Friday, March 20, 2009

03-20-09
  • That Wonderful RW Religious Insane Asylum:
    • Vatican insiders declare the Pope a 'disaster' (telegraph/uk) "Pope Benedict's repeated gaffes and the Vatican's inability to manage his message in the internet era are threatening to undermine his papacy, Vatican insiders have said."
  • The Sixth Great Extinction:
    • The Perilous State Of Birds In The U.S. (sfgate) "About one-third of 800 bird species in the United States are listed under federal law as endangered or threatened, or are dropping in numbers precipitously, because of lost habitat, invasive species, polluted water and changing climate, said the study, by government wildlife agencies and conservation groups."
  • The Great Economic Shakedown:
    • Geithner and Bernanke supported bonuses at AIG (americablog) "Show them both the door. Maybe Timmy is afraid to upset the friends that he developed during his time at the New York Fed when all of this was building. Let the guy join a club and buy friends but do it on his own dime and his own time. What part of "public" did he miss with "public service"? Geithner works for the American people, not Wall Street."
    • A Model for Obama Not Named Lincoln (firedoglake) "This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism."--Paul Krugman (nytimes)
  • Restore the Rule of Law!
    • Ray McGovern on Gov't Accountability (consortiumnews video) "McGovern compares the American tolerance of Bush's crimes with the historical failure of the German people to stand up to the Nazis as Hitler's forces began to trample on the rights of the German people. 'On Jan. 20 of this year, we got rid of the Nazis,' McGovern said. 'The only question now is whether we have the courage to hold them accountable.'"
    • Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay -- Many at Gitmo Are Innocent And the Bush Administration Knew It (thewashingtonnote) "In addition, it has never come to my attention in any persuasive way--from classified information or otherwise--that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement. This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric--continuing even now in the case of Cheney--about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO."
    • Red Cross (the last word on and caretaker of the Geneva Conventions): Torture Committed At CIA Sites (cbsnews) "Such acts constitute violations of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, the Red Cross said."
    • Wilkerson Revelations + ICRC Report = Torturing the Innocent (firedoglake) It's "pretty much what we always suspected, isn't it? Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the PNAC Platoon would rather see innocent 90-year-old men jailed and tortured forever than admit to having made a mistake. Sad to see it so blatantly confirmed."
    • Wilkerson Revelations + ICRC Report = Torturing the Innocent (firedoglake) It's "pretty much what we always suspected, isn't it? Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the PNAC Platoon would rather see innocent 90-year-old men jailed and tortured forever than admit to having made a mistake. Sad to see it so blatantly confirmed."
    • U.N. rights envoy sees Israeli war crimes in Gaza (reuters) "the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians. . . . If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law . . . . [the] denial of people's right to flee the war zone as refugees may also constitute a crime against humanity"
  • Military-Industrial Complex:
    • CIA's Panetta Is Falling Short (consortiumnews) "President Barack Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, needed only one month to establish that he lacks the courage, contrariness, judgment, and political and intellectual independence to reform the Central Intelligence Agency."
    • Jobless rate at 11.2% for veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan (usatoday) "That's significantly higher than the corresponding 8.8% rate for non-veterans in the same age group . . . ."
    • Gates Carries Over Iraq-WMD Lie (consortiumnews) "In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), but he was denied confirmation because a majority of members on the Senate Intelligence Committee believed he was lying about his knowledge and role in the Iran-Contra Affair."
    • Obama Avoids Foreign Base Cuts (consortiumnews) "Within his record $3.6 trillion budget, President Barack Obama has included a slight increase in funding for the Pentagon when compared with George W. Bush's budget of 2009."
  • Our 'Liberal Media':
    • Washington Post Is a Neocon Propaganda Sheet (consortiumnews) "For Americans who hear the name Washington Post and still think of 'All the President’s Men' – brave journalists facing down a corrupt President – today’s version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past."
    • After Years Of Lies, WSJ Concedes That Employee Free Choice Act ‘Doesn’t Remove The Secret-Ballot Option’ (thinkprogress) -- What is the lying, anti-worker, anti-democracy- neocon Murdoch up to with this admission?
    • Framing Obama -- by the Washington Post (consortiumnews) "An insidious power of a propagandistic newspaper – especially one with great influence – is how it can 'frame' an issue so the assumptions behind a story guide the readers to a preordained conclusion under the guise of presenting a fair journalistic account."
  • Sunset at the Portara (apod) -- Winter is over. Happy first day of Spring.
Posted by at