Fear mongering and patriotism

I wish every American would read this and think about it:

It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see publick dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities...

-- Samuel Johnson

Sigh...

The war on science

Please take a look at an Alternet column entitled "The Bush Administration's War On Science". Here's how it gets started:

Over the past eight years, the lives of millions of people in the United States and beyond have been endangered by the US government. No, I'm not talking about the war in Iraq. I'm talking about the quiet, systematic war the government has been waging against science.

You may have heard about gross examples of the government censoring scientific documents. For example, it was widely reported last year that a government regulatory group excised at least half of the statements Centers for Disease Control director Julie Gerberding was set to make at a congressional hearing about how climate change will affect public health. You may also have heard about the scandal in 2004 when a whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that five of the seven members on a panel of "independent experts" stood to gain financially from shutting down a scientific investigation of a controversial mining technique called "hydraulic fracturing." The panel claimed that in its expert opinion, the technique didn't require regulation, despite many scientists' concerns that it might pollute groundwater.

But these are the stories that hit the headlines. There are hundreds more where they came from, and many of them are documented meticulously in a study released earlier this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) called "Federal Science and the Public Good."

The UCS report documents, in chilling detail, how agencies have fired scientists who disagreed with government policies. For example, in 2003, experts in nuclear physics were dismissed from a panel within the National Nuclear Security Administration because some of them had published about how the George W. Bush administration's beloved "bunker buster" weapons weren't very effective. And scientists who spoke out against the administration's stem cell policy were booted from the President's Council on Bioethics.

I really think we are well on our way to the extinction of the human race. What's sad is that it is so unnecessary. And what's really tragic is to see greed trump survival over and over.

The real downside to Obama-mania

Here's a comment that was left on an article asking the question if the news media have been unfair to Hillary Clinton:

Aw, gee, Jack. Just because everything she and President Clinton say and do are attacked by the media, and Obama gets continual positive coverage and commentary, you are asking if the media is unfair to her??? I’m shocked, I tell you - shocked!!

In all my 40+ years watching politics I have never seen anything like the obsessive, relentless pro-Obama bias that is rampant right now. Many of us out here know why: it’s to get him nominated, and then to ambush him with a far bigger smear campaign than was set upon Kerry, Gore or Dukakis. The only thing that amazes me is that Obama’s supporters refuse to see this coming.

I'm actually quite concerned about this.

RIP William F. Buckley

I agreed with him on very little and he used to irritate me no end but he was truly bright, literate, well informed and, unlike so many conservatives today, civil:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- National Review founder and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. died overnight in the study of his Stamford, Connecticut, home, the magazine announced on its Web site Wednesday.

He was 82.

"He died while at work," said Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the National Review Online, in a written statement. "If he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas."

I'll never forget the time he had the Dalai Lama on his television show, Firing Line. He was so very gracious and respectful. I appreciated him for that.

Overdoing it with the flag

Run over to Common Dreams and read a snarky little article called "Fetishizing the Flag". Here's a sample:

An article in Sunday’s New York Times reports on conservative hostility to Obama. He doesn’t wear a flag pin, they complain, and he doesn’t put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. In Monday’s Times, William Kristol added insult to injury with a hyperbolic ad-hominem attack on Obama, calling him “grandiose” and accusing him of “moral vanity.”

I remember when Americans weren’t obsessed with outward shows of patriotism. People only flew flags at their homes on Flag Day or the 4th of July. Now every day is Flag Day, and private homes can be hard to distinguish from government offices. I’ve fantasized knocking on doors and asking for a packet of stamps.
...
You know who used to wear little patriotic pins on their clothes? The Commies. I have a flag pin that dates back to the 80s; I sometimes wear it as a puzzle, to ask people if they can identify it. It’s the flag of the German Democratic Republic. East Germans and Soviets were wearing flag pins long before Americans decided they were necessary signs of patriotism. Perhaps if you were bedecked with tiny metal badges, it protected you from the KGB.

You know, when I was a kid I distinctly remember being taught at school that you put your hand over your heart for the Pledge of Allegiance but you stand at attention for the National Anthem. Sheesh!

Why we're here

This is very moving:

To this day I believe we are here on earth to live, grow, and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.

~ Rosa Parks

Afghan women today

Afghan woman

Back in 2001, I had an argument with an old friend about the U.S. plans to attack Afghanistan. My friend insisted that the war was a good thing because we were going to liberate women from the Taliban.

Well, take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled "Women's lives worse than ever":

Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.

Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.

Six years after the US and Britain "freed" Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, a new report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases.

Projects started in the optimistic days of 2002 have begun to wane as the UK and its Nato allies fail to treat women's rights as a priority, workers in the country insist.

The statistics in the report from Womankind, Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, make shocking reading. Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.

Very distressing.

WHAT is his problem?

This is just disgusting. Take a look:

Ralph Nader is entering the presidential race as an independent, he announced Sunday, saying it is time for a "Jeffersonian revolution."
...
"He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and, eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about," Sen. Barack Obama said a town hall meeting Sunday.

Calling Nader's move "very unfortunate," Sen. Hillary Clinton told reporters, "I remember when he ran before. It didn't turn out very well for anybody -- especially our country."
...
Nader was criticized by some Democrats in 2000 for allegedly pulling away support from Democrat Al Gore and helping George Bush win the White House.

Noting that he ran on the Green Party ticket that year, Clinton said Nader "prevented Al Gore from being the 'greenest' president we could have had."

If Gore had won the election we might have turned global warming around. I hope Nader is happy being perhaps the one who ends up being responsible for the extinction of humanity.

For your listening pleasure

Some great bluegrass!

The Pentagon on Climate Change

Today Matt Hukulak called my attention to a 2004 Guardian (Observer) article entitled "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us" that I remember reading when it first came out. I think I even blogged it then. It's worth another look because, sadly, the report has had very little effect. Here's part of what it says:

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
...
Last week [February, 2004] the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

But that didn't happen, did it?

No two ways about it. We're screwed.

A good question

I found this on Byzigenous Buddhapalian.

Friday cat blogging!

Pure adorable-ness!!

Chomsky quote

Short. Focused:

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

~Noam Chomsky

Congressman Kagen on health care

Now this is the moral thing to do:

This essential legislation will guarantee access to affordable care for every citizen by bringing an end to the discriminatory practice of allowing insurance companies to deny life-saving medical coverage to citizens due to any pre-existing medical conditions.

Our Constitution protects all citizens against discrimination, and it is time we apply this established principle to health care.

The No Discrimination in Health Insurance Act also establishes a competitive and transparent health care marketplace by requiring all insurance companies to openly disclose their prices and charge every citizen within the region the same fee for the same service - just as restaurants do when they hand you the menu and then charge every customer the same price for the same service.

The essential elements of this necessary legislation are: (1) No Discrimination due to pre-existing conditions, (2) Open Disclosure of all prices, and (3) Every Citizen is allowed to Pay the Lowest Price available. These ideas must be included in any successful comprehensive health care reform legislation.

This bill has been proposed by Rep. Steve Kagen, M.D. of Wisconsin who has also refused his congressional health care as a protest until all Americans have access to affordable care.

What triggers revolutions

I want to call your attention to an article called "When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution":

Here's an excerpt:

Progressive modern democracies run on mutual trust between classes and a shared vision of the common good that binds widely disparate groups together. Now, we're also about to re-learn the historical lesson that liberals like flat hierarchies, racial and religious tolerance, and easy class mobility not because we're soft-headed and soft-hearted — but because, unlike short-sighted conservatives, we understand that tight social cohesion is our most reliable and powerful bulwark against the kinds of revolutions that bring down great economies, nations and cultures... [T]he stage for revolution [has historically been] set when the upper classes broke faith with society's other groups, and began to openly prey on them in ways that threatened their very future. Not surprisingly, the other groups soon united, took up arms, and
rebelled.

And here we are again: Conservative policies have opened the wealth gap to Depression levels; put workers at the total mercy of their employers; and deprived the working and middle classes of access to education, home ownership, health care, capital, legal redress, and their expectations of a better future for their kids. You can only get away with blaming this on gays and Mexicans for so long before people get wise to the game. And as the primaries are making clear: Americans are getting wise.

Our current plutocratic nobility may soon face the same stark choice its English, French, and Russian predecessors did. They can keep their heads and take proactive steps to close the gap between themselves and the common folk... Or they can keep insisting stubbornly on their elite prerogatives, until that gap widens to the point where the revolution comes — and they will lose their heads entirely.

I wonder if revolution is even possible any more, however. There are such sophisticated methods of crowd control these days as well as surveillance methods. I wonder if it's possible for there to be a successful uprising.