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marmar
marmar's Journal
marmar's Journal
September 17, 2013
(Truthout) Is there poop in your pork and poultry? It’s a serious question.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has plans to expand a privatized meat inspection model that has been in place for 14 years at five hog plants in the United States and which has been found to fail time and time again at preventing contamination of meat - with fecal matter.
The program, known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-Based Inspection Models Project - or HIMP - has been in place since the late 1990s and its expansion would replace almost half the USDA Food Safety Service inspectors in industrial meat plants with inspectors employed by those very same companies. It would reportedly speed up production lines by as much as 20 percent.
But a recent article in The Washington Post, reports that three out of the five pilot HIMP plants were among the 10 worst health and safety violators in the country, according to a spring report by the USDA inspector general. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18866-usda-seeks-to-expand-pilot-program-which-leaves-meat-contaminated-with-fecal-matter
USDA Seeks to Expand Pilot Program Which Leaves Meat Contaminated With Fecal Matter
(Truthout) Is there poop in your pork and poultry? It’s a serious question.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has plans to expand a privatized meat inspection model that has been in place for 14 years at five hog plants in the United States and which has been found to fail time and time again at preventing contamination of meat - with fecal matter.
The program, known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-Based Inspection Models Project - or HIMP - has been in place since the late 1990s and its expansion would replace almost half the USDA Food Safety Service inspectors in industrial meat plants with inspectors employed by those very same companies. It would reportedly speed up production lines by as much as 20 percent.
But a recent article in The Washington Post, reports that three out of the five pilot HIMP plants were among the 10 worst health and safety violators in the country, according to a spring report by the USDA inspector general. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18866-usda-seeks-to-expand-pilot-program-which-leaves-meat-contaminated-with-fecal-matter
September 17, 2013
Former Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools Michelle Rhee hosted a "Teacher Town Hall" event in Philadelphia Monday night. Rhee joined CNN contributor and Capital Prep Magnet School Principal Dr. Steve Perry and former Washington Teachers Union President George Parker in the hopes of engaging in "an open, honest conversation on ed reform specifically with educators."
During Michelle Rhee's three-year tenure as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school district, she ignored teacher-seniority provisions, implemented a generous merit-pay system and caught the attention of the national spotlight as DC's standardized test scores skyrocketed in her first few years on the job.
Soon though, reports of test cheating tainted Rhee's reputation, and by 2010, with the election of a new mayor, she resigned. Some who've followed Rhee's reign closely say she left DC schools in worse shape than when she came. Rhee disagrees, and now advocates for her brand of education reform on the national stage.
Speaking at Temple University's student center Monday night, Rhee, Perry and Parker sought to quell fears about what they called the "misinformation" surrounding the reform conversation. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/59871-former-dc-schools-chancellor-rhee-says-hite-is-on-the-right-track-to-ed-reform
Quelle surprise!: Michelle Rhee says Philly schools on the right track, as the district gets wrecked
Former Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools Michelle Rhee hosted a "Teacher Town Hall" event in Philadelphia Monday night. Rhee joined CNN contributor and Capital Prep Magnet School Principal Dr. Steve Perry and former Washington Teachers Union President George Parker in the hopes of engaging in "an open, honest conversation on ed reform specifically with educators."
During Michelle Rhee's three-year tenure as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school district, she ignored teacher-seniority provisions, implemented a generous merit-pay system and caught the attention of the national spotlight as DC's standardized test scores skyrocketed in her first few years on the job.
Soon though, reports of test cheating tainted Rhee's reputation, and by 2010, with the election of a new mayor, she resigned. Some who've followed Rhee's reign closely say she left DC schools in worse shape than when she came. Rhee disagrees, and now advocates for her brand of education reform on the national stage.
Speaking at Temple University's student center Monday night, Rhee, Perry and Parker sought to quell fears about what they called the "misinformation" surrounding the reform conversation. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/59871-former-dc-schools-chancellor-rhee-says-hite-is-on-the-right-track-to-ed-reform
September 17, 2013
By TOM GEIGER
Special to The Stand
You’ve probably heard how Walmart pays low wages and meager benefits and how they erode local businesses in small town America. But you might not be as familiar with their massive new plan to come into the urban markets of cities across the nation, how they’ve become the largest retailer of food in the country, or how their money is being used to influence laws that affect us all.
If not reined in, Walmart is on track to control our food supply, our freedom, and the very democracy upon which our nation is built.
As Walmart begins its serious attempt to expand into Puget Sound cities and other cities across the country, they face a growing tide of opposition to this urban expansion, and to their destructive business model and corporate secrecy. Walmart appears to be willing to say and pay just about anything to get what it wants. Walmart’s Public Relations machine puts it differently: the company’s senior community affairs director Steve Restivo was quoted in the The Seattle Times (6.24.12): “We didn’t do a very good job telling our story, and we let others manage it. That’s not undone overnight.”
Of course it would be easier for Mr. Restivo to “undo” Walmart’s image problem if that’s all it was. But their dilemma is far from superficial. Indeed it seems to be rooted at the very core of the corporation itself with a business model of “growth at any cost.” This drive toward relentless growth is increasingly a threat to the values held dear in local communities and around the globe. Whether Walmart can succeed in glossing over and covering up its dangers is yet to be known. What is sure is that those dangers are real and go far beyond just how they mistreat workers. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thestand.org/2012/07/a-threat-to-our-food-freedom-democracy/
Walmart’s threat to our food, freedom, and democracy
By TOM GEIGER
Special to The Stand
You’ve probably heard how Walmart pays low wages and meager benefits and how they erode local businesses in small town America. But you might not be as familiar with their massive new plan to come into the urban markets of cities across the nation, how they’ve become the largest retailer of food in the country, or how their money is being used to influence laws that affect us all.
If not reined in, Walmart is on track to control our food supply, our freedom, and the very democracy upon which our nation is built.
As Walmart begins its serious attempt to expand into Puget Sound cities and other cities across the country, they face a growing tide of opposition to this urban expansion, and to their destructive business model and corporate secrecy. Walmart appears to be willing to say and pay just about anything to get what it wants. Walmart’s Public Relations machine puts it differently: the company’s senior community affairs director Steve Restivo was quoted in the The Seattle Times (6.24.12): “We didn’t do a very good job telling our story, and we let others manage it. That’s not undone overnight.”
Of course it would be easier for Mr. Restivo to “undo” Walmart’s image problem if that’s all it was. But their dilemma is far from superficial. Indeed it seems to be rooted at the very core of the corporation itself with a business model of “growth at any cost.” This drive toward relentless growth is increasingly a threat to the values held dear in local communities and around the globe. Whether Walmart can succeed in glossing over and covering up its dangers is yet to be known. What is sure is that those dangers are real and go far beyond just how they mistreat workers. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thestand.org/2012/07/a-threat-to-our-food-freedom-democracy/
September 17, 2013
The Dead Rhetoric of War
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Chris Hedges
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a “Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.
The myth of war, as each generation discovers over the corpses of its young and the looting of its national treasury by war profiteers, is a lie. War is no longer able to divert Americans from the economic and political decay that is rapidly turning the nation into a corporate oligarchy, a nation where “the consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. War cannot hide what we have become. War has made us a nation that openly tortures and holds people indefinitely in our archipelago of offshore penal colonies. War has unleashed death squads—known as special operations forces—to assassinate our enemies around the globe, even American citizens. War has seen us terrorize whole populations, including populations with which we are not officially at war, with armed drones that circle night and day above mud-walled villages in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. War has shredded, in the name of national security, our most basic civil liberties. War has turned us into the most spied-upon, monitored, eavesdropped and photographed population in human history. War has seen our most courageous dissidents and whistle-blowers—those who warned us of the crimes of war and empire, from Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to Edward Snowden—become persecuted political prisoners or the hunted. War has made a few very rich, as it always does, as our schools, libraries and firehouses are closed in the name of fiscal austerity, basic social service programs for children and the elderly are shut down, cities such as Detroit declare bankruptcy, and chronic underemployment and unemployment hover at 15 percent, perhaps 20. No one knows the truth anymore about America. The vast Potemkin village we have become, the monstrous lie that is America, includes the willful manipulation of financial and official statistics from Wall Street and Washington. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dead_rhetoric_of_war_20130916/
Chris Hedges: The Dead Rhetoric of War
The Dead Rhetoric of War
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Chris Hedges
A French-language version of this article was published Monday in the newspaper
Le Monde.
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a “Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.
The myth of war, as each generation discovers over the corpses of its young and the looting of its national treasury by war profiteers, is a lie. War is no longer able to divert Americans from the economic and political decay that is rapidly turning the nation into a corporate oligarchy, a nation where “the consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. War cannot hide what we have become. War has made us a nation that openly tortures and holds people indefinitely in our archipelago of offshore penal colonies. War has unleashed death squads—known as special operations forces—to assassinate our enemies around the globe, even American citizens. War has seen us terrorize whole populations, including populations with which we are not officially at war, with armed drones that circle night and day above mud-walled villages in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. War has shredded, in the name of national security, our most basic civil liberties. War has turned us into the most spied-upon, monitored, eavesdropped and photographed population in human history. War has seen our most courageous dissidents and whistle-blowers—those who warned us of the crimes of war and empire, from Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to Edward Snowden—become persecuted political prisoners or the hunted. War has made a few very rich, as it always does, as our schools, libraries and firehouses are closed in the name of fiscal austerity, basic social service programs for children and the elderly are shut down, cities such as Detroit declare bankruptcy, and chronic underemployment and unemployment hover at 15 percent, perhaps 20. No one knows the truth anymore about America. The vast Potemkin village we have become, the monstrous lie that is America, includes the willful manipulation of financial and official statistics from Wall Street and Washington. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dead_rhetoric_of_war_20130916/
September 17, 2013
(HuffPost) A heavily armed shooter entered the Navy Yard in Washington on Monday and opened fire, killing at least 12 people before being shot to death by authorities.
The killings brought the horror of mass shootings back into the national spotlight, as President Barack Obama condemned the "cowardly act" and honored the victims during an address.
Monday's violence marked the sixth mass shooting since the one in Newtown, Conn., in December. It was also the first publicly recognized by Obama since the elementary school massacre, which claimed the lives of 27, including 20 children.
.....(snip).....
The growing number of mass killings over the past five years left the country in search of a term that would distinguish mass murder by gun from those using other weapons. Mass shooting has gained favor as the obvious choice. Though the FBI doesn't specifically define mass shooting, it does define mass murder, calling it a single incident in which a perpetrator kills four or more people, not including himself or herself. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mass-shootings-us_n_3935978.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
We've Had So Many Mass Shootings In The U.S., We've Had To Redefine The Term
(HuffPost) A heavily armed shooter entered the Navy Yard in Washington on Monday and opened fire, killing at least 12 people before being shot to death by authorities.
The killings brought the horror of mass shootings back into the national spotlight, as President Barack Obama condemned the "cowardly act" and honored the victims during an address.
Monday's violence marked the sixth mass shooting since the one in Newtown, Conn., in December. It was also the first publicly recognized by Obama since the elementary school massacre, which claimed the lives of 27, including 20 children.
.....(snip).....
The growing number of mass killings over the past five years left the country in search of a term that would distinguish mass murder by gun from those using other weapons. Mass shooting has gained favor as the obvious choice. Though the FBI doesn't specifically define mass shooting, it does define mass murder, calling it a single incident in which a perpetrator kills four or more people, not including himself or herself. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mass-shootings-us_n_3935978.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
September 17, 2013
Published on Sep 12, 2013
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss America's curse: dollar printing or JP Morgan? They also examine the truth about the fact that despite a mere $4 extra to manufacture a smartphone in America rather than in China, production will remain overseas.
Keiser Report: America's Curse
Published on Sep 12, 2013
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss America's curse: dollar printing or JP Morgan? They also examine the truth about the fact that despite a mere $4 extra to manufacture a smartphone in America rather than in China, production will remain overseas.
September 17, 2013
from Consortium News:
NFL, ESPN and Big-Dollar Secrecy
September 17, 2013
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, his Monticello farm team was obviously not what he had in mind. They were chattel, possessions toiling in his fields. So it’s not lightly – or unreasonable – to invoke the plantation mentality to describe the National Football League.
Tom Van Riper, who covers sports for Forbes magazine, points out that of the 31 owners of NFL teams, 17 – more than half – are billionaires. Many boast of being self-made, in the image of Horatio Alger, but are now ensconced in luxury skyboxes far above the proletarians whose own dreams of glory ride vicariously on the grunts and groans of bulky but agile gladiators only one play away from a career-ending collision with the laws of physics.
For more than a year, public television’s award-winning investigative journalism series FRONTLINE had been collaborating on a new documentary about brain trauma in pro football with journalists from ESPN, the giant sports network. The title: “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.”
A hard-hitting promo for the investigation upset ESPN President John Skipper. “Over the top” was his description — too “sensational.” He was so “startled” – his word – that he pulled the plug on ESPN’s partnership with FRONTLINE. The sports network has had a reputation for solid, even bold reporting of controversy and scandal in pro and amateur athletics. Not this time. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/17/nfl-espn-and-big-dollar-secrecy/
NFL, ESPN and Big-Dollar Secrecy
from Consortium News:
NFL, ESPN and Big-Dollar Secrecy
September 17, 2013
Pro football is big business and America’s fascination with often violent sports has made Disney’s ESPN a lucrative franchise. So there is much money on the line over the issue of concussion-related disabilities, explaining the NFL’s desire to keep the medical science secret, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship note.
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, his Monticello farm team was obviously not what he had in mind. They were chattel, possessions toiling in his fields. So it’s not lightly – or unreasonable – to invoke the plantation mentality to describe the National Football League.
Tom Van Riper, who covers sports for Forbes magazine, points out that of the 31 owners of NFL teams, 17 – more than half – are billionaires. Many boast of being self-made, in the image of Horatio Alger, but are now ensconced in luxury skyboxes far above the proletarians whose own dreams of glory ride vicariously on the grunts and groans of bulky but agile gladiators only one play away from a career-ending collision with the laws of physics.
For more than a year, public television’s award-winning investigative journalism series FRONTLINE had been collaborating on a new documentary about brain trauma in pro football with journalists from ESPN, the giant sports network. The title: “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.”
A hard-hitting promo for the investigation upset ESPN President John Skipper. “Over the top” was his description — too “sensational.” He was so “startled” – his word – that he pulled the plug on ESPN’s partnership with FRONTLINE. The sports network has had a reputation for solid, even bold reporting of controversy and scandal in pro and amateur athletics. Not this time. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/17/nfl-espn-and-big-dollar-secrecy/
September 17, 2013
from truthdig:
Miss America: Why Racism Thrives Online
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Marcia Alesan Dawkins
Some things evolve and some things don’t. Such is the case with this weekend’s wins of Nina Davuluri and Floyd Mayweather and the tsunami of racism that overtook Twitter in response.
Ladies first. Nina Davuluri is the second consecutive New Yorker to be crowned Miss America and the first Indian-American to win the title. Though Davuluri’s platform was “Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency,” like all of us she is more than the sum of her racial and ethnic identities.
According to CNN, “the 24-year-old Fayetteville, New York, native was on the dean’s list and earned the Michigan Merit Award and National Honor Society nods while studying at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science.” Her goal is to become a physician. Davuluri plans to invest her time as Miss America working with the U.S. Department of Education as an advocate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These are fields where women, regardless of racial or ethnic background, are sorely underrepresented.
Davuluri’s feel-good story took a racist turn in the Twitterverse, where some were outraged by the fact that 2014’s Miss America isn’t white. As in 2010, when the Lebanese-American beauty queen Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA, racism was expressed not just explicitly in the form of tweets, but also in the level of ignorance those tweets exposed. For example, Jezebel reports that some tweeps seemed confused over whether the new Miss America was Indian-American, Arab, Muslim or Latina. They could all agree, however, that she didn’t deserve the title based on whom they thought she was. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/miss_america_why_racism_thrives_online_20130916/?ln
Miss America: Why Racism Thrives Online
from truthdig:
Miss America: Why Racism Thrives Online
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Marcia Alesan Dawkins
Some things evolve and some things don’t. Such is the case with this weekend’s wins of Nina Davuluri and Floyd Mayweather and the tsunami of racism that overtook Twitter in response.
Ladies first. Nina Davuluri is the second consecutive New Yorker to be crowned Miss America and the first Indian-American to win the title. Though Davuluri’s platform was “Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency,” like all of us she is more than the sum of her racial and ethnic identities.
According to CNN, “the 24-year-old Fayetteville, New York, native was on the dean’s list and earned the Michigan Merit Award and National Honor Society nods while studying at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science.” Her goal is to become a physician. Davuluri plans to invest her time as Miss America working with the U.S. Department of Education as an advocate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These are fields where women, regardless of racial or ethnic background, are sorely underrepresented.
Davuluri’s feel-good story took a racist turn in the Twitterverse, where some were outraged by the fact that 2014’s Miss America isn’t white. As in 2010, when the Lebanese-American beauty queen Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA, racism was expressed not just explicitly in the form of tweets, but also in the level of ignorance those tweets exposed. For example, Jezebel reports that some tweeps seemed confused over whether the new Miss America was Indian-American, Arab, Muslim or Latina. They could all agree, however, that she didn’t deserve the title based on whom they thought she was. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/miss_america_why_racism_thrives_online_20130916/?ln
September 17, 2013
The Dead Rhetoric of War
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Chris Hedges
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a “Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.
The myth of war, as each generation discovers over the corpses of its young and the looting of its national treasury by war profiteers, is a lie. War is no longer able to divert Americans from the economic and political decay that is rapidly turning the nation into a corporate oligarchy, a nation where “the consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. War cannot hide what we have become. War has made us a nation that openly tortures and holds people indefinitely in our archipelago of offshore penal colonies. War has unleashed death squads—known as special operations forces—to assassinate our enemies around the globe, even American citizens. War has seen us terrorize whole populations, including populations with which we are not officially at war, with armed drones that circle night and day above mud-walled villages in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. War has shredded, in the name of national security, our most basic civil liberties. War has turned us into the most spied-upon, monitored, eavesdropped and photographed population in human history. War has seen our most courageous dissidents and whistle-blowers—those who warned us of the crimes of war and empire, from Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to Edward Snowden—become persecuted political prisoners or the hunted. War has made a few very rich, as it always does, as our schools, libraries and firehouses are closed in the name of fiscal austerity, basic social service programs for children and the elderly are shut down, cities such as Detroit declare bankruptcy, and chronic underemployment and unemployment hover at 15 percent, perhaps 20. No one knows the truth anymore about America. The vast Potemkin village we have become, the monstrous lie that is America, includes the willful manipulation of financial and official statistics from Wall Street and Washington. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dead_rhetoric_of_war_20130916/
Chris Hedges: The Dead Rhetoric of War
The Dead Rhetoric of War
Posted on Sep 16, 2013
By Chris Hedges
A French-language version of this article was published Monday in the newspaper
Le Monde.
The intoxication of war, fueled by the euphoric nationalism that swept through the country like a plague following the attacks of 9/11, is a spent force in the United States. The high-blown rhetoric of patriotism and national destiny, of the sacred duty to reshape the world through violence, to liberate the enslaved and implant democracy in the Middle East, has finally been exposed as empty and meaningless. The war machine has tried all the old tricks. It trotted out the requisite footage of atrocities. It issued the histrionic warnings that the evil dictator will turn his weapons of mass destruction against us if we do not bomb and “degrade” his military. It appealed to the nation’s noble sacrifice in World War II, with the Secretary of State John Kerry calling the present situation a “Munich moment.” But none of it worked. It was only an offhand remark by Kerry that opened the door to a Russian initiative, providing the Obama administration a swift exit from its mindless bellicosity and what would have been a humiliating domestic defeat. Twelve long years of fruitless war in Afghanistan and another 10 in Iraq have left the public wary of the lies of politicians, sick of the endless violence of empire and unwilling to continue to pump trillions of dollars into a war machine that has made a small cabal of defense contractors and arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Halliburton huge profits while we are economically and politically hollowed out from the inside. The party is over.
The myth of war, as each generation discovers over the corpses of its young and the looting of its national treasury by war profiteers, is a lie. War is no longer able to divert Americans from the economic and political decay that is rapidly turning the nation into a corporate oligarchy, a nation where “the consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. War cannot hide what we have become. War has made us a nation that openly tortures and holds people indefinitely in our archipelago of offshore penal colonies. War has unleashed death squads—known as special operations forces—to assassinate our enemies around the globe, even American citizens. War has seen us terrorize whole populations, including populations with which we are not officially at war, with armed drones that circle night and day above mud-walled villages in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. War has shredded, in the name of national security, our most basic civil liberties. War has turned us into the most spied-upon, monitored, eavesdropped and photographed population in human history. War has seen our most courageous dissidents and whistle-blowers—those who warned us of the crimes of war and empire, from Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to Edward Snowden—become persecuted political prisoners or the hunted. War has made a few very rich, as it always does, as our schools, libraries and firehouses are closed in the name of fiscal austerity, basic social service programs for children and the elderly are shut down, cities such as Detroit declare bankruptcy, and chronic underemployment and unemployment hover at 15 percent, perhaps 20. No one knows the truth anymore about America. The vast Potemkin village we have become, the monstrous lie that is America, includes the willful manipulation of financial and official statistics from Wall Street and Washington. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dead_rhetoric_of_war_20130916/
September 16, 2013
A Seattle man who crashed his car while high on meth, pantsless and wearing fake breasts was sentenced Friday.
Jonathan Harty, 31, will serve 29 months in jail for the April 20 incident, during which he crashed into 3 vehicles at 100 mph on a Seattle highway, KOMO News reported.
Harty's two daughters, ages 4 and 6, were in the car when the crashes occurred. Harty had put them in the car at around 11:30 p.m., telling them he was taking them to a toy store.
Police noted they found a full bottle of urine and a pair of panties by Harty's feet. Arresting officers also noted that Harty stated he was having a dream that he was in a car crash. ......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/jonathan-harty-pantsless-meth-crash_n_3935893.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news
Pantsless Dad Wore Fake Breasts, Crashed Car
A Seattle man who crashed his car while high on meth, pantsless and wearing fake breasts was sentenced Friday.
Jonathan Harty, 31, will serve 29 months in jail for the April 20 incident, during which he crashed into 3 vehicles at 100 mph on a Seattle highway, KOMO News reported.
Harty's two daughters, ages 4 and 6, were in the car when the crashes occurred. Harty had put them in the car at around 11:30 p.m., telling them he was taking them to a toy store.
Police noted they found a full bottle of urine and a pair of panties by Harty's feet. Arresting officers also noted that Harty stated he was having a dream that he was in a car crash. ......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/jonathan-harty-pantsless-meth-crash_n_3935893.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news
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