kpete
kpete's Journal
Bradley Manning's 1,000th day in prison
America's track record on the handling of prisoners is no more enlightened than, say, Egypt's or Germany's or just about any other country you could name.
The actions of Bradley Manning offer a moment to reflect on the meaning of secrecy in the information age. Regardless of one's opinion of the young private (traitor or hero, disturbed or determined, ideological or idiotic), he put the entire secrecy apparatus to the test. Manning downloaded a perfect geologic slice of what we don't know, and presented that information to the world. He took the catastrophic loss of "secret" information out of the theoretical and into the real world. He initiated the government secrecy industry's worst-case scenario.
What is perhaps most astonishing is that the U.S. government had no substantive contingency plans or response mechanisms in place for such an event, aside from a shameful mistreatment of a harmless, if unwell, twenty-three year old.
For all that Bradley Manning revealed, he didn't really reveal much. But by its shameful non-application of justice in Manning's prosecution -- 1,000 days in chains for a nonviolent offense, without the dignity of a trial by jury -- the U.S. government has itself revealed the most terrible truth imaginable. ...The Atlantic
"Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the flesh of the earth and pissed upon its bones."
from a few years ago...
Still, there is choice available, even a superior choice: Accept the truth and act upon it. We can at the very least say no to scorched babies in Iraq. We can refuse to participate in a dead society gone shopping. That in itself can be called embracing the spirit. It won't accomplish shit, but it is nevertheless the right thing to do. Because it's the only just thing left to do. Too late, for sure, but better than remaining a dysfunctional moral cretin. My inner scales tell me so.
As long as we are cataloguing pointless acts of moral common sense, we may as well turn off PBS's Nova for a while. Realize the limits of technology and quit looking for more techno solutions to what technology itself hath wrought. All the green energy sources and eating right cannot repair what has been irretrievably ruined. Species gluttony is nearly over and we've eaten the flesh of the earth and pissed upon its bones. Not because we are cruel by nature -- though a case might be made for stupidity -- but because we took the existence of individual consciousness to mean that each of us is some unique center of the world, acquisitive and deserving of all things. One brand of this collective hallucination, although there are others, is called American exceptionalism. And we can get away with that game as long as the oil and the entertainment last. Which looks to be about another half hour.
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http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/11/the-sucker-bait-called-hope.html
Why Is GOP Speaking Out Against Immigration Reform? -BECAUSE- Private Prison Execs Told Them To
Why are so many Republicans speaking out against comprehensive immigration reform? Perhaps because private prison executives told them to. Some of our nation's biggest opponents to commonsense reforms, like a pathway to citizenship, happen to be recipients of prison industry cash. For example, Republican immigration reform standard-bearer, Marco Rubio, has scored big with the private prison industry, raking in a whopping $27,300 in donations from the GEO Group. Contributions like that make sure members of Congress have a vested interest to keep the prison cells full of undocumented immigrants waiting to be deported. According to The Think Progress Blog, immigration detention has more than doubled private prison profits since 1995, and those sentenced for immigration offenses make up one of the fastest-growing segments of our overflowing federal prison population. It's time to get profit out of the prison industry, and money out of Congress, so we can get some honest immigration reform in our nation.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14739-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-the-biggest-opponents-of-immigration-reform-are-those-receiving-prison-industry-cash-and-more
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Among members of Congress, the top two recipients of contributions from CCA are its home-state senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee. The Republican lawmakers, each of whom has received more than $50,000 from CCA according to data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, represent important swing votes for advancing a reform bill through the Senate. Another top CCA recipient is Arizona Republican John McCain, who has gotten $32,146 from CCA and is a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that is working to draft legislation. His fellow Gang of Eight member, Marco Rubio, ranks among the top recipients of contributions from the Florida-based GEO Group, receiving $27,300 in donations over the course of his career.
In recent years, each of these senators has sponsored bills that would have increased the detention and incarceration of immigrants. Legislation put forward by Alexander in 2009, for example, would have provided for “increased alien detention facilities.” And a 2011 bill cosponsored by McCain and Rubio sought to expand Operation Streamline, a federal enforcement program that makes illegal entry a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/21/1624061/report-republicans-with-influence-on-immigration-debate-are-top-recipients-of-private-prison-contributions/
Let's Not Pretend that Bush Won in 2000 - by BooMan
Let's Not Pretend that Bush Won in 2000
by BooMan
Fri Feb 22nd, 2013 at 02:37:44 PM EST
Michael Gerson acts like President Bush won the 2000 election. It may be a permissible error if you are talking horseshoes and hand grenades, but he's trying to use Bush's campaign as some kind of template for GOP revival. He explicitly compares the 2000 rebranding effort of Bush to the 1992 rebranding effort of Bill Clinton. Insofar as Clinton represented a new brand for the Democratic Party, that is because he was part of a new institution (the Democratic Leadership Council) that had different ideas. His campaign's focus on the struggling economy was strictly tactical (we were recovering from a recession). On substance, Clinton bucked the labor unions in favor of free trade. He espoused more business-friendly policies as part of a overall strategy to reach parity in fundraising again. But he also led with obviously progressive priorities like health care and gay rights in the military and gun control that actually drove a big wedge between the Democratic Party and a big part of Clinton's winning coalition (much of which is now solidly in the Republican camp).
Clinton had some help from Ross Perot, too. It will never be completely resolved whether Clinton would have won in a straight-up contest against Poppy Bush. I doubt very much that he would have won states like Georgia or Montana in a one-on-one match. But, I'll grant that Clinton rebranded the party. It's just that he did it substantively.
Dubya distinguished himself from the cavemen who had impeached Bill Clinton by embracing a federal role in education and, eventually, providing a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. But his ridiculous campaign against Gore was only good enough for him to lose, and that isn't a prescription for revival.
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Anyway, Bush didn't win.
MORE:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/2/22/143744/505
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-republican-party-needs-a-shakeup/2013/02/21/d89d9d82-7baa-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html
pst, someone make sure FOX get this pic,
obviously, these 2 are up to NO GOOD!
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/michelle-obama-teams-big-bird-psas-article-1.1269738
Caught In Act: Priests are being blackmailed by male prostitutes who work at a sauna near Vatican
Michael Chase Walker
?@mchasewalker
The priests are being blackmailed by male prostitutes who work at a sauna in Quarto Miglio district near the Vatican http://thebea.st/YLXrOm
Oh boy.
The trio of cardinals who authored the report, known in the Italian press as the ‘007 Priests,’ were commissioned by Benedict to dig into the Vatileaks scandal that rocked the Holy See last fall when the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted of stealing secret papal documents and leaking them to the press. The sleuthing cardinals ran a parallel investigation to the Vatican tribunal’s criminal case against the butler, but theirs was far more covert and focused not on the mechanics of the leaks, but on who within the Roman Curia might be the brains behind them. And, according to the leaked reports, what the ‘007 Priests’ found went far beyond the pope’s private desk. “What’s coming out is very detailed X-ray of the Roman Curia that does not spare even the closest collaborators of the Pope,” wrote respected Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao in Panorama. “The Pope was no stranger to the intrigues, but he probably did not know that under his pontificate there was such a complex network and such intricate chains of personal interests and unmentionable relationships.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/22/priests-in-panties.html
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A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/21/pope-retired-amid-gay-bishop-blackmail-inquiry
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