Kabuki to create impression he's somehow a daring choice.

All that matters is that Hagel will perform the job of the Pentagon CEO. He will lobby for maximum (realistic) MIC profits, stir up bullshit about supposed threats, and prepare the next six or seven little wars the Empire will be forced to start. Just like any other Secretary of War. And we saw during the latest Gaza atrocity the limits of frankness about Israel. Obama called the Israeli attack counterproductive and the next batch of military aid to Israel went into the defense bill, as always. Hagel won't be any impediment to that. This is a sop for choosing Another Republican.

Really now?

Don't you think the bigger problem lies with politicians who render their promises worthless, thus discouraging popular belief and participation in the process? I speak as someone who expects these results and nevertheless votes lesser evil, but that puts me in a small minority. Most people are conditioned to discouragement about politics and want to believe fully in what they vote for. (The latter quality is all-too evident on DU, where quasi-deification of the chosen team leadership is a must.)

Thanks for trying to save our souls, Pastor.

Insofar as I thought about it all, I never thought anything other than that she killed herself. And generally I hate and avoid all tabloid-type threads. But you know what? It's an Internet board. Let people speculate. It is not inherently embarrassing to anyone. It is certainly not embarrassing to anyone who doesn't speculate, or to "DU in general."

You want to know what's embarrassing to DU?

Doublethink and double standards that rightly condemn Republican actions but justify the same actions by Democrats.

Those here who call themselves liberals but join the assault on earned benefits.

People in denial about the fundamental, widespread class-based criminality that runs this economy, above all in the financial sector. People who find excuses for Geithner and Holder catering to this criminal class of bankers.

People who should be leading on exposure of election fraud or deep state criminality, but who instead push denial.

People who push an essentially Republican program in Democratic guise. People who support wars and military buildups. Third Way and neoliberal programming.

That's embarrassing.

Some minor speculation for a few days about a nurse's suicide in the UK, not so much.

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Not at all true. Hanging is a very common method of suicide...

among all groups, throughout the world.

Hanging is the most common method of suicide in the UK. Here are statistics for 2010:

http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics/england-wales-methods-suicide

21% of UK female suicides were by hanging. That's 247 women in the UK for 2010. Poisoning/overdose was more common among women, whereas hanging was the most common method among men.

In the US, almost 20 percent of female suicides in 2004 were by "Hanging, strangulation, suffocation," for a total of 1,356 women who killed themselves that way in this country in one year.

http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html

Not so many out of 300 million population, but nothing you could call "very rare."

You will find the same story in almost every country. Fewer women kill themselves than men (in the West, more make the attempt). Among those who do kill themselves, hanging usually will be one of the three most common methods.

I would not want any part on this particular political spectrum.

These general terms are

a) generally meaningless
b) largely removed from any meaning they may have once had
c) long-ago perverted into attack terms with strawman definitions
d) obfuscatory
e) imposed by an ideological hegemony that seeks to limit debate
f) generally placed in false opposition and relation to each other
g) barely if ever correspondant to the most important conflicts and issues in society
h) generally without stable referents in reality
i) a frightened rabbit's way of avoiding left and right.

But other than that...

Your particular listing of it might as well come from Gallup or some such.

In particular, "moderate" might be the biggest bullshit term in the galaxy.

I support the status quo, perhaps with small modifications, therefore I am "moderate."

Or else: My views are an average of two points I have arbitrarily chosen and define as extreme. Therefore I am "moderate."

Or else: I want to win this debate. Therefore I choose to call myself something reassuring, which is "moderate."

Or else: I don't know very much, so I choose "moderate."

Or else: I don't have strong opinions and "don't like politics," not like those fanatics who actually stand for something, therefore I am moderate.

Why do the Apache helicopter murderers...

fail to prompt the same flood of comment on this board as Private Manning, who exposed this war crime? Why was the whistleblower subjected to torture, while these men have not been investigated? Why is he facing life in prison while no investigation is underway of the horrific war crimes exposed in the Iraq war logs? Why are the architects of the war of aggression all free and in prosperous sinecures, awaiting their chance to return to power in a future administration?

Videos - Collateral Murder
http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Update: On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with disclosing this video (after allegedly speaking to an unfaithful journalist). The whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has called Mr. Manning a 'hero'. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait. The Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. To assist Private Manning, please see bradleymanning.org.

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.

Which is why we locked him in a walk-in closet...

-- for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day

-- with a bright light on overhead at all times

-- naked and without covers

-- with orders to sit upright on the edge of the bed without touching walls or anything around him for hours at a time

-- and with interruptions to wake him up after allowing short periods of sleep.

Also, the 20 minutes "outside" in a concrete yard are in shackles.

Because that's how you treat the depressed: Make sure they want to kill themselves! Employ the classic techniques of sensory deprivation and mental destruction for breaking prisoners down into zombie states! Partly as developed by the CIA and famously seen in its rendition prisons!

Any further apologetics for torture today? I don't think you've done your daily Kill Assange thread yet.

That is an incredibly smug & silly comment.

The funny thing is, "if for some reason" the Communist Party of China decided to award you a million-dollar tax-free prize in exchange for screaming "Fuck the English Queen, ancient symbol of racism and imperialist mass murder," not once but twice from the parapets of the Great Wall, I am sure that you would jump at the chance! Like any return-maximizing American would and should.

You don't know me, I don't know you, and total fantasy scenarios (projections of your evident desire to be UK nobility) are irrelevant.

For the record, as if it matters, I'd accept such an honor from the Queen, and I'd use my time in the UK sun to advocate an end to monarchy and aristocracy. Unless, of course, she paid the right price in money that I get to keep. (Enough for a reasonable expectation of a lifetime's security would do.) In which case, I'd sing and dance whatever she commanded under the terms of a negotiated contract. After all, I already whore for employers in exchange for wages, as most likely you also do (or did), and certainly as most Mets fans also do. So I'd go with the economic imperative.

In other vitally important questions, what if Steinbrenner offered you a contract to play third base on the Yankees right now? Because that's a lot likelier than your racist, imperialist Queen and her title-bestowing apparatus taking note of lower orders like you or me.

RIP Jack Brooks:

He was one of the few to probe for truth during the Reagan-Bush era Iran-Contra hearings, which served to cover up a vast complex of criminal dealings in arms, drugs and money to pay for the CIA's right-wing armies and death squads. To him we owe the limited exposure of Oliver North's involvement in the Rex-84 interagency martial law plans and exercises, held in 1984. These rehearsed the round-up of 400,000 political opponents and undocumented Central American aliens in the contingency of a US invasion of Nicaragua. The exposure and uprooting of the deep state networks who would even contemplate such operations remains as a future necessity.

.

Trivial stories about "royalty" should not be LBN.

Some lady got pregnant in Britain - so? That makes her one of how many thousands who announced such a development on the planet today?

This should be of no concern to an ostensibly Democratic, secular forum. I mean, if people want to post, let'em, but not as LBN. There are plenty of gossip sites to talk about imperial holdovers who uphold eugenics theories.

(EDIT: To add quotes around "royalty.&quot



There's a more humane solution -- give them generous pensions & re-entry training.