Category Archives: ethics and morals

If you have nothing to hide…

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common dreams has this up on the Obama Administration continuing to not enlighten us.  This is such a dangerous precedent–our democracy is based on many checks and balances to keep any one person from having too much power.  As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It’s just mindboggling that American citizens are having their right to privacy being stripped away — being “guilty” before being proven innocent — but those in positions of power are increasingly unaccountable towards those same Americans.

 

Anonymous connection to cyber stealth stealing

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Well, this is….interesting.  The comments are interesting, as well, as they point out that Anonymous released all of these emails and personal information.  But is it THE Anonymous? And which members of Anonymous?  This is just too, too, cloak and dagger for my taste…

Farmers protests

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I missed this when it was first published.  The family farm is in danger of being run over by not only Monsanto, but the Too Big To Fail corporate farms.  God help us.

The rightwing radio nooz casters mentioned the Indiana farmer with the case before the Supreme Court against Monsanto.  Vernon Bowman was portrayed as a greedy farmer who tried to get away with “stealing” Monsanto technology without paying for it.  I was just stunned.

More farmer protests here.

And British farmers’ action.

Protests in Poland.

And in India–farmers protesting pipelines.

In Canada.

Taiwan.

And here is a piece of history--farmers protesting the 1977 Food Bill–when the blizzard struck.

From the last link:

The protesters stayed, camped out on the Washington Mall. During that time a blizzard hit the city with 20-inches of snow. Farmers used their tractors to help dig out the city. Some tractors transported doctors and nurses to hospitals. AAM women even cooked and cleaned in hospitals when other staff couldn’t make it in.

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This from Occupy Monsanto. Stone Soup Day April 8, 2013.

 

Israel stroking the ego

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They’re awarding President Obama a Medal of Distinction for supporting Israel….

…this comes after President Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom to Shimon Peres last June.

What can I say?

Most of the medals and trophies my kids won are…um, well, let’s see…they’re here somewhere…I just saw them last week sometime…

A medal does not capture what truly occurred at the moment that an outstanding athletic or political action took place.

One cannot replace that moment with a piece of metal.  If it is given under the false disguise of making someone bigger than they are, everyone who is aware will see right through it.  If it is given to stroke the ego, even if that person made an outstanding effort, it puts them into a “better than” category that, as we see over and over, puts them on a pedestal where they don’t belong….as none of us belong on a pedestal.  It feeds into the Meritocracy mindset….you must earn your right to breathe air….to occupy your space….to live on Earth….

 

Selling of the war

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Rachel Maddow has a special out on the selling of the Iraq War.  Unfortunately, I’m at a computer with no sound today, so I can’t listen to this piece.  I hope that she holds Hillary Rodham Clinton accountable, and the other dems who were all too happy to go along with the charade.

The big eye in the sky

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common dreams has this up on the move by the FAA to allow drones to spy on your every move. (Note that this is a Friday news dump–they save the most worrisome news for Fridays, hoping that it will, ahem, fly under the radar.

How detached does an engineer have to be to joke about the ability to spy on people in their backyards?  What the hell gives them the right?

 

Speaking of the airwaves…

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commondreams has this up on the *cough* reporting of the Iraq war…or I should say, the blind acceptance of the “facts” without a hint of healthy cynicism and questioning authority that the serious situation required.

FAIR’s worst moments in journalism.

Last night on CBS, they had a story of an Afghan youth who could not play a musical instrument because the Taliban had outlawed any music that was not religious.  It’s great that he is part of a musical troupe but in no way does it justify us going to war.  I’m sorry that probably sounds cold, but I have to think —how many innocent people have died so this kid could play a musical instrument?  Why does America have to spend billions of dollars policing another country?  Of course, there was no mention of the oil in Afghanistan…