Musings on meat and the recent recall

Well, unless you live under a rock you’ve probably heard by now that 143 million pounds of beef coming from a particular meat factory in California have been recalled due to concerns over health and safety related to the improper health-related treatment of certain “downer” cows. A few thoughts:
1) I saw on the news today [...]

Support our troops?

This morning, my grandfather sent me an email “action alert” from the American Family Association urging protest of the recent Berkeley, California City Council resolution that declared the downtown Marine recruiting office “unwanted” and urged the recruiters to leave town. This article does not respond to that issue, but rather to the subject line of [...]

By the way…

If anyone hasn’t read NSPD 51/HSPD 20, they definitely should. It basically states that the president can take over all functions of the government as well as some private functions (read: corporate business interests) in the event of a “national emergency”. It was released May 9 of last year.
For some reason every time I think [...]

“[I] had been living inside their imagination.”

Recently I read the excellent novel Imagining Argentina by Thornton Wilder. The book is set in Argentina under a military junta of the type the United States tends to support in our so-called “ally” countries. People are constantly disappearing, being abducted by agents of the regime, including the wife of Carlos. Carlos possesses a mysterious [...]

Bush, Pakistan and the Bomb

This article from today’s International Herald Tribune gives an excellent example of what Chalmers Johnson calls “blowback”, from the title of his 2000 book (revised ed. 2004) Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, in which he essentially predicted a 9/11-like attack as one of the “unintended consequences” of American policy towards so-called “developing [...]

Hidden costs double war bill

Washington Post article
Ignoring for a moment the hypocrisy of the Democrats criticizing the cost of the wars when they overwhelmingly voted for them in the first place and continually approve funding for endless “emergency” appropriations, here’s an excerpt from the article:
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so [...]

Orwell Rolls in His Grave

A documentary exploration into how the Media is anti-democratic.

Internet cut in Myanmar, blogger presses on - from CNN

Internet cut in Myanmar, blogger presses on - CNN.com
From the story: According to The Associated Press, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday he believes the loss of life in Myanmar has been “far greater” than is being reported.
A Burgundy Revolution? - Time
While the official government-released death toll is 9, witness claim as many as [...]

The obligatory 9/11 post

I wasn’t going to do this, I was just going to let the post about Stirling Bridge stand as my statement about 9/11, but I just wrote this for my Livejournal and thought it was worth sharing here.
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, [...]

Read this if you care about what you eat

I don’t usually get into campaigns trying to leverage the government but sometimes even anarchists have to work within the system, and then brush our teeth later to get the bad taste out of our mouths.
Got this from the Urban Sisterhood:
The FDA wants to allow food from cloned animals into the food supply without labeling.
Please [...]

a couple of good articles

School’s keeping me crazy busy and probably will continue doing so until finals are over next week, so until then here are a couple of good, but scary articles to keep you entertained (and, hopefully, at least somewhat outraged):
The Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State: http://www.alternet.org/rights/36553
Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

America’s image

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that [...]

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Keeping Tabs on the Peaceniks

This really makes me rather angry. It doesn’t SURPRISE me, not in the least, not after I heard Brian Terrell say “vegetarianism” and “involvement with organic foods” was part of the rationale for investigating him under the FBI Joint Terror task force and that pacifist anabaptist groups were on the terrorist suspect list, but it [...]

This may be the best opinion I’ve seen so far on the Libby verdict

A Libby verdict - International Herald Tribune
I was thinking about writing something up, but most of what I would have said this piece says better.

the Katrina of 2007?

That’s how Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York refers to the current scandal regarding the treatment of wounded Iraq vets at Walter Reed hospital.
While comparisons may be apt on the count of massive government negligence and indifference regarding both the poorer denizens of the Gulf Coast and the wounded soldiers returning home from Iraq, [...]

A telling graphic…

found at http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com. Definitely do read the article the graphic is in.

Gee, where do OUR national priorities lie? Even if you allow for the possibility that military expenditures might be, by definition, expensive, this is still a telling picture.
The real question, which is also the subject of Eve Ensler’s latest book Insecure at Last: Losing [...]

Surprise, surprise - Intel twisted to manufacture link between Saddam and Al Qaida

Pentagon official’s prewar intel faulted | Top News | Reuters.com
Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, this morning, said, “The intelligence relating to the Iraq/al Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the… Administration’s decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the [...]

another thought on Romans 13, the oppressiveness of Christianity

my original post on Romans 13
This pertains, actually, to Paul’s immediately previous statement about repaying evil with good. Could it be that Paul has in mind that the Christians, as a sect with subversively dangerous ideas to the Empire, should keep their noses so clean, as it was, that the officials could legitimately find [...]

speaking of protesting…

Here’s one for you from The Smirking Chimp:
Future Shock: Evidence of Plans to Torture US Demonstrators
I do not see any way our government can even pretend to uphold the supposed traditional American values of little things like liberty and justice for all, that whole pursuit of happiness bit. The only reason it’s even possible [...]

The US Constitution: intended to provide liberty and justice for all?

Read this article and tell me what you think.
A Constitution for the Few: Looking Back to the Beginning — by Michael Parenti
The argument is that the actual way that the Constitution came into being served more to preserve and protect the status of the American upper class than the ideals we commonly assume today. Parenti [...]