Category Archives: defense contractors

The State of the Union

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Briefly, I shut off the TV after the President stated that natural gas extraction (fracking) should be pursued…if done cleanly…….(echos of “clean coal” and his push for nuclear renaissance before Fukushima)

I am not willing to sacrifice clean water and good health for the $$ gains for energy companies.  My children deserve to have clean water, clean air, and soil suitable for growing healthy, organic food.

Even IF one could extract the gas without using horrible chemicals that poison water supplies…what about the earthquakes associated with fracking?  What about the numerous sink holes appearing….are they, too, associated with fracking?  I suspect so.

And Fred Klonsky captured my thoughts on his opening remarks on education.  Three words:  Don’t Patronize Me.

It appeared at one point that President Obama was going to listen to us…but I no longer have that opinion.

(As a side note~  someone just called into the radio station and said they spotted the first robins of Spring. Woot!!  We’re all a little weather weary here.  Yes, I’m whining…so sue me…even those of us who love winter have our limit…)

 

NSA using phone apps like Angry Birds to gather personal info

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Well, I wish I could say I’m surprised, but no…nobody is going to design a game and give it away for free…ain’t gonna happen without some benefit for themselves.  No free lunches, folks.

Here we have another case of taxation without representation…since a majority of people want this invasion of privacy to stop.

 

 

Update: Indiana HB1320

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Update on this post on the power grab/information grab by Pence and his henchmen.

I found this summary of the bill– as you can see, it does not outline what information is being gathered.  It does not say who is receiving this information.  It does not outline how this benefits children and education.  And why does the state need to provide backup when schools routinely backup their own records??

As I wrote on Diane’s blog–

It looks like Gates has his dirty little fingers in this–gathering more information for…what? or perhaps I should say…who? What kind of information are they gathering? Who will benefit from gathering this information?

The bill does not tell us. Highly suspicious.

I also found this excellent blog by Doug Martin (you might recall he posted on firedoglake).

If passed into law, HB1320 will probably hand another $3.7 million of our tax dollars to a private company which will sell off personal and confidential information of students and families to companies out to market their products and agenda to them.

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This new move is not a new one.  In fact, HB1320 was probably inspired by a model bill drafted for various states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate sponsored bill-mill behind the scenes in Indiana and across the country bringing us school privatization, attacks on the postal service and unions, and the infamous Stand Your Ground Law.

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Yep.  This has the smell of ALEC all over it.

 

 

 

Action Alert: Pence Power Grab from Glenda Ritz

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Once again, Glenda Ritz is under threat of losing her authority granted to her by the citizens of Indiana….who voted more for her than Pence.

Calling all Hoosiers…send out emails to have your voice heard.  Don’t let Pence become a dictator!

Mi’kmaq Warriors begin tour

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Mi’kmaq Warriors will begin a speaking tour on the environmental protests against fracking, but also pipelines and tar sands.

“We are all being systematically displaced within our own traditional territories,” Patles explained. “Once they destroy our territories and these resource companies are gone, we will be the ones left with destroyed land and poisoned water.”

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Again, we have the disaster capitalism…take the resources without even paying for them, and then leave poisoned land and water.  And no, I don’t think the Mi’kmaq would take money even if it were offered to them. Their spirituality cannot be bought…and the Earth is seen as connected to the Creator…

You can’t buy clean air, clean water, nor clean land after it’s been poisoned.  This point seems to always be lost on politicians and energy companies who couldn’t care less what happens to people after the fact…

Occupy Monsanto protests

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Occupy Monsanto is organizing  a protest on January 28th in Missouri — at their annual shareholders meeting:

NEWS ADVISORY
January 15, 2014

CONTACT: Mark Bohnert – 314-265-5140, markbstl@gmail.com
Lacy MacAuley – 202-445-4692, lacymacauley@gmail.com
Adam Eidinger – 202-744-2671, GCU@Occupy-Monsanto.com

Protests Over GMO Food Labeling Come to Monsanto Annual Shareholder Meeting January 28

Monsanto Shareholders to Vote on GMO Food Labeling for the First Time
Activist Efforts Force Meeting to Be Broadcast LIVE Via Internet

CREVE COEUR, MISSOURI – Every January the shareholders of Monsanto Company come from all over the world to Creve Coeur, Missouri, in order to attend the company’s annual shareholder meeting. For the first time a shareholder has introduced a “GMO Food Labeling” resolution that will be voted on at the meeting. Unlike previous years the annual shareholder meeting will not be conducted completely behind closed doors, instead members of the media and public will be able to listen online. Activists have repeatedly asked for the video of the shareholder meeting to be streamed online but Monsanto has only met activists half way and will stream only the audio of the meeting. Outside of the shareholder meeting safe food activists will gather along Olive Blvd to urge shareholders to support the shareholder resolution.

WHO: Adam Eidinger, Monsanto Activist Shareholder, GMO Free Midwest Coalition, “Are We Eating Fishy Food?” GMO Art Cars, and Concerned Citizens

WHAT: Protest at Monsanto Annual Shareholder Meeting to Support Vote on “GMO Food Labeling”

WHEN: Noon to 3pm, January 28, 2014

WHERE: Olive Blvd at Monsanto’s East Campus Entrance, Creve Coeur, MO

If the shareholder resolution passes, Monsanto will be required to work with the Food and Drug Administration to label genetically engineered foods nationally. Monsanto’s executives oppose the resolution, but shareholders, many of whom are represented by faceless mutual funds, will have the final say on the chemical giant’s GMO labeling position.

You can read the text of the “GMO Food Labeling” shareholder resolution:
http://occupy-monsanto.com/new-monsanto-shareholder-resolution-supports-gmo-labeling/

Another shareholder resolution to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting is sponsored by activist investor John Harrington and deals with Monsanto’s potential liability to organic farmers. The protests at Monsanto will be the first since last October when more than 500 activists descended on the company’s headquarters for the March Against Monsanto.

For more information: www.occupy-monsanto.com

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DN!

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I don’t think democracynow could have put together a more emotional show than they did today.

The domestic violence segment is heartbreaking.  I don’t know how anyone can look at that woman’s injuries and ask her why she didn’t try to run away!  Who does that?!  (I’m really trying to restrain myself from using every choice expletive I know).  Given that she will either not have a job, or has one that pay is so low she cannot survive on her own, it will take nearly being beaten to death (or verbally abused to the point of the soul’s death), before she will even *think* of leaving.

I’m sure the documentary will explore the subject, but having not seen it, I can’t foresee that they will explore everything–the impact of toxins on rage; the circle of domestic violence, war, and domestic violence.  The interview mentions that the abuser was a body builder—red flag right there because of steroid use and other drugs that are known to produce aggressive feelings. 

Secondly, mercury and other heavy metals can produce feelings of rage and apparently promote criminal behavior.  Since one can’t really escape mercury, because it’s everywhere, I think it should be standard to do hairtests on those charged with crimes.  One can only wonder at what we would find–and how detoxing someone acting in a criminal way could change their life to a positive one….

My biggest hope for the film is to gather all the evidence of the rape/violence against women culture we live in.

I’ve touched on the domestic violence connection to war here.

My blog on the justification of rape…because *she’s just a whore*  here.

My blog on the military and sexual harassment/rape here. I wish that I could say my prediction of expressions of “outrage” and then business as usual was wrong…but, alas….women will still have to go through their chain of command, who may or may not be harassing them, too, or encouraging an atmosphere of bullying (which is what sexual harassment/rape/violence are).  How can we say that the youth are wrong for chanting misogynist lyrics when adults are condoning the treatment of women as second class?

I briefly volunteered for an organization that used lawyers and paralegals volunteering to help victims of domestic violence get protective orders.  It was hard to take–the first case I had, I was to interview the victim.  She unfortunately was not native to this country and her English was hard to understand at times, so there was a small communication barrier.  She was afraid of her victimizer, because he threatened to have her sent back to her native country, among other things.  The lawyer, trying to work within the laws on the books (that suck), told her to take the minimum that the judge would offer her.  I tried to convince her, based on the attorney’s advice. She refused.  The judge ruled against her petition, leaving her vulnerable.  I never felt so worthless for letting her down. She was understandably upset and immediately felt we had let her down.  It was hard.

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The second part of the show, about Alzheimers’ and Dementia was particularly hard.  It’s coming up on a year anniversary of my mother’s death…and it’s already starting to affect me.

It was especially hard to see the faces of the patients–I saw my Mom in them.  Music is definitely a way to reach them, as it was one of the last things my mother lost, but in the end, she was so detached that I don’t know whether having her own headset would have helped.  The nursing home did play Beatles and other 60s music, but that was in the dining hall, not in the patients’ rooms.  Mostly, they watched mind-numbing TV that doesn’t stimulate them by any measure.

And, as above, a hairtest on heavy metals should also be standard for these patients….my God, think of the lives saved if these folks were toxic and able to be saved through detox….

Autistic Child found in New York

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NBC News has this posted.  The remains of the autistic child that disappeared from school have been found.

I was re-reading my blog on school colocation that had mentioned an autistic child had gone missing because the school was so overcrowded, he slipped out without being noticed.  I wonder if this is the school…and if so, why aren’t the networks mentioning this?  (I had seen the news on CNN before NBC website)

Wanna bet they won’t mention that school overcrowding via colocation with charters is responsible for this death?

Yeah, just like they’re *all over* the Newark school principal firings…er I mean indefinite layoffs (yeah, they were fired…)…haven’t heard a peep about it, but judging by the visitors to my blog on it, this is a hot issue.

Dr. Martin Luther King

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Several folks have posts up this morning on Dr. King–

I’ll start with Mercedes Schneider — it is disgusting how George W. Bush used MLK to somehow try to link No Child Left a Mind with civil rights.  As we are seeing, most of the public schools being closed are in neighborhoods of the poor and minorities.  An excellent point made by Joanne Barkin about how they have appointed themselves as leaders of the reform movement without the rest of us included.  Our opinions don’t matter…unless, of course, we agree with them.

A quibble I have with “I Have A Dream…” is the sons of former slave owners and advocating brotherhood...what is glaringly missing are women being part of the whole.

As has been pointed out by others–Dr. King was defending workers who wished to unionize…he would have no part of the destruction of teacher’s unions.

Next, Diane Ravitch has a blog up on MLK.  When breaking the law is just…if one follows one’s conscience.

Finally, Democracy Now! has a video up on MLK.  When I first clicked on, I heard “I Have a Dream…” and sighed that it was going to be yet another rehash of the I have a Dream speech without reference to his other great speech, Beyond Vietnam. 

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2014/1/20

I was so glad that they aired this speech.  It was so wonderful hearing Dr. King’s voice again…hard not to get emotional at the love that was flowing from him.  He and John F. Kennedy were advocates of Peace working against dark forces.  Both were killed for it.  But as Dr. King said prophetically, he had been to the mountain top and was not afraid of the consequences of doing what he knew God wanted him to do.

I want to say something about this speech by Amiri Baraka, also on DN!

He speaks about women being raped and wanting to have reparations for it…does he not think that white women have been raped, too?  Where is the white woman’s reparation?

What about the Irish slaves whom also worked for no wages?  Where are their reparations?  What about the Irish women whom were forced to birth babies for lighter-skinned African Americans?

The music we stole?  Didn’t all music come from the great classical composers?  Isn’t music supposed to be a shared experience?  Did we not enjoy each other’s music and share that special connection?  It is deflating to hear such anger for something we both enjoyed.

And then he says “give us our lives or be prepared to forfeit your own…”

Dr. King was against violence of any kind.  I can’t see him agreeing with advocating violence.

And I don’t understand “giving” someone their life….you can’t “give” someone their life.  You can’t give someone self-esteem nor a purpose in life–it has always come from within…from that connection to God (or your Higher Power).

Dr. King knew this…it emanated from him.  He was solidly connected and acted accordingly.   He mentions the overzealous need for material things…and questioned why someone had more than enough while others had to beg for the things they need.

Advocating violence against whites is just as bad as a KKK leader advocating violence against blacks.

I see white faces amongst the black faces in the civil rights protests.  I read a story of a white guy being hosed down and beaten along with the blacks during the civil rights riots.  He nearly had an eye gouged out.

Other whites wrote that they had fought alongside blacks and  then were told they were not welcome anymore.

White folk were right there alongside black folk, and now it seems that part of history is being rewritten.

I know I’ll probably catch hell for writing this, but it is written with an open heart, and not meant to offend, but to question biases and prejudices….and somehow get back to that love that emanated from Dr. King.   Violence, anger, and hatred don’t serve anyone.  Anger is only useful if that energy is used in a positive way.

As a side note~ Dr. King spoke about them keeping Vietnam going when they knew it was wrong.  I happened upon this the other day–and how Kissinger was behind the scenes prolonging the war…because he loved the power and he, Nixon, et al, wanted to “save face”.  They prolonged death of our soldiers, death of Vietnamese so they could keep their reputation intact.  Remember, he had stated that power is an aphrodisiac…it’s as if he thought of himself as some sort of “James Bond”….how disgusting.