Oops . . .

— Hybrid Sons of Tifton 85 —

THE INQUISITR has an article you should check out: “Genetically Modified Grass Begins Releasing Cyanide, Kills Texas Cattle”. Really.  That bears repeating,

“Genetically Modified Grass
   Begins Releasing Cyanide,
   Kills Texas Cattle”

Political Science 101 . . .

Yup, that pretty much sums 'er up.

Two years ago . . .

AS THE PERSECUTION of Julian Assange was getting organized, things were in their early stages, and on 23 of June, 2011 a secret five hour meeting took place between Julian and Eric Schmidt, who is the CEO of Google. Wikileaks has the complete transcript. It gets a bit technical, but you can get through that, and ponder.

This meeting discusses the current state-of-things, and gives an interesting look at the facets of the Wikileaks effort around the world. It discusses the power and the vulnerability of the surveillance state, and what concerned citizens might do about it. Mobile phone network freedom may be the key to freedom in the future:

During these revolutionary periods the people involved in the revolution need to be able to communicate. They need to be able to communicate in order to plan quickly and also to communicate information about what is happening in their environment quickly so that they can dynamically adapt to it and produce the next strategy. Where you only have the security services being able to do this, and you turn the mobile phone system off, the security services have such an tremendous advantage compared to people that are trying to oppose them. If you have a system where individuals are able to communicate securely and robustly despite what security services are doing, then security services have to give more ground. It's not that the government is necessarily going to be overthrown, but rather they have to make more concessions.

Well, Julian wound up in the London embassy of Ecuador, as US pressure built up. A key component has been to deny Wikileaks access to the banking system, especially credit cards. This means that you can't support Wikileaks, because you can't donate any money. Well, according to NPR, that's changed:

Iceland's most recent move that lent support to WikiLeaks was an April Supreme Court decision that "ordered Valitor hf, the Icelandic partner of MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc., to process card payments for [the] anti-secrecy website ... within 15 days or face daily penalties," Bloomberg News says. So, as other nations have tried to put roadblocks in WikiLeaks' way by cutting off its access to funds, Iceland has gone the opposite direction.

Maybe getting one of those mobile phone base stations might be a worthy consideration, but even passing them a few bucks might be crucial; these guys have some heavy lifting to do.

Like it is, like it is . . .

Women in space . . .

FIFTY YEARS NOW, women have been in space, starting with Valentina Tereshkova, who went to orbit on June 16, 1963. You can find out all about it at io9. And there are places on the planet where women aren't allowed to drive?

Bradley vs the Beast . . .

THE AMERICAN STATE has become a mutant, vicious beast, beyond its own laws. Julian Assange posted a letter on Wikileaks, commenting about the persecution of Bradley Manning:

Statement by Julian Assange

As I type these lines, on June 3, 2013, Private First Class Bradley Edward Manning is being tried in a sequestered room at Fort Meade, Maryland, for the alleged crime of telling the truth. The court martial of the most prominent political prisoner in modern US history has now, finally, begun.

It has been three years. Bradley Manning, then 22 years old, was arrested in Baghdad on May 26, 2010. He was shipped to Kuwait, placed into a cage, and kept in the sweltering heat of Camp Arifjan.

"For me, I stopped keeping track," he told the court last November. "I didn’t know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages... I remember thinking I’m going to die."

After protests from his lawyers, Bradley Manning was then transferred to a brig at a US Marine Corps Base in Quantico, VA, where - infamously - he was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of his captors - a formal finding by the UN. Isolated in a tiny cell for twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day, he was deprived of his glasses, sleep, blankets and clothes, and prevented from exercising. All of this - it has been determined by a military judge - "punished" him before he had even stood trial.

"Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched, I believe, in our nation’s history, as a disgraceful moment in time" said his lawyer, David Coombs. "Not only was it stupid and counterproductive, it was criminal."

The United States was, in theory, a nation of laws.
But it is no longer a nation of laws for Bradley Manning.

Do click on the link to read the rest. The meanness of spirit reminds me of a similar persecution, 109 years ago, in 1894, when poor Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent, was charged with treason and wound up on Devil's Island. Like today's "I am Bradley Manning", concerned citizens protested for the captain.

By George . . .

THE ORWELLIAN NIGHTMARE seems to be with us, as we regard the "processing" of Bradley Manning, the hounding of Julian Assange and now Edward Snowden.

There's good news, bad news and really bad news. The good news is, eventually the Fourth Reich will be overthrown. The bad news is, Hollywood will create "The Bradley Manning Story". The really bad news is, the actor who will play Bradley hasn't been born yet. Sure hope I'm wrong.

Schadenfreude super-size me . . .

SCHADENFREUDE INDEED:

“My fellow Canadians, we have all just witnessed a sad spectacle, a prime minister so burdened with corruption in his own party that he is unable to do his job and lead the country, a party leader playing for time, begging for another chance. This is not how a prime minister should act.”
Stephen Harper, April 21, 2005

And did you know, Stevie's chimps have been middlefingering us for a long time, now? According to a 2007 report by Shane Dyson at the Langley Free Press, the Harper pizdobols refuse to follow the rules. Six years later, and it's on steroids. But check out Shane's article, these weasels have a consistent track record, all the while crying how they're gonna bring accountability:

In a November 8, 2005 news release, Langley MP Mark Warawa said: "People who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules have been let down by the Liberals. Canadians deserve nothing less than accountable government. The Conservative Party has a plan to renew faith in government; to instill a culture of accountability in Ottawa."

Glad I don't live there . . .

A CAR-JACKING in Venezuela. Citizens 1 Carjackers 0, it seems.  Violent, to be sure, but perhaps this might help see how the NRA and Tea Party types regard owning guns and the right of self-defense. Where they live, you see, sooner, rather than later, you'll probably need one.

Stevie's last obstacle . . .

HUPACASATH FIRST NATION battles China-Canada FIPA in court. So says the VO, aka the Vancouver Observer.

Photo via @Lyacksongirl

Closing arguments began Wednesday for the historic Hupacasath First Nation court challenge of a FIPA, or foreign investor protection agreement between Canada and China. The Hupacasath's case against the Harper government says that Canada has a duty to consult First Nations before entering into international treaties.

Canada holds FIPAs with 14 countries, and is in talks to establish a dozen more. But the Canada-China FIPA is the first to position Canada as a capital-importer rather than a capital-exporter country.

It's all about Chinese money: Stevie wants to give its owners entitlement, and the First Nations are rightly concerned. IF the Hupacasath  win, this goes to the Supreme Court, who won't rule on it until after the next election, when FIPA may be toast.

A map of Stevie Crime . . .

THE ELECTION FRAUD ATLAS of Canada: a site that proclaims itself to be

A comprehensive public source for materials pertaining to the electoral fraud that dominated the 2011 Federal Election, created through crowdsourced funds and data.

Each phone icon represents a riding-specific report of fraud, pulled from publicly available court documents, blog posts or newspaper articles, signifying hundreds, if not thousands, of unreported voter suppression calls.

Zoom in, select from the list or click on the map to explore individual ridings. Toggling the icons at the top of the page will allow you to drill down and filter the fraud reports by source.

In the 2011 National Election, there were complaints of voter fraud in 247 of Canada's 308 ridings, currently under investigation by Elections Canada. Three major polling companies estimate that 690,000 voters got fraudulent calls telling them to vote in the wrong place. That's almost 3% of all Canadians in an election ultimately won by 6000 votes, and does not include the widespread harassment calls, where political parties were impersonated and voters were repeatedly called at inappropriate times.

This is more than just a few silly prank calls: it's the biggest case of electoral fraud in Canadian history. Ever.

The Fraud Atlas of Canada currently incorporates materials from the Council of Canadians, backofthebook.ca, Sixth Estate, Saskboy, and countless local and national newspaper articles, including the work of Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, recipients of a World Press Freedom Award for their coverage of the scandal.

Check it out — and get very, very angry.

Don't buy from fascists . . .

NOW YOU CAN AVOID buying stuff from companies controlled by fascists like Nestlé or the Koch brothers. Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. According to Forbes, "You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries."

Information is power.

For the next G20 protest . . .

HARD TIMES IN TURKEY. People are fed up with encroaching fundamentalism of the current government, as civil rights are being whittled away. So, a protest against the demolition of a park has become much, much more.

Tarihinde Yayımlandı has a blog post you should read, "What is Happenning (sic) in Istanbul?", which outlines the situation. Do check it out. Oppression can bring out true creativity, as you see by this brilliant home-made gas mask, used this weekend.

Four days ago a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines. No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out. But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening the number of protesters multiplied.

Nestlé, again . . .

THESE MAMZERS JUST DON'T QUIT: according to Sum Of Us, Nestlé is pulling a million litres of water a day for bottling — out of an acquifer in Ontario where there are surrounding drought conditions. Nestlé can take the water, but you, who live there — can't.

Ironically, the head Pirate of these bandits is on record that "access to water should not be a public right." Looks like he wasn't kidding. Click on the link and sign the Sum Of Us petition.

do NOT mess with our national animal

Many countries have a national mascot - the U.S. has its bald eagle, the British have their bulldog, the Russians have their bear. Fierce creatures all, but none of them compare with the Canadian beaver.
Oh sure, they look cuddly and were once prized as the raw material for stylish hats, but do NOT mess with "nature's engineer"  because any critter that can chew thru a tree is not to be taken lightly.

Stevie's Tar Baby . . .

THE BEAVER LAKE CREE JUDGMENT: The Most Important Tar Sands Case You’ve Never Heard Of. That's what Carol Linnitt at DESMOG CANADA contends. Do click on the link for more.

Sure they’re bad for the environment, for human health, and for wildlife, but we rarely stop to wonder if the Alberta tar sands are in fact unconstitutional.

But the constitutional standing of the tar sands – one of the world’s largest and most carbon-intensive energy projects – is just what’s at stake in a treaty rights claim the Beaver Lake Cree Nation (BLCN) is bringing against the Governments of Alberta and Canada in a case that promises to be one of the most significant legal and constitutional challenges to the megaproject seen in Canada to date. 

It's been a slow, grudging process, but it's here, at last, in spite of everything the governments of Canada and Alberta have tried to do. Win or lose, may this be Stevie's Tar Baby.

— Song of the South, 1946 —

The art of truth . . .

THE CHRONICLE HERALD has a fine cartoonist in Bruce MacKinnon, who has fine advice for Duffy. Kudos to the man, made my day.

Pox perspective . . .

OUR WELTANSCHAUUNG: how much of it has been shaped because somebody creative had a dose? You know, the gift-that-keeps-on-giving, aka syphilis, aka "The French Disease"?  Creative types, like Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce and their crotch critters?

Sarah Dunant, at The Guardian, has a fascinating look at the historical effects of 'The Pox', with an article, "Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world" that is worthy of your attention. You sure did not want to live before the discovery of antibiotics, syph is a nasty way to die.  As pay-back for Smallpox, this New World invader cut a hell of a swath through Europe, you just took years to die and enjoy the process.

Historians mining the archives of prisons, hospitals and asylums now estimate that a fifth of the population might have been infected at any one time. London hospitals during the 18th century treated barely a fraction of the poor, and on discharge sufferers were publicly whipped to ram home the moral lesson.

The Critter: Treponema pallidum
on cultures of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells

Again, until the discovery of antibiotics, there was no cure. What's old, is new again:

Much of the extraordinary detail we now have about syphilis is a result of the Aids crisis. Just when we thought antibiotics, the pill and more liberal attitudes had taken the danger and shame out of sexual behaviour, the arrival out of nowhere of an incurable, fatal, highly contagious sexual disease challenged medical science, triggered a public-health crisis and re-awoke a moral panic.

Not surprisingly, it also made the history of syphilis extremely relevant again. The timing was powerful in another way too, as by the 1980s history itself was refocusing; from the long march of the political and the powerful, to the more intimate cultural stories of everyman/woman.

Corporate psychopaths . . .

MONSANTO CAN BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. So contends GMO, a site devoted to "Raising awareness about the risks of genetically modified food (GMOs)", with an article, "Monsanto’s Dirty Dozen". Monsanto has been dangerous for a long, long time, since 1901. The company moved into the food area with the production of Saccharin for Coca-Cola, but Monsanto produced all sorts of toxic stuff, like Polystyrene, PCB's, Dioxin, DDT, Agent Orange and the scourge of today's farmers, RoundUp, as well as Bovine Growth Hormone, Aspertame and other toxics.

— Beneficiaries of Agent Orange —

And Monsanto has company. According to GMO:

Monsanto’s not alone. Other companies in the “Big Six” include Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont), Syngenta AG, Dow Agrosciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, BASF (which is primarily a chemical company that is rapidly expanding their biotechnology division, and Bayer Cropscience (a subsidiary of Bayer).

A veritable smörgåsbord of corporate psychopaths, the folks who brought us Thalidomide are probably in there somewhere.

In the pile of poison is Aspertame. It can be really dangerous. That's the opinion of DORWAY, a site with the dedicated mission to "Get the Truth About Aspartame. The Whole Truth." The page "About Aspartame" has many links to many scary things — you really ought to stop guzzling. Pilots are very concerned; the FAA doesn't like the danger, but cannot ban it, because the FDA says it's OK, according to the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network's article, "Aspartame & Flying".

Aspartame was discovered as a drug in the 60s (first approved in 1974 then rescinded because of the brain tumor issue — then approved again, over the objections of many scientists, in 1981) and is composed of two synthetic amino acids, Phenylalanine, Aspartic Acid and Methanol (10% wood alcohol). At temperatures exceeding 85 degrees F (body temperature is 98.6) the substance breaks down further into Formaldehyde, Formic Acid, and Diketopiperazine (a brain tumor agent). Aspartame complaints make up 80% of all complaints volunteered to the FDA. Aspartame is often the unidentified environmental trigger for: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimers, Lyme Disease, Post Polio Syndrome, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Epilepsy, Anxiety/Phobia Disorders, Manic Depression, Graves’ Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome and others. Many Doctors have reported drastic improvement or disappearance of symptoms after removing Aspartame from the patients’ diet. On rechallenge, the symptoms tend to return. Symptoms reported to the FDA include: headache, nausea, vertigo, insomnia, numbness, blurred vision, blindness, memory loss, suicidal depression, personality and behavior changes, hyperactivity, gastrointestinal disorders, seizures, skin lesions, muscle cramping and joint pain, fatigue, heart attack symptoms, hearing loss and tinnitus, pulmonary and cerebral edemas, shock and death.

Does everything but cause ingrown toe-nails and halitosis. I avoid the stuff, not necessary for de-blubberization. Taken two years, but I've gone from a 44+" to a 32" waist, like I had when I was twenty. No Aspartame required, just no wheat, wheat-starch, corn and corn-starch.

You can join in the fight. Visit March Against Monsanto, for details. It's world-wide.

That $90,000 cheque . . .

WE SHOULD BE

This could cause more damage than all of the Stevie gaffes to date, because it won't play in the beer parlors aka "sports bars", where the politically unaware and ignorant hang out. These people are unsophisticated, and things like Global Warming and the Tar Sands pipelines confuse. BC should be a reminder; all of the "Progressive" Canuck poliblogs were pronouncing Christie Clark toast. So, what happened? Simple, the ignorant voted for what they could understand. People can understand greed when they look at Duffy.

 — Sen. Maximus Avaritius —

Sociopaths are people, too, and as long as you're not one of their targets, hail, fellow well met, just don't get in their way, by doing stupid things like asking for accountability. It costs to live well, socially. As we see from Nigel's largesse, these sociopaths can afford to be gracious when it suits them — or when they are sufficiently shamed by publicity, or are on the wrong end of a 12-gauge.

Yon Duffy has a porky aspect, to bash the Bard, that plays so obscenely well. To Duffy, the Senate was an All-You-Can-Eat buffet of expensed perks: the Porkarama of Patronage. T-t-that's all, folks.