April 10, 2007

Experts bash Bush: Pullout won't bring 'enemy' to U.S. - "It's become President Bush's mantra, his main explanation for why he won't withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon. In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that ''this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here.” ... But is it true? Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn't. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland. ... U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States. ... ''Attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence,” said a February DIA report. While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time - whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not - the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, according to experts."

All Roads Lead to Dick Cheney - "Did all of these aspects of Mr. Cheney's background converge in the Iraq debacle? Well, a top official at the State Department stated there was a secret "cabal" involving Cheney, and that Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the country's foreign policy. Did they converge on 9/11? This last question is not merely academic: vice President Cheney was apparently in charge of ALL 5 of the war games which occurred on 9/11 and coordinated the government's "response" to the attacks."

U.S. military develops Robocop armour for soldiers - "Included in the Pentagon's Future Warrior Concept are a powerful exoskeleton, a self-camouflaging outer layer that adapts to changing environments and a helmet which translates a soldier's voice into any foreign language." -- Check out the picture.

Airman Burned in Raygun Test - "An airman suffered second-degree burns during an evaluation of a non-lethal heat-ray gun this week in south Georgia, officials said."

10 States Introduce Impeachment - "The question, of course, is what in the heck is wrong with the other 40 states? ... But let's give credit where it's due. These 10 states have acted: CA, HI, IL, MN, MO, WA, VT, NM, WI, TX."

Schoolchildren to be fingerprinted in Big Brother-style shake-up - " Pupils will have to hand over their biometric details simply to borrow library books or gain access to school dinners. ... Critics say it is part of a 'softening-up' exercise to condition children to accept a creeping surveillance society."

Court: MySpace postings are free speech - "A judge violated a juvenile's free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled."

Praying for the Apocalypse - "The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy. It is a mass political movement. It is interchangeable, in many ways, with other traditional political movements ranging from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. It shares with these movements an inability to cope with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty. It also embraces a world of miracles and signs and makes war on rational, reality-based thought. It condemns self-criticism and debate as apostasy. It places a premium on action. It dismisses those who do not bow down before its god—and the leaders who claim to speak for God—as heretics and traitors. This movement shares with corporatists, who are busy cannibalizing our society for profit, the belief that there are a chosen few who know the truth and therefore have the right to impose it. The citizen, the individual, no longer has any legitimacy in this new world. All legitimacy is assumed by groups, whether they are corporate groups herding us over the cliff of globalization or religious groups that give popular vent to corporate-generated despair through faith in the Christian utopia. In this paradigm—corporate and religious—we become disempowered, afraid, passive and easily manipulated. Apocalyptic visions like this one have, throughout history, cowed populations and inspired genocidal killers. They have enticed societies into collective suicide. These visions nourished the butchers who led the Inquisition, the Crusades and the conquistadors who swept through the Americas converting and then exterminating the native population. These visions sustained the SS guards at Auschwitz, the Stalinists who consigned tens of thousands of Ukrainian families to starvation and death, the torturers in the clandestine prisons in Argentina during the Dirty War and the Serbian thugs with heavy machine guns and wraparound sunglasses who stood over the bodies of those they had slain in the smoking ruins of Bosnian villages. Those who promise to purify the world through violence, to relieve the anxiety of moral pollution and despair, appeal to our noblest sentiments, our highest virtues, our capacity for self-sacrifice and our utopian visions of a cleansed world. It is this coupling of fantastic hope and profound despair, along with visions of peace and light and absolute terror, of selflessness and murder, which frees the consciences of those who call for and carry out the eradication of those they have banished from moral consideration. When leaders of this movement, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, sanction, as they do, pre-emptive nuclear strikes against our enemies, and therefore the enemies of God, they fuel the passions of terrorists in love with the same apocalyptic nightmares. They march us to our own doom cheered by the delusion that once the dogs of war, even nuclear war, are unleashed, hundreds of millions will die, but because Christians have been blessed and chosen by God they alone will arise in triumph from the ash heap."

HAVE CHRISTIANS BECOME DUPES - "I will tell you what is going on: countless millions of Christians have elevated certain politicians and their mouthpieces in the Religious Right into a church-sphere or even into a God-sphere. In other words, because a politician or conservative celebrity claims to be a Christian, they are presumed to be untouchable. Such people must not be criticized or challenged, no matter how unconstitutional or stupid their actions might be, because doing so makes one guilty of some kind of spiritual law against speaking ill of Christian brothers."

Stop shopping ... or the planet will go pop - "'Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet,' begins the argument by Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and all-round environmental guru. 'Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.'"

More Uninsured Means More Healthcare Corporate Profits - "The U.S. is said to offer gold-standard healthcare, but it's the most expensive health system in the world and only people with a pot of gold can get that care."

Diets damage health, shows biggest ever study - "The world's largest study of weight loss has shown that diets do not work for the vast majority of slimmers and may even put lives at risk."

Do coffee and cigarettes protect against Parkinson's? - "People with Parkinson's disease are less likely to be smokers and coffee drinkers than their healthy siblings, according to a study of family members. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that some substance in tobacco might protect the brain against this devastating neurological disorder and sheds new light on coffee's effects on the disease."

Scientists show we can die of a broken heart - "Scientists have charted for the first time how intense stress caused by bereavement can make someone "die of a broken heart". A British team has found that the regions of the brain responsible for learning, memory and emotion can destabilise the cardiac muscle of someone who already has heart disease."

Glass baby bottles making comeback - "Glass baby bottles, replaced decades ago by unbreakable plastic, are making such a comeback that parents can't get their hands on them. Online and brick-and-mortar retailers report a run on glass baby bottles in recent weeks that they say was spurred by reports that the most common type of plastic in baby bottles may leach a toxic chemical."

Species Total Tops 1 Million - "A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped the 1 million milestone. Six years into the program the total has reached 1,009,000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75 million species."

Prisons of Passion - "According to government statistics, most sexual contact between corrections staff and inmates occurs between female employees and male prisoners."

Googling your date - "For better or worse, "googling" your date has become standard practice."




Quote of the Day
"It's better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it."
~ Anonymous