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04-25-09

• Seen one or two, seen 'em all - The most highly classified of all that the government is hiding:
• Are UFOs real? Famous people who believed (telegraph/uk) "The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years." -- Having seen (in the presence of other witnesses) two together at one time that definitely were unidentified and were flying objects, include me to that list, although I'm not quite as famous as they all are.
• The latest thing that will kill you dead:
• WHO declares international concern over swine flu (sfgate) -- If there are swine flu victims in your area, wash your hands often, carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer with you everywhere and use it often, don't stick your flu-germ-dirty fingers in your mouth, nose, or eyes. If you get it or think you have it, stay home so you don't pass it along. If the swine flu turns into an epidemic, threat it as you would an avian flu pandemic - except for the parts that pertain to infection of pets by birds and dried bird droppings.. Find out NOW if you don't know how. Check the news on a daily basis on swine flu. See also my 02-03-09 entry (Hiding China’s Bird).
• Mexico flu 'a potential pandemic' (bbc)
• Global Broiling and Environment Destruction - Go Obama, Go!
• Did Obama Throw Appalachia’s Mountaintops Under The Bulldozers? (firedoglake) -- Has put the wolf in charge of the mountain top mining chicken koop. How very Republicon of him.
• Dark Markings of the Sky (apod)
  

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04-24-09

• Rotating Earth from Galileo (apod)
  

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04-23-09

• The Phony War on Drugs:
• Juking the Stats - Statistics Will Always Lie - The War on the Underclass (from 19:20 to end) (pbs bill moyers journal) -- Discussing HBO's The Wire, the 'War on Drugs' is all about juking the stats, has reduced the arrest rates for violent crime while enormously increasing arrest rates for minor drug offenses, and has propelled cops with lots of those minor drug arrest records up through the ranks, marginalized the 'expendables' of society, destroyed innumerable families, fed the voracious prison-industrial complex and overstuffed our U.S. prisons.
• Sharpless 308 (apod)
  

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04-22-09

• Israel: U.S. Partner in Crimes Against Humanity and Companion Black Hole:
• New Foreign Minister Lieberman Says "Believe me, America accepts all our decisions" (haaretz)
• The Biggest Financial Ripoff in the History of the World:
• Robert Scheer: Thievery Under the TARP (truthdig)
• Restore the Rule of Law:
• George W. Bush - Compassionate Conservative: How the Bush administration waterboarded a low-level operative, who was brain-damaged, 83 times (americablog) -- Would it have meant the ovens if Bush were not a "compassionate conservative"?
• Jeremy Scahill: A Closer Look at Obama's 'New' Position on Torture Prosecutions (rebelreports) "We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration." Sign a petition here.
• Torture architect John Rizzo is still serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel (thinkprogress) -- Since the CIA serves almost exclusively as the president's own personal, private army, this says quite a lot about Obama.
• Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown (propublica)
• Sedna of the Outer Solar System (apod) - Occultation of Venus This Morning By the Moon (spaceweather - enlarged image)

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04-21-09

• Global Warming Predictions 2070-2100 (apod)

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04-20-09

• Military-Industrial Profiteers Out of Control:
• Flashback to 01-01-09: Chalmers Johnson discussing his three books on the overreach and decline of the American military empire--Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis (video.google). Johnson, a professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, remarks that if you have a little money, it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to invest in a home away from home up in Canada.
• Flowing Barchan Sand Dunes on Mars (apod)
  

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04-19-09

• Return to the Rule of Law and Legal Accountability:
• Overlords of US Torture Must Be Punished (independent/uk) "If, there or here, evidence points to high level, unpalatable, unethical and possibly criminal advice, the conductors should be called to public account."
• Mr. President, War Crimes Must Be Investigated (common dreams) "First, the men who wrote those memos should be investigated for disbarment. They acted in ways that are unconscionable and unprofessional, to put it mildly. Second,, neither the President nor Congress should investigate these crimes. They must be pursued by a special independent investigator who has no political ax to grind. Now you may well ask, who approves of torture? Well, hardly anyone, except those in the Bush administration who justified or directed these war crimes. Third, how can we allow a sitting federal judge to remain on the bench--for life-- when he provided legal justification for torture? I speak here, of course, of Stephen L. Bybee, who should resign or be impeached."
• The New York Times today called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee (nytimes) "Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated. . . . After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability."
• UN Rapporteur On Torture: Obama’s Pledge Not To Pursue Torture Prosecutions At CIA Is Not Legal (thinkprogress) "The United States has, like all other Contracting Parties to the UN Convention Against Torture, committed itself to investigate instances of torture and to prosecute all cases in which credible evidence of torture is found."
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month (thinkprogress) "The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn’t sound very effective to me"
• View Near a Black Hole (apod) -- This one looks like Israel to me. A fair representation of conservative Israeli government ambitions in the region -- and, it's insatiable hunger for U.S. aid, congressional support, and U.S. armaments with which to kill non-Jewish non-combatants (oh, along with a comparatively very few real combatants).