"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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In memoriam by Chris D. Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK I think it would be fitting if this year on the 4th of July all Americans would leave the bitchin' fireworks display unlit, and instead have a moment of prayer or solemn reflection under a flag flown at half-mast. Do this in memoriam to those who truly died in a bid for freedom and those who died for the flimsy, see-through, depraved and utterly shameless illusion of freedom. And then after your moments of silence and bitter tears please turn your wounded hearts towards those who are viewing a very different display of fire in the sky as their lives are ruined as they yearn for a freedom of their own in the wake of a war of pure deceit and inconceivable terror. If the 'President' himself should come to your home in this sacred moment as you try to remember the true meaning of freedom and the founding principles of your country, kindly tell him to get the fuck off your property unless he plans to bring back safe and sound every poor soul he has condemned to a meaningless death touring the Middle East so they might share this once meaningful day with you. Freedom may not be free, but abiding by tyranny carries a price too horrid to allow even your most hated enemy to pay. Dark days for Starbucks: Job cuts and store closures Is America in a permanent decline? Chris D.  Of thee I sing by MonkeyMan Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK I sing a song of a once free nation, of citizenship and censorship, of mundane, arcane, insane law, worship, and war-ships, I sing a song of Uncle Sam, with a tyrannical right and an ineffective left hand. Whose back is bent and his legs are lame. I sing a song of Lady Liberty on her knees before profits, prophets, and the Chinese. Full of cheeseburgers, fries and oversweet tea. I sing a song of a standing army, A soldiers' valor, a mother's pallor, a wasting disease. I sing a song of the USA whose foundation is given 'way whose Mustang spirit has had it's day. What would the founders have to say today? I sing a song of news that spews polluting the air, the land and the minds, screwing with the view. I sing a song of a forgotten Vet, and his debt, His final rest in unknown yet. I sing a song of our country that we will reclaim, and make even stronger than before that infamous day. Happy Independence Day. May I have your home telephone number, please? Why would it be illegal? If someone is in my yard uninvited and I blow a whistle at them, are they gonna' call the cops? My point is that I pay for my phone. It's mine, not yours. It's a privacy issue. I have the same automated voicemail on my home phone EVERYDAY! Why do they keep calling? Obviously I am not going to answer any number that I don't recognize. A daily call, to me, constitutes harassment, especially since I am on the no call list. If you had an ex that called every day, you could call the cops and report harassment. Why are telemarketers immune? Same behavior. MonkeyMan I too am on the alleged "no call list", and I too receive the same automated calls from the same companies over and over again. "This is your final notice. Your car's extended warranty is about to expire," when , of course, we have no car and we've received the same "final notice" dozens of times. A few times I've listened to the recording to the end and pressed "2" (which promises to remove our number from their list) or pressed "0" for a human operator (and been promptly disconnected), but nothing is accomplished. I try to be Zen and laugh it off, because if I throw the phone at the wall I'll just need a new phone. Helen & Harry I get 800 number calls on my cell and don't answer them. But I recently added my cell phone to the national cell phone No Call list. I'll let you know if it works. I mentioned that I swim 3-5 times a week. I love kicking off and swimming under water, as close to the bottom as I can get, for as long as I can. For a few moments each day I get a break from the lights and noise of our modern life. My version of getting "Zen" I suppose. MonkeyMan For us it's fishing. I take the pole and spend several hours at a quiet park catching (and releasing) pond fish, while husband sits beside me and reads. It's a few hours in 1808 instead of 2008, and allows our internal batteries to recharge. Helen & Harry I have a little Zebco... it has a cat toy on the end of it. I cat fish from the couch. I grew up fishing, but I just don't think about it anymore. Those were good times. I'm jealous. The Savannah River is too muddy for trout (Fish & Wildlife Dept. found out the hard way) and I have lost too many fights with catfish. Happy Fishing! MonkeyMan Four more years by Pujyboy Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re My hope is no longer audacious He's just another politician. People need to stop backing candidates because they are electable and start voting for candidates whose records we can trust. Obama hardly even has a Senate voting record. He was there for a year before he began his presidential bid. Ron Paul would have done us some good. He certainly has his flaws, but he's the only guy who could have rescued us from the looming financial melt down. I figure we have about 4 years and then we're totally fucked. Pujyboy When all writing is for children by Herb Ruhs, MD Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK In the last stages of "civilization," which we are apparently living through now, all the natural relationships are turned upside down as the culminating result of constant manipulation and perceptual coercion. Status devolves to those with the greatest sponsorship by centers of power that maintain that power by virtue of an ability to coerce compliance. Advancing your personal status in these situations, including one's status as an author, becomes a function of your ability to communicate with a population that is functioning at very low levels of moral and intellectual development for the purpose of inducing compliance with the aims of the sponsoring hierarchical structure, be it employers in mass media, publishers of mass market entertainment or even technical and scientific writing. ... Click for more ... Herb Ruhs, MD Those f*cking bureaucrats by Chris M. Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK US teacher is suspended for letting pupils read bestseller This is the kind of shit that really tears me and is one of the main reasons I got totally turned off to education is this country a long time ago. A school with no principal? Milwaukee tries it, and some people like what they see Now on a brighter note this is definitely a small positive spot in education. If we can get those fucking bureaucrats out of education, as well as health care, this would be a big improvement. Chris M. Mugabe, "the only candidate" — WRONG & other mistakes by Marie K. Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Zimbabwe, a no-win situation, Nationalism today, Mscsrrr Prog replies Actually, the names of BOTH leaders were on the ballots as the link below confirms. So what gives with this “daily headline” article? That was info easy to discover, and yet that 1st sentence was wrong and the rest stuck with the typical propaganda about Zimbabwe. However, below you’ll see that I’m pretty sure I’ve made a mistake myself (affecting 1 sentence). It now seems that Mugabe only INITIALLY pursued neo-liberal/IMF policies and that he later rejected them. As for the election, this Zimbabwean English language newspaper article announces the OFFICIAL RESULTS (see below) of the presidential run-off (and has links to the other results): it specifically says that the MDC leader’s name was on the ballot because “his withdrawal was a nullity” which means that his “pulling out” happened too late to be official — which surely the MDC candidate himself knew. I’d say that makes his gesture of pulling out some kind of show. Actually, there were a lot of MDC “shows.” Anyway, the turnout for both parts of the election was about the same — 42%, and the results for the 210-member lower chamber were 110 seats for the MDC (both factions) 99 for ZANU-PF, and 1 seat for an independent. In the Senate, 16 seats are assigned to tribal chiefs with 2 more for the Council of Chiefs’ president & deputy pres., 5 are appointed by the president, and 10 are for the governors appointed by the president. The other 60 are elected: the results were 30 seats for the MDC (both factions) and 30 for ZANU-PF. Some of the results weren’t announced until May 2 because there were recounts in 23 constituencies requested by ZANU-PF after accusing the MDC of vote rigging. According to Wikipedia, the March election was described by the head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) official observer mission as “a peaceful and credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.” It was the period afterwards that was problematic — a continuous stream of MDC accusations and claims of having won. Also, there were some foreign accounts of ZANU-PF supporters attacking people in rural areas. I assume mistakes/propaganda are involved since it is unlikely that ZANU-PF people would attack those that support them. Another type of report was that Mugabe loyalists were out putting pressure on people in Harare to vote, but it is the urban voters who are the most likely ones to vote for the MDC. I guess more “mistakes” are being made in those reports. What seems pretty evident is that the country in March was split pretty equally between the two parties — the MDC (both factions) and ZANU-PF. Yet, the presidential run-off had Mugabe getting 85.51% and the MDC leader 9.3%. The March presidential results were 47.9% for the MDC candidate and 43.2& for Mugabe. The leader of the other MDC faction got 8.3% and a 4th candidate got .6%. It looks as though the splitting of the MDC into 2 groups caused the loss of the presidential election for the MDC in the first round. There is no doubt that the results of the run-off seem very improbable compared to the March figures. I can think of several possible explanations. I have added some comments related to each of them that indicate some lines for investigation. (1) Possibly, the MDC itself was carrying out some vote rigging in March that increased the number of votes they got or lowered Mugabe’s or both.
(2) Possibly, Mugabe did some vote rigging in June. You have to wonder, though, why it was done in such an obvious way.
(3) HOWEVER, if you assume that the run-off was also basically “free and fair,” then many Zimbabweans changed their minds between March and June.
SO, I find myself eager to learn more about Mugabe’s policies and what the former Yugoslavia accomplished. It is knowing about various SPECIFIC ideas that matters. If big business and economies are EVER going to be regulated in effective ways or even be re-organized in new ways, it will require those specific ideas. As for Zimbabwe, for once I hope I’m wrong and that Mr. Gowans is correct. Hopefully, Mugabe and his supporters ARE protecting Zimbabwe’s independence — which would be a good reason for him to stay on despite his age. Marie K. Dancing on the raft by JR Mooneyham Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK The lone guy dancing around the world has made a second video, and it seems very sweet and endearing (it has a few differences from the original). It sort of reminds me of that scene in Joe Versus the Volcano where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are stranded on a tiny raft in the ocean, and Ryan may be dying, and Hanks not long after, but he's done all he can. So he listens to some music from a radio and dances alone on the raft, while waiting and hoping Ryan will recover, and somehow they'll both find rescue. The movie is worth renting for that scene alone. JR Mooneyham (www.jrmooneyham.com/) Visualizing no bombs at all by Sherri B. Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Visualize high-altitude nuclear explosions Okay not to be annoying again but this "visualization" is assuming that OUR government and the opposing governments are going to release just the right kind of bombs just because THEY said so? Or because you are hoping that they do? Though John Hersey was born in China and returned to China to write does not men he didn't have an American life. He was not a survivor of a bomb attack. He wrote about six people who were. Only six. Jonathan Schell is also an American though he took Japanese studies in Japan. Then came back to America. The point of this is that these two speak from a distance. They did not suffer but thought their acquaintance with the culture involved allowed them to make assumptions. Because America claps its hands and pats them on the back because their work makes "sense" to them doesn't have one hair to do with what this current set of administrations are capable of. You wrote: In the scenarios constructed by experts (and presented in Congressional hearings)... Are you kidding me? "Experts"? ANYONE in congress? You believe what they say to be the truth? *** Using Wiki articles as backup for any kind of important information is worrisome at best as they can alter the info based upon the writer or corporate need to dispense information. http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=97&contentid=4754&page=2 *** All these things that YOU wouldn't want will occur somewhere. People DO live near nuclear reactors. You say: I wouldn't want to be part of any high-tech army engaged with an insurgent force. *** Why couldn't or shouldn't that happen? Especially when we're under large scale attack? You wrote: In any event, the consequences of well-placed high-altitude nuclear explosions, in the long run, would be less severe than those anticipated from oil and resource depletion resulting from runaway industrial growth. *** You need to talk in length with survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not those that wrote about them from a distance. Talk to the burned, the cancer victims, the destitute. Though yes different kind of bombs were used on their cities they were bombs nonetheless. Our government ensured "our" safety and murdered millions. But when those bombs are headed to our soil I'm not going to hope for "atmospheric" conditions to keep us safe and for our government to make the "right" choices in choosing and using certain bombs. The oceans, in particular, would likely rebound quickly from their current moribund state. *** How long is "quickly" and can you last that long should our water supplies become contaminated? You write: There would be no advantage in bombing people back to the stone age when everyone is already practically there anyway. *** Ummm... Do you remember the leaders that have these weapons? They don't CARE about bombing people back into the stone age. How would or could you get the idea that they do? The rich will rebuild the poor will die. I'm visualizing (not to be disrespectful) no bombing at all. These are governments that are made up of psychopaths and sociopaths. Hoping that a bomb will drop on others and kill them or on us and there's minimal "collateral damage" is not for me. The "save me sorry you're dead" thought is not for me. One man dead is one too many. No bombs. Can you imagine how stressed out mentally these people will be when they get home? Screaming passengers! Hahahahaha! Sherri B. Obamagram by Jonathan C. Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Obama hands McCain the election You've got that right! Barack Obama's web site is about to be taken over by activists outraged at his FISA Amendments Act support. Their grassroots group is about to become the largest on all of BarackObama.com! Listen to your supporters, Mr. Obama! Jonathan C. Like a human by Brellrai Friday, July 4, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Re Brutal Tell me how you'd respond.I'd have responded like a human being, not like a total ass. Brellrai I have ankles, so I can't be a total ass. If you have ankles too, answer the question: Helen & Harry
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