Hi Ho Silver, Away!

That Old Time Religion

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse"

Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

"Governor Mancin seems to believe that all he has to do is make promises while the children who attend Marsh Fork continue to breathe in coal dust," says Bill Price of
Charleston, WV. "We are not interested in promises. We want a new school for these kids so that they do not have to breathe in polluted air while they are trying to learn."

"This is exciting that students and community members have joined together to demand a safer school for the kids who attend Marsh Folk Elementary," says Sarah Kidder, a student at Glenville State College and a key protest organizer. "These kids should not have to endanger their lives simply by going to school and having to breathe in air polluted by coal dust."

Massey has been attempting to build a second coal silo near the school, but the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in 2005 rejected Massey's permit request for the second silo. On Tuesday, March 13, the state Surface Mine Board overturned the DEP's order that blocked the silo.

"The situation at Marsh Fork is an embarrassment to West Virginia," said Lindsey Warf of Bluefield, WV. "People from other states can't believe this is happening in the US."

Contrary to Massey's public claim that the silo would reduce coal dust, their 2005 air quality permit application associated with the second silo's operation predicts an increase in coal dust emissions by three and a half tons of dust per year.

Global Warming Part 2

You know I like to look for contrarian evidence for views that I hold. I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and thought it correct.
1. The earth's atmosphere is warming.
2. Polar icecaps and glaciers are melting.
3. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing.
4. Human activity is the cause.

After watching this new documentary, I remain convinced of 1, 2, and 3, but I think 4 is probably not true.

See for yourself. Yes, CO2 levels are going up, but it the result of global warming, not the cause. The ocean is the giant CO2 collector, and when it warms up it gives off much more CO2 than the puny addition by humans.

The cause of the global warming is indeed, the sun. Not the rays that heat us, but the cosmic rays which stream down on us from the solar wind. These rays vary with the sunspot cycle, which is the cause of global warming. Check out the movie.

Is Bush Cracking?

Sorry, I couldn't resist using this photoshopped picture again.

Not with the original article, but I can hope.

By way of http://www.rense.com/:

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

"March 13, 2007 --Our White House Press Corps sources report further disturbing news about President George W. Bush. Our sources have witnessed a clearly inebriated Bush approaching members of the press corps and making rude comments, including one particularly crude remark about First Lady Laura Bush. In that case, Bush, nodding toward Laura, called her a "c**t."

While Bush's drinking is no secret to the White House press contingent, that particular comment was reportedly the worst they have heard uttered by Bush.

Our sources also report that Laura Bush's stays at the White House are less frequent and that her overnight trips to the Mayflower Hotel often coincide with the president's drunken binges.

Note: Some of our female readers were shocked to see the "C" word in the above news item. This editor wants to make it clear that word was used by George W. Bush to denigrate his wife. It was his word, not mine. It is important that the public knows what kind of person Mr. Bush is by the offensive words he uses.

The editor also wants to make clear that the President chose a public press gaggle to use this word -- that is not a private moment between him and his wife. If Mrs. Bush feels her privacy has been violated, she must understand that it is her responsibility to herself, her children, and the nation to end this abusive relationship by legally separating from the President and becoming a role model for other women around the country and the world who find themselves locked into similar abusive marriages.

Nevertheless, we have "asterisked" the word in question. However, Mr. Bush cannot asterisk his own vile words."

Hope Springs Eternal

Hawaii: State's Legalization Of Pot Could Yield $33 Million Annually

West Oahu, HI: Taxing and regulating cannabis in Hawaii in a manner similar to alcohol could yield the state approximately $33 million in annual revenues and cost savings, according to an economic analysis released last week by the University of Hawaii.

The study found that regulating cannabis could create annual tax revenues of up to $23 million. The study added that prosecuting and enforcing state pot laws costs taxpayers approximately $10 million per year. Of this total, more than 40 percent is spent by state and county law enforcement solely to enforce marijuana possession laws.

"Those who favor legalization ... argue that policies like those involved in the regulation of alcohol and tobacco are far more effective in limiting the individual and social costs involved," the study states. "[T]axation is significantly cheaper in terms of enforcement and outcomes than outlawing substances."
The study also reports that law enforcement efforts to restrict Hawaii's pot supply have been ineffective because the black market price of marijuana per ounce has fallen over the last decade -- indicating a marked increase in supply and consumption.

A previous nationwide analysis of marijuana policy by Boston University economist Jeffrey Miron reported that enforcing state and federal pot laws costs taxpayers an estimated $7.7 billion annually.

John Dean has made the point that this administration is the most secretive ever. But this ...

"Don't discuss polar bears": memo to scientists

(Please supply your own awwwwww (poor animal) sound)

Telephone Tax Take

Apparently 30% of early filers are forgetting to pick up their $30 - $60 in Telephone Tax refund. This tax, instituted by Nixon to fund the Vietnam War, is finally being retired. See also my true-life tale of Telephone Tax fun.

Blocked in China

I ran across a website that tests to see if your URL is blocked in China. I guess this accounts for the lack of Chinese vistors.

Note: If you read the comments on the site, you'll see some doubt that the test is real. I checked a few, most were not blocked. Who knows?

At What Point Are We Obligated to Take Action to Stop the Madness?

I've found an interest blog at Organizing Notes. The blogger/activist Bruce Gagnon has some worthwhile stuff going on there.. While researching this statement from his blog

The Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, in 1950, released the following statement to the citizens of the world:

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

The occupation of Iraq and the continued funding of the occupation by Congress in my mind is a crime against peace and humanity. We must collectively act now as instructed by international and moral law.

I ended up going to the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal Principal 82, issued in 1950,

Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle Vl
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

Crimes against peace:
Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or illtreatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.

and then to Wikipedia for this: Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal

Application in the war on terror

A number of legal analysts have advanced the argument that the principle of "command responsibility" could make high-ranking officials within the Bush administration guilty of war crimes committed either with their knowledge or by persons under their control.[10]

As a reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks the U.S. Government adopted several controversial measures (e.g., invading Iraq, introducing "unlawful combatant" status, conducting "extraordinary renditions", and allowing "enhanced interrogation methods", which has been described as torture). Alberto Gonzales and others argued that detainees should be considered "unlawful combatants" and as such not protected by the Geneva Conventions in multiple memoranda regarding these perceived legal gray areas.[11]

Gonzales' statement that denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" suggests, at the least, an awareness by those involved in crafting policies in this area that US officials are involved in acts that could be seen to be war crimes.[12] The US Supreme Court challenged the premise on which this argument is based in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which it ruled that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions applies to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and that the Military Tribunals used to try these suspects were in violation of US and international law.[13]

On April 14, 2006, Human Rights Watch said that Secretary Rumsfeld could be criminally liable for his alleged involvement in the abuse of Mohammad al-Qahtani.[14] Dave Lindorff contends that by ignoring the Geneva Conventions the US administration, including President Bush, as Commander-in-Chief, is culpable for war crimes.[15] In addition, former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials Benjamin Ferencz has called the invasion of Iraq a "clear breach of law," and as such it constitutes a war crime.[16] On November 14, 2006, invoking universal jurisdiction, legal proceedings were started in Germany -for their alleged involvement of prisonerabuse- against Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, George Tenet and others.[17]

Lieutenant Watada has refused to be deployed to Iraq charging that the invasion of iraq was illegal, and as such he is bound by the command responsibility to refuse to take part in an illegal war. Otherwise he himself could face legal challenges. For this he stands trial at this moment.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is seen as an amnesty law for crimes committed in the War on Terror by retroactively rewriting the War Crimes Act[18] and by abolishing habeas corpus, effectively making it impossible for detainees to challenge crimes committed against them.[19]

Wow, if you made it through all of that and got it, you know now that we have war criminals as leaders. And, they have attempted to bullet-proof themselves from the consequences of their crimes. And that we have to do something to stop it. If you go to the Organizing Notes blog you can read how they are organizing and implementing non-violent actions.

Lord have mercy!

Ray Revealed

Are you familiar with ZeFrank? He runs "The Show" and has enlisted his minions to find "Ray", the creator of the viral song - "I'm about to whip somebody's ass." Now watch and listen to Ray in person. Click on title.

Operation Falcon - Oh My! How Did This Happen?

While we weren’t looking the “Unitary Executive” has stolen away our rights and organized a budding police state. Homeland Security, Patriot I and II, Military Commissions Act, all add up to …what?

The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.

Operation Falcon is the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration is fine-tuning its shock-troops so it can roll up tens of thousands of people at a moment’s notice and toss them into the newly-built Halliburton detention centers. This should be a red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.

Operation Falcon was allegedly the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his counterpart in the US Marshal's office, (Director) Ben Reyna. (Ed. aside, I don't think so ... I think Gonzales got the whole package from ...). But its roots go much deeper into the nexus of right-wing Washington think tanks where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history. The name, Falcon, is an acronym for “Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.” It relates to the more than 960 state, local and federal agencies which are directly involved in the administration’s expansive criminal dragnets.

Read on...

Using Your Head

McKelvey in Astronaut Farmer

My good friend George McKelvey has a part in the new Billy Bob Thornton movie, "The Astronaut Farmer". Watch for the Dunkin' Donuts guy. Way to go George!

Whippin' Ass

I just had to pass this along. Sounds like the next viral internet office-worker classic. Click here to listen to 'Whippin' Ass'

I guess I was a little late to the party, as I just found that ZeFrank has a variety of versions of this little ditty.

U.S. Sponsored Terrorism

The brouhaha surrounding the "Iranian weapons" found in Iraq is a classic. The exhibit apparently has been around for a while. Note that the date in the second picture is US style mm-dd-yyyy. Is this going to be the reason we bomb Iran?

U.S. made weapons can be found in almost every corner of the earth. Being the largest manufacturer of such weapons for years has its consequences. Thousands of these weapons are lying about cocked and ready to go off. Unexploded cluster bomblets kill and maim thousands each year. With our name on them.

And now read on to learn that we are sponsoring anti-Iranian terrorists inside of Iran. As we usually do...

CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran's border regions.
The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime.

continued..

Gen. Wesley Clark

Read what Gen. Wesley Clark is saying now. Do what you can.

Understanding The Cosmos - The Electric Universe

As you may have noticed, I am interested in cosmology, the study of the cosmos; everything that is out there.

Over the years, the “standard model”, based largely on mathematics way beyond my comprehension, has gotten very weird. Black holes, for example, have led to a controversy as to whether or not matter can be destroyed. Steven Hawking has contended for thirty years that matter sucked into black holes can disappear when the black holes themselves eventually disappear. Recently, he reversed himself (sort of, by claiming that there are probably other universes without black holes so across all universes matter is conserved), but the question still remains as to where the matter goes when it is sucked into a black hole.

The “standard model” is fundamentally based on gravitational force (electrical and magnetic forces are pretty much left out) and the existence of red shift. Red shift is a kind of Doppler effect for light instead of sound. Starlight from stars further away and traveling faster is shifted toward the red end of the visible light spectrum. This “fact” is very basic to our current “understanding” of the universe. Unfortunately, there are many examples (120+ anomalies - identified by Halton Arp) of stars with higher red shift values connected to stars with lower values. There are also stars with higher values in front of stars with lower values. Ooops. Doesn’t fit the “standard model”.

Add in “dark matter” and “dark energy”, made-up concepts to account for all of the “missing” matter in the gravitational model, and it starts to sound like untestable fantasy.

In addition, satellites sent out to measure the magnetic field around the earth, which protects us from injurious cosmic particles, have found magnetic fields far out in space beyond the earth's field. In fact recently, the standard physicists have been surprised to find that “empty” outer space is actually crammed with plasma, the fourth and most abundant form of matter. This plasma seems to flow in very interesting ways between stars and galaxies.

In my internet wanderings, I ran across an alternative theory, the Plasma Universe. The work of David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill really grabbed me. I wanted to write about it here but couldn’t quite motivate myself to do the work required to get it all down. Now that problem is solved with their new DVD. The first part of this work is available on Google Video here, or just search on Thunderbolts of the Gods. Also check related sites here, and here where you can buy the books or DVDs.

I’ll warn you that if you get into this like I did, it will take you 4 or 5 hours to start to get your head around it. Have a nice trip.

The Other Kind of Intelligence

The 16 agencies which comprise the Intelligence Community.

Air Force Intelligence
Army Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
Coast Guard Intelligence
Defense Intelligence Agency
Department of Energy
Department of Homeland Security
Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Marine Corps Intelligence
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
National Security Agency
Navy Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Finally Arrives

Click on the title and then on Silvia's face.

Defeated at Our Own (Capitalistic) Game

Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler (of Future Shock and Third Wave fame) recently make the point that current wars are still being fought with industrial era tools (hurling pieces of lead and dynamite at each other, albeit with increasing sophistication), and that soon war will move into a “Third Wave” with laser, microwave, and mind control weapons.

My theory is that China has been quietly developing the “Fourth Wave” of warfare, and we have already lost. Using our own dollars gathered in their enormous trade surplus (now over one trillion dollars) provided by Wal-Mart shoppers and U.S. Treasury notes (interest - $329 billion per year), they are foresightedly locking in the world’s mineral wealth and raw materials in Canada, South America, and now Africa. Read and weep...

Our reaction? Military bases, that we won’t be able to maintain due to lack of raw materials and very long supply lines. China is also now building 50 submarines, just in case they need to hurl something at us.

America's phony Superpower "total dominance" doctrine is based on brute force. How 20th century.