Monday, October 29, 2012

Romney Presidency will be disastrous for America - Salon.com

You may have heard that an election is coming up in the U.S., it's October 2012 and the U.S. Presidential Election between Obama and Romney is around the corner.  One hopes that Obama will prevail, and that the electorate will wake up to the insanity that is circulated as fact among the Republicans.  In case that does not happen, in case Romney does win, Salon.com's Alex Pareene just published an article going over what a Romney Presidency might do.   He didn't just parrot the promises made by Romney's campaign, if only because Romney has flip-flopped so much that it would be impossible to pin the campaign down on any promise, but instead going by the merits of the people surrounding the Romney campaign.  Basically, it's a retread of the disastrous Bush II Presidency, and of the disastrous prior Republican Presidencies.

Let's go through the high points ...

"Obviously we're bombing Iran.."   Hooooboy..  Basically the reasoning goes that Romney's campaign has collected up a bunch of the people that led the Bush II Presidency to think that an invasion of Iraq would be easy, bloodless, over in a few weeks, and that it would usher in an era of world peace and nirvana.  The last 9 years since the invasion of Iraq should have proved the case that this was a bunch of hooey, but...  we have a right wing echo chamber that is recycling ridiculous insane ideas over and over, such as the Iraq War was a success.

Bombing or invasion of Iran would not be easy, and there are a lot of differences between Iraq and Iran.  Iraq had been under U.S. sanctions for 10 years, under constant military not-quite-invasion-occupation (no flight zone etc) and was weakened.  Iran has on the other hand been free to act on its own, not been under any such sanctions, has been able to sell Oil on the market, etc etc .. they're in a strong position, where Iraq was in a weak position.

Under the guideline promoted by Gen. Shinseki before the Iraq War, a successful invasion of Iran would require an army of 1.4 million troops.  But the advisors surrounding Romney are the ones who surrounded Bush and ignored Shinseki's recommendations, and just as the U.S. went into Iraq with too few troops, so too will we go into Iran with too few troops.

What will be the bloodshed and death in Iran because of this?  Will it be in the Millions where in Iraq it was in the Hundreds of Thousands of civilian casualties resulting from the war?

What if Romney appoints John Bolton as Secretary of Defense?  Yikes!  "Remember: John Bolton isn’t just being kept around for show. Romney actually listens to the guy."

Pareene predicts a big role for Dan Senor in the Romney Administration calling him "the man who instantly went from unqualified idiot political hack appointee to Respected Foreign Policy Expert the day Bush sent him to lie on behalf of the disastrously incompetent provisional government in post-invasion Iraq."

And .. Cofer Black .. a former CIA agent, who was there while the Extraordinary Rendition plans were being drawn up. and who was Vice Chairman of Blackwater 

And .. Michael Hayden (“Warrantless Surveillance”) who is expected to be the Director of National Intelligence .. implication:- we'll see even more illegal warrantless wiretapping and privacy invasions

Sen. Joe Lieberman, expected to become Secretary of State.  He's worrisome because of being such an uber-hawk.

We can expect the Supreme Court to become far more conservative.  ... Justice Anthony Kennedy (born in 1936) ... Ginsburg (born in 1933) ... Stephen Breyer (1938) ... all old enough we can expect within the next few years one or all three will be replaced on the bench.  "means the effective end of Roe v. Wade and the Commerce Clause... possibly mean the end of the entire New Deal regulatory state... conservative control of the Court for decades..."

Environment ... plausibly an Obama administration is better for environmental and energy supply issues, because his ideas are more enlightened (less "oil friendly") than Romney's.  But Obama has a number of big question marks about this, such as his enthusiastic support for that Clean Coal idiocy.

Federal Budget .. we can expect a return to the trickle down tax cuts for the wealthy while slashing programs for the poor while expanding the military sort of policies that proved so disastrous under recent Republican Administrations.  Especially if Romney has Congress with him.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2012/10/29/the_romney_presidency_the_worst_case_scenario/

Monday, August 13, 2012

Sheldon Adelson's financial dealings in Chinese/Macau casino's under investigation

The NY Times reports that Sheldon Adelson is under investigation for questionable dealings related to the casino's Adelson has built in Macau (China).  The videos below are a pair of excellent reports by Rachel Maddow and Ed <??> both of MSNBC.  They go into details about what Adelson did to set up the casino's in Macau, including what amounts to bribery of local officials as well as massive missing amounts of money.

In the U.S., Adelson is acting as a kingmaker in the Presidential race, as one of the better known richer-than-God people who are funneling unlimited amount of money to support chosen Republican causes.  For example: "On Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, is to appear at a fund-raiser at the Sands’s Venetian casino in Las Vegas; Mr. Adelson is likely to attend, according to a person close to him."

According to a WSJ report the dealings are under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/us/politics/sheldon-adelsons-dealings-in-china-are-under-investigation.html?emc=na

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577578900341481654.html


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy




Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Israel under attack and the IDF is posting alarming tweets

I stumbled across these tweets - and had no idea that Israel was under any kind of attack.  I'd glanced through the news earlier this evening, and seen nothing.  Not until accidentally finding these tweets.

One thing that stands out is the idea of, every 30 minutes having to take cover.  This reminds me of one of the Battlestar Galactica episodes in which the Cylons would attack every 33 minutes, forcing the fleet to make an emergency jump every 33 minutes.  The thing is that, being machines, the Cylons could keep up the pace on and on and on, while the humans were getting tired and eventually would fail at something.

But this is not a fictional TV show, but real life, and the Palestinians aren't evil robots, they are human beings.  The analogy was this concept of having to endure an attack so frequently, that it has to sap at you.

As someone living in a very calm and peaceful place, I find it hard to fathom what it must be like to live in Israel or for that matter the Palestinian territories.  On either side of this conflict life must be very tense for those living through these experiences.

Sometimes I start ranting about how Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is just inflaming the Middle East tensions.  On the other hand, I'm not living there, I don't know what it is like to be an Israeli in the Middle East, nor do I know what it's like to be a Palestinian in that same context.  As an outsider I only see so much, the people living there have a different perspective.

The other thing which stands out is - this is the official IDF twitter account sending out messages saying that the people should be afraid, messages meant to put fear into peoples hearts.  Read these messages after taking a step back to get some perspective.  This is an arm of the Government, the Israeli Military, telling us to be afraid.  Is this the best highest sort of communication that should come from a Government official?  To be afraid?  Shouldn't the Government official be attempting to offer reassurances, and useful advice?







Thursday, January 26, 2012

Oldest Bible found in Palestine - Jesus was a servant of God and not God himself - Trinity False

One of the core tenants of Christianity is the Trinity - The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost.  The figure we know of as Jesus is The Son, and the other two are individuated spirits off in the heavens somewhere.  I don't know the theology of it perfectly, but that's the model we all learned in Sunday School (at least, all of us who went to a Christian church while growing up).  The key of this model of the spiritual hierarchy is to make Jesus out to be a Divine intervention into the modern world, where The Father sent his Son down here to Earth to save us all from our selves.  More or less that is the story.  It means that Jesus cannot be a Human, but is a Divine Emissary.  Is that what happened?

A few years ago I wrote about Establishing Control over a Society in which I posited four steps a group could take over a series of generations to control the society for hundreds of years.  It's a long term vision of control in other words.  I do have a hunch that these steps were taken with Christianity where the original real Christianity was subverted in order to become a mechanism for political control over Western Society.

In any case - regardless of all that - this video shows "proof" of an early Bible from a small sect in Jerusalem.  Their Bible discusses Jesus as a Human like you and me, who was acting as a teacher of a body of spiritual training, rather than discussing Jesus as a Divine Emissary.


Hawaii may keep track of all Web sites visited

CNET News is reporting that Hawaii's legislature is considering a proposal to require Internet Service Providers to record every web site their customers visit. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

The required data is "subscribers information and internet destination history information".  That information includes IP address, domain name, or host name.

The effect of this proposal would be for the government to know every website its citizens look at.  The refrain from a Police song pops into my mind, "every breath you take, every step you take, I'll be watching you". 





http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57366443-281/hawaii-may-keep-track-of-all-web-sites-visited/


Hawaii HB2288 - record keeping requirements for Internet Service Providers

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative

Homeland Security Given Permission to Monitor (a.k.a. spy on) American Journalists


Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative

2010 Winter Olympics Social Media Event Monitoring Initiative

Homeland Security Given Permission to Monitor (a.k.a. spy on) American Journalists


2010 Winter Olympics Social Media Event Monitoring Initiative