean acidification may also be playing their parts in this complex story.

Should swimmers in the United States be worried?

Every year around the world there are an estimated 150 million jellyfish stings, according to recent research. In the United States, jellyfish are blamed for half a million stings in the Chesapeake Bay and up to 200,000 stings in Florida waters.

That sounds like a lot, but a jellyfish lashing in North America is “more the level of a bee sting,” says Brotz. “It’ll be quite painful and might even give you a little bit of scarring temporarily, but unless you have a severe allergy, it’s not going to be too dangerous.”

The most dangerous species of jellyfish—Chironex fleckeri and Irukandji—are found in the waters around Australia and the Philippines. It only takes three minutes for a sting from Chironex fleckeri, a species of box jellyfish, to kill you, with a tentacle laced with some of the world’s deadliest poison. Box jellyfish are outfitted with superior wits and senses to their jellyfish brethren, writes Flannery. For one, they can see: “They are also the only jellyfish with eyes that are quite sophisticated, with retinas and corneas… And they have brains, which are capable of learning, memory, and guiding complex behaviors.” (Shudder.) A single brush of the Irukandji jellyfish—in the box jellyfish family—can cause searing pain and cramps, inducing nausea and vomiting which can continue for 12 hours, and more insidiously, an existential dread: Victims are “gripped with a sense of ‘impending doom’.”

A box jelly fish photographed in aquarium. Daleen Loest/Shutterstock

“As the oceans warm,” Flannery writes, “the tropical box jellyfish and the Irukandjis are likely to extend their ranges.” That’s already the case, with Irukandji spotted in coastal waters from Cape Town to Florida.

Great.

How many people die every year from jellyfish stings?

We don’t know, because deaths can so easily be attributed to other causes, like drowning. But readers filled with terror about sharks chomping down on your leg while you swim should put this in perspective: the death toll from jellyfish is definitely more than from sharks. Sharks kill about eight to 10 people a year. Jellyfish kill at least 50, according to Brotz.

If you get stung, what should you do?

I’m sorry to say, despite everything you’ve heard, peeing on a sting is not going to help. We’ll get to that in a moment. But first, here’s what’s going on when a jellyfish stings you.

A jellyfish has “thousands or millions” of these really fascinating little cells with their own venom sacs that operate “almost like a hypodermic syringe,” says Brotz. “If you come in contact with them, each cell has it’s own little trigger hair. Once the trigger hair gets fired, basically this little harpoon will shoot out of the cell.”

“The more tentacle you come in contact with, the more of these cells, these nematocysts, the more severe the sting is going to be. Even when a tentacle breaks off from a jellyfish these nematocysts are still active.”

Here’s what to do, and what not to do, according to Brotz:

  1. If you find a jellyfish dead and washed up on the beach, don’t touch it because it could still sting you.
  2. Even if you’ve been stung already, you might still have bits of “unfired nematocysts” stuck to you. Don’t rub them; they might sting you further.
  3. Try to pick off any little bits of tentacle that are stuck to you, but avoid using your fingers. Again: they can still release venom. Brotz suggests a pair of tweezers, or even a stick.
  4. “After that it’s best to rinse it with sea water,” says Brotz. “You don’t really want to use freshwater because that can also chemically cause the nematocysts to fire.”
  5. That advice about seawater goes for urine, too.
  6. Vinegar, an acetic acid, has been used for years to prevent box jellyfish stingers from firing. But this remedy has been called into question with new research in Australia that says it could actually increase the venom load in the victim by 50 percent.

If there are too many jellyfish, what about eating them to control their populations?

People do eat jellyfish. It’s quite a common delicacy in parts of Asia, and the jellyfish-as-food business is booming, says Brotz, who estimates the annual global catch to be around one million tons. “I mean, that’s much more than the global catch of say lobsters, or scallops,” he says.

And while jellyfish fisheries are growing around the world to cater for the demand, Brotz warns that eating them won’t necessarily be a solution to overpopulation.

Dried jellyfish being sold in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan market. Claudio Zaccherini/Shutterstock

Of the twelve types of edible fish, sand jellyfish and cannonball jellyfish are the most popular, and tend to be a “more meaty, a little bit more dense species,” says Brotz. Consumers “really like to have the final product to have a little bit of a crunch to it,” and there’s only a handful of species that can really deliver.

What does it taste like? “It’s this interesting line between crunchy and chewy,” Brotz says. “It sort of reminds me of under-cooked pasta, like al dente pasta, with crunch and chew at the same time. Of course, it depends on what market it’s heading for. Japanese prefer their jellyfish much crunchier than, say, the Chinese do.”

See the original article here: 

What You Need to Know About the Coming Jellyfish Apocalypse

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Monterey, ONA, Pines, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What You Need to Know About the Coming Jellyfish Apocalypse

Noordwijk Journal: Awakening the ‘Dutch Gene’ of Water Survival

by Myrna Posted on June 29, 2014

The dikes of the country’s water management system work so well that experts say they worry that citizens will begin to take staying dry for granted. Read original article:  Noordwijk Journal: Awakening the ‘Dutch Gene’ of Water Survival ; ;Related ArticlesObservatory: The Secret of the Disco Clam’s Light ShowLoan Sought for Tappan Zee Work Is FaultedU.S. Catfish Program Could Stymie Pacific Trade Pact, 10 Nations Say ;

Visit site – 

Noordwijk Journal: Awakening the ‘Dutch Gene’ of Water Survival

Posted in Citadel, Citizen, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Noordwijk Journal: Awakening the ‘Dutch Gene’ of Water Survival

Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

by FrankieReeder Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Tim Lee argues—or perhaps merely hopes—that yesterday’s decision protecting cell phones from warrantless searches might signal a turning point for the Supreme Court’s attitude toward digital information in general:

The government has typically pursued a simple legal strategy when faced with digital technologies. First, find a precedent that gave the government access to information in the physical world. Second, argue that the same principle should apply in the digital world, ignoring the fact that this will vastly expand the government’s snooping power while eroding Americans’ privacy.

….The government hoped the Supreme Court would take this same narrow, formalistic approach in this week’s cell phone privacy case. It wanted the justices to pretend that rifling through the vast quantity of personal information on a suspect’s cell phone is no different from inspecting other objects that happen to be in suspects’ pockets. But the Supreme Court didn’t buy it.

….The Supreme Court clearly recognizes that in the transition from information stored on paper to information stored in computer chips, differences of degree can become differences of kind. If the police get access to one letter or photograph you happen to have in your pocket, that might not be a great privacy invasion. If the police get access to every email you’ve received and every photograph you’ve taken in the last two years, that’s a huge invasion of privacy.

This is a problem that’s been getting more acute for years. The basic question is whether courts should recognize the fact that digital access to information removes practical barriers that are important for privacy. For example, the state of California keeps lots of records about me that are legally public: DMV records, property records, birth and marriage records, etc. In the past, practically speaking, the mere fact that they were physical records provided me with a degree of privacy. It took a lot of time and money to dig through them all, and this meant that neither the government nor a private citizen would do it except in rare and urgent cases.

In the digital world, that all changes. If a police officer has even a hint of curiosity about me, it takes only seconds to compile all this information and more. In a technical sense, they don’t have access to anything they didn’t before, but in a practical sense I’ve lost a vast amount of privacy.

In the past, the Supreme Court has rarely (never?) acknowledged this. In yesterday’s cell phone case, they not only acknowledged it, they acknowledged it unanimously. Is it possible that this means they’ll be applying a more skeptical view to similar cases in the future? Or even revisiting some of their past decisions in light of the continuing march of technology? We don’t know yet, but it’s certainly possible. Maybe the Supreme Court has finally entered the 21st century.

Original article: 

Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

Awlaki Assassination Memo Finally Released

by AnnabelCorrigan Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

A federal court has finally released the Obama administration’s memo justifying the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen who was apparently a top Al Qaeda operative. I think we mostly knew this already, but the memo confirms that the decision to kill Awlaki was based primarily on the Authorization to Use Military Force passed a few weeks after 9/11:

“We believe that the AUMF’s authority to use lethal force abroad also may apply in appropriate circumstances to a United States citizen who is part of the forces of an enemy authorization within the scope of the force authorization,” reads the Justice Department memorandum, written for attorney general Eric Holder on 16 July 2010 and ostensibly intended strictly for Awlaki’s case.

Among those circumstances: “Where high-level government officials have determined that a capture operation is infeasible and that the targeted person is part of a dangerous enemy force and is engaged in activities that pose a continued and imminent threat to US persons or interests.”

I’ve never taken a firm stand on the decision to kill Awlaki. Everything I’ve read persuades me that he was, indeed, a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative, and a dangerous one. If we were engaged in a normal war, there would be no question about our right to treat him like any other enemy combatant.

But we aren’t engaged in a normal war, are we? There’s no specific enemy, no specific battlefield, and no way of knowing if and when the war is over. The AUMF is open-ended, both in time and geography, and is famously vague about just who it authorizes the president to make war against. It specifies “those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” and that takes in a helluva lot of ground.

Thus, the problem I’ve always had isn’t specifically with the targeting of Awlaki, but with the fact that the targeting was based on such a flimsy legal pretext. However, despite the fact that I’m disappointed in Obama’s decision to interpret the AUMF widely, most of the blame on that score should be directed not at Obama, but at Congress. The AUMF is now more than a dozen years old, and it’s long past time for Congress to emerge from its fetal crouch and write a new law specifically designed for our present circumstances. Among other things, it should address the president’s ability to target American citizens for killing. If Congress wants to give the president that power, it should debate and pass a law and the courts should rule on its constitutionality. That’s the rule of law. And regardless of whether I liked the law, I’d accept it if Congress passed it, the president signed it, and the Supreme Court declared it constitutional.

Instead, as usual, Congress prefers to do nothing. This leaves them free to kibitz if they don’t like what the president is doing, or to simply avoid having to take a stand at all. It’s shameful.

Read the full Justice Department memo here.

Source:

Awlaki Assassination Memo Finally Released

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Awlaki Assassination Memo Finally Released

Ex–Air Force Lt. Colonel: You’ve Been Drafted and You Don’t Even Know It

by LanPridham Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

I spent four college years in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and then served 20 years in the US Air Force. In the military, especially in basic training, you have no privacy. The government owns you. You’re “government issue,” just another G.I., a number on a dogtag that has your blood type and religion in case you need a transfusion or last rites. You get used to it. That sacrifice of individual privacy and personal autonomy is the price you pay for joining the military. Heck, I got a good career and a pension out of it, so don’t cry for me, America.

But this country has changed a lot since I joined ROTC in 1981, was fingerprinted, typed for blood, and otherwise poked and prodded. (I needed a medical waiver for myopia.) Nowadays, in Fortress America, every one of us is, in some sense, government issue in a surveillance state gone mad.

Unlike the recruiting poster of old, Uncle Sam doesn’t want you anymore—he already has you. You’ve been drafted into the American national security state. That much is evident from Edward Snowden’s revelations. Your email. It can be read. Your phone calls. Metadata about them is being gathered. Your smartphone. It’s a perfect tracking device if the government needs to find you. Your computer. Hackable and trackable. Your server. It’s at their service, not yours.

Many of the college students I’ve taught recently take such a loss of privacy for granted. They have no idea what’s gone missing from their lives and so don’t value what they’ve lost or, if they fret about it at all, console themselves with magical thinking—incantations like “I’ve done nothing wrong, so I’ve got nothing to hide.” They have little sense of how capricious governments can be about the definition of “wrong.”

Consider us all recruits, more or less, in the new version of Fortress America, of an ever more militarized, securitized country. Renting a movie. Why not opt for the first Captain America and watch him vanquish the Nazis yet again, a reminder of the last war we truly won. Did you head for a baseball park on Memorial Day? What could be more American or more innocent. So I hope you paid no attention to all those camouflaged caps and uniforms your favorite players were wearing in just another of an endless stream of tributes to our troops and veterans.

Let’s hear no whining about militarized uniforms on America’s playing fields. After all, don’t you know that America’s real pastime these last years has been war and lots of it?

Be a Good Trooper

Think of the irony. The Vietnam War generated an unruly citizen’s army that reflected an unruly and increasingly rebellious citizenry. That proved more than the US military and our ruling elites could take. So President Nixon ended the draft in 1973 and made America’s citizen-soldier ideal, an ideal that had persisted for two centuries, a thing of the past. The “all-volunteer military,” the professionals, were recruited or otherwise enticed to do the job for us. No muss, no fuss, and it’s been that way ever since. Plenty of war, but no need to be a “warrior,” unless you sign on the dotted line. It’s the new American way.

But it turned out that there was a fair amount of fine print in the agreement that freed Americans from those involuntary military obligations. Part of the bargain was to “support the pros” (or rather “our troops”) unstintingly and the rest involved being pacified, keeping your peace, being a happy warrior in the new national security state that, particularly in the wake of 9/11, grew to enormous proportions on the taxpayer dollar. Whether you like it or not, you’ve been drafted into that role, so join the line of recruits and take your proper place in the garrison state.

If you’re bold, gaze out across the increasingly fortified and monitored borders we share with Canada and Mexico. (Remember when you could cross those borders with no hassle, not even a passport or ID card. I do.) Watch for those drones, home from the wars and already hovering in or soon to arrive in your local skies—ostensibly to fight crime. Pay due respect to your increasingly up-armored police forces with their automatic weapons, their special SWAT teams, and their converted MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles). These vintage Iraqi Freedom vehicles are now military surplus given away or sold on the cheap to local police departments. Be careful to observe their draconian orders for prison-like “lockdowns” of your neighborhood or city, essentially temporary declarations of martial law, all for your safety and security.

Be a good trooper and do what you’re told. Stay out of public areas when you’re ordered to do so. Learn to salute smartly. (It’s one of the first lessons I was taught as a military recruit.) No, not that middle-finger salute, you aging hippie. Render a proper one to those in authority. You had best learn how.

Or perhaps you don’t even have to, since so much that we now do automatically is structured to render that salute for us. Repeated singings of “God Bless America” at sporting events. Repeated viewings of movies that glorify the military.(Special Operations forces are a hot topic in American multiplexes these days from Act of Valor to Lone Survivor.) Why not answer the call of duty by playing militarized video games like Call of Duty. Indeed, when you do think of war, be sure to treat it as a sport, a movie, a game.

Surging in America

I’ve been out of the military for nearly a decade, and yet I feel more militarized today than when I wore a uniform. That feeling first came over me in 2007, during what was called the “Iraqi surge”—the sending of another 30,000 US troops into the quagmire that was our occupation of that country. It prompted my first article for TomDispatch. I was appalled by the way our civilian commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, hid behind the beribboned chest of his appointed surge commander, General David Petraeus, to justify his administration’s devolving war of choice in Iraq. It seemed like the eerie visual equivalent of turning traditional American military-civilian relationships upside down, of a president who had gone over to the military. And it worked. A cowed Congress meekly submitted to “King David” Petraeus and rushed to cheer his testimony in support of further American escalation in Iraq.

Since then, it’s become a sartorial necessity for our presidents to don military flight jackets whenever they address our “warfighters” as a sign both of their “support” and of the militarization of the imperial presidency. (For comparison, try to imagine Matthew Brady taking a photo of “honest Abe” in the Civil War equivalent of a flight jacket!) It is now de rigueur for presidents to praise American troops as “the finest military in world history” or, as President Obama typically said to NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview from Normandy last week, “the greatest military in the world.” Even more hyperbolically, these same troops are celebrated across the country in the most vocal way possible as hardened “warriors” and benevolent freedom-bringers, simultaneously the goodest and the baddest of anyone on the planet—and all without including any of the ugly, as in the ugliness of war and killing. Perhaps that explains why I’ve seen military recruitment vans (sporting video game consoles) at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Given that military service is so beneficent, why not get the country’s 12-year-old prospects hopped up on the prospect of joining the ranks?

Too few Americans see any problems in any of this, which shouldn’t surprise us. After all, they’re already recruits themselves. And if the prospect of all this does appall you, you can’t even burn your draft card in protest, so better to salute smartly and obey. A good conduct medal will undoubtedly be coming your way soon.

It wasn’t always so. I remember walking the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, in my freshly pressed ROTC uniform in 1981. It was just six years after the Vietnam War ended in defeat and antiwar movies like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now were still fresh in people’s minds. (First Blood and the Rambo “stab-in-the-back” myth wouldn’t come along for another year.) I was aware of people looking at me not with hostility, but with a certain indifference mixed occasionally with barely disguised disdain. It bothered me slightly, but even then I knew that a healthy distrust of large standing militaries was in the American grain.

No longer. Today, service members, when appearing in uniform, are universally applauded and repetitiously lauded as heroes.

I’m not saying we should treat our troops with disdain, but as our history has shown us, genuflecting before them is not a healthy sign of respect. Consider it a sign as well that we really are all government issue now.

Shedding a Militarized Mindset

If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider an old military officer’s manual I still have in my possession. It’s vintage 1950, approved by that great American, General George C. Marshall, Jr., the man most responsible for our country’s victory in World War II. It began with this reminder to the newly commissioned officer: “On becoming an officer a man does not renounce any part of his fundamental character as an American citizen. He has simply signed on for the post-graduate course where one learns how to exercise authority in accordance with the spirit of liberty.” That may not be an easy thing to do, but the manual’s aim was to highlight the salutary tension between military authority and personal liberty that was the essence of the old citizen’s army.

It also reminded new officers that they were trustees of America’s liberty, quoting an unnamed admiral’s words on the subject: “The American philosophy places the individual above the state. It distrusts personal power and coercion. It denies the existence of indispensable men. It asserts the supremacy of principle.”

Those words were a sound antidote to government-issue authoritarianism and militarism—and they still are. Together we all need to do our bit, not as G.I. Joes and Janes, but as Citizen Joes and Janes, to put personal liberty and constitutional principles first. In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, who told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this Berlin wall,” isn’t it time to begin to tear down the walls of Fortress America and shed our militarized mindsets. Future generations of citizens will thank us, if we have the courage to do so.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular, edits the blog The Contrary Perspective. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

Continued here – 

Ex–Air Force Lt. Colonel: You’ve Been Drafted and You Don’t Even Know It

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ex–Air Force Lt. Colonel: You’ve Been Drafted and You Don’t Even Know It

Has This Chilean Architect Figured Out How To Fix Slums?

by NovellaSvm Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

In the United States, we tend to think of the suburbs as the historic domain of the middle class. It’s where the boomers went after fleeing the cities to accommodate their growing families (although the demographics of the suburbs are now changing).

But in Latin America, urban peripheries are less commonly populated by leafy suburbs for the rich than by slums for the poor. These shantytowns typically lack basic infrastructure like paved roads, sewers, and tap water. Living far from the city, residents are often forced to make long and expensive commutes.

But in the medium-sized Chilean port city of Iquique, one architect, Alejandro Aravena, had a solution: partial houses, located at the center of town, equipped with only the barest necessities—and space for residents to build on, bit by bit, as they can afford it.

When they were first built fourteen years ago for about 100 families, Aravena’s flagship projects, called the Quinta Monroy Houses, came with all the core necessities—a roof, a bathroom, a kitchen. With a little more than 300 square feet in floor space to start with, the houses were 25 percent smaller than the average public housing unit in Chile, but with an extra-wide foundation, residents had plenty of room to expand.

In his new book, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture, journalist Justin McGuirk writes that when Aravena first launched the project through his firm, Elemental, a number of critics were appalled. They argued that the government should provide complete houses, since incomplete houses require the occupant to perform manual labor. But where some saw a failure in the making, others welcomed change. In the 1970’s, under Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende, the government prioritized building completed public housing, even enlisting a Soviet-made pre-fabricated house factory for the job. But despite the initial gusto, the government quickly ran out of the resources to continue. In three years, the slum population rose more than 130 percent.

Since the Allende period, the government has shifted to a hybrid market-government approach, giving subsidies to the poor to buy houses and land. At the time Aravena built Quinta Monroy, the government offered $7,500 per family—usually too little to buy a complete house, but just enough to make Aravena’s stripped-down models affordable.

As residents expanded their houses, their value grew. One study (PDF), sponsored by the Finnish government, found that in its first two years, Quinta Monroy’s 100 families had made an average of $750 in improvements per unit, doubling the size of their homes and raising the houses’ value to an estimated $20,000 each. One six-year resident McGuirk speaks with says that after the subsidy, he spent just $400 of his own money to buy a basic Quinta Monroy house. But after saving up and adding four bedrooms and an extra bathroom, he estimates he has increased the value of his home to $50,000.

The Quinta Monroy houses before residents doubled their size with their own improvements Cristóbal Palma/Verso Books

It’s hard to see a plan like this taking off in the United States, given our long permitting processes and strict building codes. And even in Iquique, some of the half-houses look similar to the shantytowns they were designed to replace: While some residents have transformed their homes into elegant structures with balconies and trim, “other add-ons look like slum shacks wedged between concrete houses,” McGuirk says.

Still, other countries see promise in Aravena’s idea. Already, Elemental has built and sold hundreds of half-houses in Chile, and it’s testing the idea in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru. “These are places where Aravena can still make a difference,” McGuirk says.

See the original article here: 

Has This Chilean Architect Figured Out How To Fix Slums?

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Paradise, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Has This Chilean Architect Figured Out How To Fix Slums?

Inside the Unraveling of Las Vegas Shooting Spree Suspect Jerad Miller

by 41laowo Posted on June 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Two years before Jerad Miller and his wife, Amanda, allegedly gunned down two police officers and a third person in a Las Vegas shooting spree, before taking their own lives, he pondered when it might be justified to kill law enforcement officers on the website of conspiracy-peddling radio personality Alex Jones. In a May 28, 2012, post titled, “The Police (To Kill Or Not To Kill?)” Miller wrote on Jones’ Infowars.com website: “I live in Indiana and recently a law was passed named the right to resist law. As i can make out from it, if a police officer kicks in my door and is not there legally, then I may shoot him.”

His posts on Infowars depict an angry, down-on-his-luck man who blamed his woes—decaying teeth, lack of health insurance, and inability to find work—on the tyranny of government. (Alex Jones has insisted the shooting spree Miller and his wife allegely carried out was “absolutely staged” by the federal government.) The justice system became a focus of Miller’s wrath following his arrest for selling marijuana. “Before I got arrested I had 2 jobs and was selling weed to my friends and family on the side,” he wrote. “Now I cannot find a job. My probation officer states that if I protest that my probation will be violated. They have tried to tell my fiance, who has no criminal record, that she may not own a firearm if I live in the house. Now, i face a dire problem.”

Continue Reading »

Source: 

Inside the Unraveling of Las Vegas Shooting Spree Suspect Jerad Miller

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Inside the Unraveling of Las Vegas Shooting Spree Suspect Jerad Miller

The Definitive Guide to Every Hillary Clinton Conspiracy Theory (So Far)

by UXMAnnetta Posted on June 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Long before she let Benghazi happen, Hillary Clinton was the center of a swirl of inventive rumors about sex, drugs, and murder. For entertainment purposes only, we’ve rounded up some of the greatest (i.e., most scurrilous). We’ll add more as they inevitably bubble up in the run-up to the 2016 race.

Benghazi on the brain

Concussiongate
Rumor: Then-Secretary of State Clinton faked the flu and a concussion in December 2012 to avoid testifying to Congress about Benghazi.
Rumormongers: 2016 presidential dark horse John Bolton and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley

#TCLOT
Rumor: As if a phony head injury wasn’t bad enough—Hillary faked a blood clot, an even more serious medical condition, to further delay her Benghazi testimony.
Rumormonger: Glenn Beck, who added that “if she really had some weird thing in the hospital, then it should prohibit her from ever becoming president.”

Brained by Bush’s brain
Rumor: The clot was real, and Hillary suffered lingering brain damage that could render her unfit for office.
Rumormonger: Fox News analyst Karl Rove, who backtracked the next day.

The CLINTON Body Count

Fostering doubts
Rumor: Various theories hold that former Clinton White House chief of staff Vince Foster didn’t commit suicide in Virginia’s Fort Marcy Park. One posits that he was killed because he was having an affair with Hillary Clinton.
Rumormongers: Former Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) once shot a watermelon (or a pumpkin—it’s unclear) to prove that Foster was shot by someone else. Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine took out an ad in the New York Times to note that the FBI had failed to investigate “semen in Foster’s shorts, blond hair on his T-shirt and trousers and multicolored carpet fibers on all his clothing.” (Bonus: Anne Coulter once joked, “If you attack the Clintons publicly, make sure all your friends know that you are not planning suicide.”)

Ron Brown’s body
Rumor: Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others were killed in a plane crash orchestrated by the Clintons to prevent him from spilling the beans to special investigators about selling seats on trade missions.
Rumormonger: The Clinton Body Count, a website linking the first family to more than 90 deaths.

Whitewater whitewash
Rumor: After agreeing to cooperate with special investigator Ken Starr, Whitewater partner James McDougal died in prison—allegedly at the hands of Clinton henchmen. “Chalk up another body to Clinton,” as one Rush Limbaugh caller put it. An alternative theory: McDougal faked his death to avoid ratting out his benefactors.
Rumormonger: The Clinton Body Count

Kittycide
Rumor: Former Clinton aide Kathleen Willey alleged that after her cat went missing, a suspicious-looking jogger told her to watch what she said. Then her new cat turned up dead.
Rumormonger: Willey, in the the 2007 pseudo-documentary Hillary: The Movie (which triggered the Citizens United Supreme Court decision).

The condoms must be on the other side of the tree. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

The Sex stuff

Gay until inauguration
Rumor: After majoring in lesbianism at Wellesley, Hillary entered into a sham marriage with Bill Clinton to cover up the truth. At one point, a former classmate moved to Little Rock to continue an affair with Hillary.
Rumormonger: Edward Klein, author of The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President

Bisexual after inauguration
Rumor: Bill confided that his wife was a bisexual who, as she put it, “had eaten more pussy than he had.”
Rumormonger: Former Clinton mistress Gennifer Flowers, in a 2013 interview with the Daily Mail

Webb of lies
Rumor: Associate attorney general Webb Hubbell was really Chelsea’s father. (And Vince Foster was possibly killed because he knew.)
Rumormonger: This guy on the Internet who keeps emailing me and every other DC journalist.

Bermuda shorts
Rumor: Forget Webb Hubbell. Chelsea was conceived when Bill forced himself on Hillary during a vacation in Bermuda.
Rumormonger: Klein, keeping it classy.

Troopergate
Rumor: Hillary looked the other way when then-Gov. Bill Clinton used Arkansas state troopers to set up sexual liaisons with dozens—maybe hundreds—of women.
Rumormonger: Former right-wing operative-turned-Media Matters honcho David Brock, who later wrote in his book, Blinded by the Right, that “none of the trooper allegations that could be independently checked turned out to be true.”

Bill’s black love child
Rumor: Bill fathered a son after after luring a prostitute into a cocaine-fueled orgy. Hillary dutifully covered it up.
Rumormongers: Little Rock businessman Robert McIntosh circulated a flier noting the resemblance between 13-year-old Danny Williams and a young William Jefferson Blythe during the 1992 campaign. A 1999 Drudge Report exclusive featured Williams’ mother’s on-tape confession. “What becomes immediately obvious to the viewer watching the videotaped confession is that this is clearly not gossip, rumor or anonymous charges being maliciously directed at a politician,” wrote Drudge, before learning three days later that the child was not Clinton’s.

Come all ye faithful
Rumor: As First Lady, Hillary decorated the White House Christmas tree with condoms, cock rings, and lords-a-leapin’ with erect penises.
Rumormongers: Disgruntled former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, in his 1996 tell-all, Unlimited Access; and Texas activist “Doc Marquis,” who seized on Aldrich’s claims as “proof positive that Hillary Clinton is a power, practicing witch.”

Sexual pagan
Rumor: No, it’s not the name of my new metal band—it’s Hillary Clinton’s orientation.
Rumormonger: Southern Evangelical Seminary president Richard Land, who leveled the charge in response to the secretary of state’s advocacy for gay rights in Africa.

The Drug stuff

Powder hungry
Rumor: When Bill was governor, the Clintons covered up a multimillion-dollar cocaine smuggling ring based in Mena, Arkansas.
Rumormonger: The Clinton Chronicles (below), a 1994 pseudo-documentary distributed by the Reverend Jerry Falwell

Boys on the tracks
Rumor: Seventeen-year-olds Kevin Ives and Don Henry weren’t hit by a train after passing out on an Arkansas railroad track; they were brutally murdered after witnessing a Clinton-assisted drug drop.
Rumormongers: Former Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.) and The Clinton Chronicles

Assorted Power madness

Four martini punch
Rumor: Reporter LJ Davis didn’t, as he claimed, pass out on his floor after drinking one too many martinis—he was assaulted in his Arkansas hotel room in 1994 by Clinton goons and robbed of four “significant” pages from his notebook. His crime: Asking too many questions about Clinton’s work at a Little Rock law firm.
Rumormongers: The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which cited the incident as evidence that Arkansas is a “congenitally violent place,” and Rush Limbaugh, who told his listeners, “journalists and others working on or involved in Whitewatergate have been mysteriously beaten and harassed in Little Rock; some have died.”

PC police
Rumor: As first lady, Clinton formed her own clandestine police force. Agents embedded in the FBI, the CIA, and the IRS harassed and eliminated critics.
Rumormongers: Richard Poe, author of Hillary’s Secret War, and American Evita author Christopher Andersen

Con air
Rumor: Hillary purged the White House Travel Office in order to set up a system of kickbacks for an Arkansas airline helmed by a childhood friend of Bill’s.
Rumormongers: Brock and current Virginia congressional candidate Barbara Comstock

Red, not blue
Rumor: A “meticulously documented” report exposed the Clintons’ links to a Marxist terrorist plot to take over the country, inspired by the Italian communist and grad-student favorite Antonio Gramsci. Exhibit A: Hillary’s failed health care reform plan.
Rumormonger: WorldNetDaily columnist Samuel Blumenfeld

Filegate
Rumor: Classified FBI files were requested and misused by First Lady Hillary Clinton to target enemies of the administration. White House Office of Personnel Security Craig Livingstone took the fall when Republican investigators caught wind.
Rumormonger: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who demanded FBI files be swiped for the First Lady’s fingerprints.

Brazilian whacks
Rumor: The Clintons forced former Hillary donor Peter Paul to spend two years in a Brazilian prison—including two months in a cellblock known as the “Corridor of Death”—after he filed a lawsuit against the couple claiming they knew about his illegal campaign finance dealings.
Rumormonger: Paul, in the 2007 pseudo-documentary Hillary Uncensored

Black helicopters
Rumor: Team Hillary used helicopters to surveil the Southampton home of 2006 Republican Senate challenger—and current Fox News contributor—K.T. McFarland.
Rumormonger: McFarland, at a campaign event on Long Island

Rush to judgment
Rumor: Rush Limbaugh’s 2006 drug bust for painkillers possession was a set-up by the Clinton machine.
Rumormonger: Poe again

Dressed to kill in 1993 AP Photo/James Finley

The Muslim stuff

Muslim Sisterhood
Rumor: Clinton and top aide/alleged lover Huma Abedin (wife of ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)) are in cahoots with the ladies’ auxiliary of the Muslim Brotherhood. Which explains why Clinton has been secretly pushing us to spread Sharia law in America.
Rumormongers: “Huma’s mom is best friends with the new so-called First Lady of Egypt, who is also a member of the Sisterhood,” explained Rush Limbaugh. “Folks, it’s Peyton place—it’s too much to keep up with.” Rep. Michele Bachmann’s allegations of collaboration between Clinton and the Brotherhood was cited by protesters in the streets of Cairo.

Mullah moolah
Rumor: Clinton’s Islamofascist sympathies were secured with a bribe from Iran.
Rumormonger: Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman, who conscientiously adds, “I cannot prove it at this time.”

Ban on churches
Rumor: Clinton was working with Islamists to shut down Christian houses of worship in the United States before she left office in 2013.
Rumormonger: Conservative speaker and self-described “former terrorist” Kamal Saleem

Hillary Clinton with fellow Muslim sympathizer Barack Obama in Cairo, 2009. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Just Plain Bizarre

Cold-blooded
Rumor: Like most of the Washington elite, Hillary is in fact a blood-drinking extraterrestrial lizard in disguise.
Rumormonger: “Reptoid hypothesis” creator David Icke

Everything is Illuminati’ed
Rumor: Wake up, sheeple. The Clintons belong to an 18th-century secret society that controls global governance and finance.
Rumormongers: Lots of crazy people on YouTube

Contra dancing
Rumor: In the 1970s, Hillary worked at a Little Rock law firm that helped funnel weapons to the Contras.
Rumormonger: The late Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn

Blood money
Rumor: The Clintons consented to the harvesting and selling of HIV- and hepatitis C-positive blood from prison inmates to China in the 1980s.
Rumormongers: Klein and WorldNetDaily conspiracy guru Joseph Farah

Starr crossed
Rumor: Why did the Clintons enjoy impunity for their myriad crimes? Easy: Ken Starr, the man tasked with investigating them, was a secret Clinton crony.
Rumormonger: Poe again

Get behind me, thetan
Rumor: Why did the did the movie version of Primary Colors, in which John Travolta plays a thinly-veiled Bill Clinton, go so easy on the first couple? Maybe because President Clinton pressured the German government to extend religious protections to the Church of Scientology.
Rumormonger: The New York Post reported that Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) demanded an investigation into the matter; Faircloth denied this.

It’s a tax!
Rumor: As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was pushing a secret United Nations takeover of the Internet, to be paid for by a secret tax on American billionaires.
Rumormonger: Former Clinton aide Dick Morris

Goo goo for Gaga: Clinton’s State Department betrayed its true function as an “agent for Lady Gaga” when it helped the “Bad Romance” singer secure a gig at a gay pride event in Italy.
Rumormonger: Mission: America founder Linda Harvey

Here We Go Again…

Face the nation
Rumor: Clinton got a face-lift after leaving the State Department to “glam up” for 2016.
Rumormonger: Fox and Friends’ Steve Doocy, who tweeted afterwards that he was referring only to Clinton’s website.

Hey sole sister
Rumor: Clinton hired a mentally ill woman to throw a sneaker at her while giving a speech to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Las Vegas in April.
Rumormongers: Limbaugh and former Republican presidential front runner Herman Cain

Hill’s angels
Rumor: Hillary is a tool of the Dark Lord Lucifer sent to oppose Jesus Christ in the Last Days.
Rumormonger: Montana Republican congressional candidate Ryan Zinke, who called Clinton the “anti-Christ” at a January campaign event.

It takes a child
Rumor: Chelsea Clinton became pregnant at the behest of her parents, who believe that the former secretary of state will be viewed more favorably if she has grandkids.
Rumormongers: Fox News host Howie Kurtz, the Washington Free Beacon‘s Michael Goldfarb, and the New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Vanity press
Rumor: The Clintons arranged for Vanity Fair to publish Monica Lewinsky’s recent essay two-and-a-half years before the next presidential election, so it would be forgotten by 2016.
Rumormonger: Prolific children’s author Lynne Cheney, who asked Bill O’Reilly, “Would Vanity Fair publish anything about Monica Lewinsky that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t want in Vanity Fair?” (Yes.)

To be continued…

Link to original:

The Definitive Guide to Every Hillary Clinton Conspiracy Theory (So Far)

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Definitive Guide to Every Hillary Clinton Conspiracy Theory (So Far)