Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Firestarter]

Oh those are cute! But its true they do a serious service. Its all about the balance and they arent blood suckers, they eat the blood suckers!

[Michael]

The battle for Pakistan is now on for young and old.

The Pak army has gone in boots and all, and Petraeus gives them two weeks - it's all or nothing for the Pak Government.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Hillary has said, don't you worry about the Pak nuclear weapons - we are looking after those. Which I take to mean that whatever happens, US will throw everything at stopping them fall into Taliban hands - if they can't save the country, at least they can do that much.

In such cases, expect the Taliban to pull off a major attempt to demoralise Pak, or the West for that matter.

[Michael]

[Michael]

[Firestarter]

Notre Dame’s Obama invite riles bishops
Conservative Catholics angered by president's abortion rights record

updated 1 hour, 36 minutes ago
This coming week, Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Fla., will take the unusual step of celebrating a Mass of Reparation, to make amends for sins against God.

The motivation: to provide an outlet for Catholics upset with what Wenski calls the University of Notre Dame's "clueless" decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at its commencement and receive an honorary doctorate May 17.

The nation's flagship Catholic university's honoring of a politician whose abortion rights record clashes with a fundamental church teaching has triggered a reaction among the nation's Catholic bishops that is remarkable in scope and tone, church observers say.



At least 55 bishops have publicly denounced or questioned Notre Dame in recent weeks, employing an arsenal of terms ranging from "travesty" and "debacle" to "extreme embarrassment."

Paramount issue of activism
The bishops' response is part of a decades-long march to make abortion the paramount issue for their activism, a marker of the kind of bishops Rome has sent to the U.S. and the latest front in a struggle over Catholic identity that has exposed rifts between hierarchy and flock.

Bishops who have spoken out so far account for 20 percent of the roughly 265 active U.S. bishops — a minority, but more than double the number who suggested five years ago that then-Democratic presidential hopeful and Catholic John Kerry should either be refused Communion or refrain from it because of his abortion stance.

"I think they do believe the chips are down," said James Hitchock, a history professor at St. Louis University. "The election has changed the whole landscape. Now we have a strongly pro-abortion administration in power, and he's in a position to achieve what we've been trying to stave off now for years."

As for Wenski, he issued a statement and then came up with the Mass idea after angry Notre Dame graduates from central Florida asked for guidance about how to respond, he said in an interview.

"I figured, 'I'm a bishop — I'm not going to tell them to attack Notre Dame with a pitchfork,'" said Wenski, who is not among the nation's more confrontational bishops. "I'm going to tell them to go pray."

Wenski said he will not "preach a tirade against Notre Dame" during the Monday night Mass at Orlando's Cathedral of St. James. What must be atoned for, Wenski said, is complacency among U.S. Catholics about the legal killing of unborn children, which contributed to the climate that allowed Notre Dame to think it was all right to honor Obama.

Protests began quickly
Almost immediately after Notre Dame invited Obama and he accepted, anti-abortion and conservative Catholic groups launched protests, and bishops began either making statements or releasing letters written to the university president, the Rev. John Jenkins.

Former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon turned down a prestigious Notre Dame medal last week because she was to have shared the stage with Obama.

The university has emphasized that Obama will be honored as an inspiring leader who broke a historic racial barrier — not for his positions on abortion or embryonic stem cell research.

U.S. bishops have long been at the forefront of opposing legal abortion, but it's never been their sole focus. During the 1980s, the bishops issued pastoral letters on nuclear weapons, poverty and the economy, influenced by the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's concept of a "consistent ethic of life."

Many Catholic bishops, however, worried that abortion was getting shortchanged. Those who argue abortion trumps everything say that other issues are irrelevant without the beginning of life and that things like capital punishment and war are sometimes justified.


Bishops hammered that home in November 2007 with a statement on faithful citizenship that said: "The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many."

Timothy Barnes, a Colgate University political scientist, said the Notre Dame clash gives bishops a chance to promote two of their top priorities: re-emphasizing abortion at a time when the issue is waning, and stressing the Catholic character of Catholic universities.

"If you put yourself in their shoes and see Notre Dame honoring a new president, a popular president, who seems to be a new kind of political figure trying to emphasize new issues and post-partisan politics, that would be something they would want to respond to pretty aggressively," he said. "The old divisions of the old politics, in certain sectors, is focused on abortion."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Obama backed by most Catholics
Polls show Catholics giving high job approval ratings to Obama, and Catholic attitudes about abortion and stem-cell research largely mirror the public's.

"I think the bishops who believe abortion is the ultimate litmus test look at the polls and realize Catholics are not listening to them," said the Rev. Mark Massa, co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University. "They're playing a very dangerous game because they do not have the moral authority they had before the sex abuse crisis, and they're trying to find a toehold and get heard."

So far, the Notre Dame saga doesn't seem to be resonating. Only about half of Catholics surveyed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life from April 23 to 27 had heard about the controversy.

About half of U.S. Catholics supported Notre Dame, 28 percent said the school was wrong and 22 percent had no opinion, the poll found. People who attend Mass frequently were more likely to oppose the university's stance, and also gave Obama lower job performance marks.

R. Scott Appleby, a Notre Dame history professor, said the bishops' outspokenness points to a new litmus test — not on whether abortion should be legal but over how to fight it.

"The litmus test is on 'How do we best change the policies and work for a culture of life?" Appleby said. "Many Catholics want to be open to at least discuss with the bishops the best way to move forward on our common goal. But the bishops have imposed this particular approach and have not felt it necessary to consult the faithful fully on that."

Several bishops have taken a harder line on perceived dissent. To them, Notre Dame is defying a 2004 bishops' statement on politics that says: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

Legacy of Pope John Paul II
The bishops' response to Notre Dame also is part of the legacy of the man who appointed so many of them, said the Rev. Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. Pope John Paul II sought loyal servants who "were willing to take on the world — willing to argue and debate and confront people," Reese said.

Wenski, the Orlando bishop, said bishops are not angry at Obama in this case, but the university leadership. Yet their disapproval "is also an expression of our frustration" with Obama administration decisions on funding for overseas groups that perform abortions, expanded embryonic stem cell research and "conscience clause" protections for health workers, he said.


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On being a voice on abortion, Wenski said: "We've been doing this pretty consistently. Perhaps in the past, some bishops have been a little bit too indulgent of what we tolerate in some of the dissent."

Wenski also has spoken out about banning torture and finding a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants — issues he said can be common causes for bishops and the White House.

"Bishops are like most other people," he said. "We really don't want to look for conflicts or fights. "But this has been egregious enough that we have to be clear. We're standing on principle, not looking for a battle."

[TIOTIT]

From The Times
May 2, 2009
Mission to break up Pacific island of rubbish twice the size of Texas
Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent

A high-seas mission departs from San Francisco next month to map and explore a sinister and shifting 21st-century continent: one twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.

Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle a monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific.

The toxic soup of refuse was discovered in 1997 when Charles Moore, an oceanographer, decided to travel through the centre of the North Pacific gyre (a vortex or circular ocean current). Navigators usually avoid oceanic gyres because persistent high-pressure systems — also known as the doldrums — lack the winds and currents to benefit sailors.

Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one.
Related Links

 
The damage caused by these tiny fragments is more insidious than strangulation, entrapment and choking by larger plastic refuse. The fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals.

“You can buy certified organic farm produce, but no fishmonger on earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish. This is our legacy,” said Mr Moore.

Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can be solved at sea. “Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went.”

In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei’s flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.

“The trick is collecting the plastic while minimising the catch of sea life. We can’t catch the tiny pieces. But the net benefit of getting the rest out is very likely to be better than leaving it in,” says Doug Woodring, the leader of the project.

With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

“We have a few technologies that can turn thin plastics into diesel fuel. Other technologies are much more hardcore, to deal with the hard plastics,” says Mr Woodring, who hopes to run his vessels on the recycled fuel.

Plastics bags, food wrappers and containers are the second and third most common items in marine debris around the world, according to the Ocean Conservancy, which is based in Washington. The proportion of tiny fragments, known as mermaid’s tears, are less easily quantified.

The UN’s environmental programme estimates that 18,000 pieces of plastic have ended up in every square kilometre of the sea, totalling more than 100 million tonnes. The North Pacific gyre — officially called the northern subtropical convergence zone — is thought to contain the biggest concentration. Ideal conditions for shifting slicks of plastic also exist in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic, but no research vessel has investigated those areas. If this exploratory mission is successful, a bigger fleet will depart in 2010.

Mr Woodring admits that Project Kaisei has limitations. “We won’t be able to clean up the entire ocean. The solution really lies on land. We have to treat plastics in a totally different way, and stop them ever reaching the ocean.”

[Firestarter]

Notice along the pacific sw, anyone will tell you beaches are dirty. People littler and trash beaches all the time so some of the crap probably got in the oceans via dirtybeaches and wind currents blowing it in the water.

[tangerine dream]

This one's Great!!

[TIOTIT]

The BBC’s American soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.

It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.

No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.

Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion . . .” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know . . . identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who . . . can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.

In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.

Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of Smoking Is Good for You – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.

Much of the American Establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.

[Michael]

Good old John, keeping the mirror up.
He's not an easy catch.

[Firestarter]

We're not judging obama after hes only been in office for 100 days are we? Then of course, got to check sources of any news you get at this time. Everyones gonna have their biases.

Michael, how would you feel if the taliban blew up the Sydney opera house full of people one night? There is still unfinished business with 911. Americans are not going to just let that shit go overnight.

Also, if people would stop flowering fighting with each other in all these stupid wars and threatening the globe (and then people call on america as an ally to help out of course), then you wouldnt see all of this drama occuring.

Obama stepped into a mess, we dont expect him to make perfect moves or fix the whole entire globe and economy overnight. So the comment 'a tough one to catch' is unacceptable. Until he really flowers up, if he does, then let it go. I do get tired of this anti-american talk (subtly or overtly) which occurs in soma, as if we're the big satan like saddam hussein called us. Just cause a bunch of muslims hate us doesnt mean america is a great satan. We dont oppress our women, we dont jail folks for their freedom of speech, they can say the president sucks and its totally allowable. If you dont like democracy move from aussie then and go live in Bejiing or something, and see if you like it better. Or Pakistan and live there and see. I think you'd rather life in the usa when push comes to shove.

[Michael]

"He's not an easy catch." refers to John.

Meaning he doesn't allow himself to be bought off - he works hard to criticise every side when he sees a flaw. I'm surprised he is still alive. I don't always agree with him, but I believe he does a very good job of holding up a mirror to a side of many who don't want to see their warts, or their evil in some cases.

He recently gave Australia a severe criticism. His views are definitely one-sided, but that doesn't make them unworthy of serious consideration. People like him are needed, to keep reminding us that we must have criticism for a healthy world.

[Firestarter]

"He's not an easy catch." refers to John.

Meaning he doesn't allow himself to be bought off - he works hard to criticise every side when he sees a flaw. I'm surprised he is still alive. I don't always agree with him, but I believe he does a very good job of holding up a mirror to a side of many who don't want to see their warts, or their evil in some cases.

He recently gave Australia a severe criticism. His views are definitely one-sided, but that doesn't make them unworthy of serious consideration. People like him are needed, to keep reminding us that we must have criticism for a healthy world.

Oh my bad. I thot you meant catching obama doing bad deeds or something. Still, he just went into the office, and you cannot expect him to be perfect overnight. Theres a lot of other people advising him. and as far as humane treatment for terrorists or taliban folk, I dont care. They torture people and all that, flower them. They may as well take what they dish out to people all the time. I remember seeing some kids drawings from afganistan of kids parents, they draw them all mutilated and bloody cause the taliban killed their parents in some public execution in front of them. They're just a bunch of thugs with guns and knives and need to be taken out. I do not care if they are human when they do not see other people, even their own people, as human. And they also destroyed all those buddhist statues in afganistan and that says something about them too.

[TIOTIT]

 Everything we expirience while we're passing through
is relative ask any remnant of an indigenous culture.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k

Report on the Conduct of the War 1865 Vol. 3
Page 47
MASSACRE OF THE CHEYENE INDIANS

Proclamation by Governor Evans, of Colorado Territory.
PROCLAMATION.

    Having sent special messengers to the Indians of the plains, directing the friendly to rendezvous at Fort
Lyon, Fort Larned, Fort Laramie, and Camp Collins for safety and protection, warning them that all hostile
Indians would be pursued and destroyed, and the last of said messengers having now returned, and the
evidence being conclusive that most of the Indian tribes of the plains are at war and hostile to the whites, and
having to the utmost of my ability endeavored to induce all of the Indians of the plains to come to said places
of rendezvous, promising them subsistence and protection, which, with a few exceptions, they have refused to
do:
 Now, therefore, I, John Evans, governor of Colorado Territory, do issue this my proclamation, authorizing all
citizens of Colorado, either individually or in such parties as they may organize, to go in pursuit of all hostile
Indians on the plains, scrupulously avoiding those who have responded to my said call to rendezvous at the
points indicated; also, to kill and destroy, as enemies of the country, wherever they may be found, all such
hostile Indians. And further, as the only reward I am authorized to offer for such services, I hereby empower
such citizens, or parties of citizens, to take captive, and hold to their own private use and benefit, all the
property of said hostile Indians that they may capture, and to receive for all stolen property recovered from
said Indians such reward as may be deemed proper and just therefore.
    I further offer to all such parties as will organize under the militia law of the Territory for the purpose to
furnish them arms and ammunition, and to present their accounts for pay as regular soldiers for themselves,
their horses, their subsistence, and transportation, to Congress, under the assurance of the department
commander that they will be paid.
    The conflict is upon us, and all good citizens are called upon to do their duty for the defense of their
homes and families.
    In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the great seal of the Territory of Colorado
to be affixed this 11th day of August, A.D. 1864
[SEAL]                                                                                                            JOHN EVANS.
By the governor:
     S.H. ELBERT. Secretary of Colorado Territory.



A group of slaves bought from the coast of Africa at $5,000 could be sold for $25,000 in Brazil. Profit would equal about 400% during the nineteenth century. Tightepacking- More slaves they had on a ship more profit made. In 1850 about 92% of all black Americans were concentrated in the South and of all these people about 95% were slaves. Only the healthiest slaves were chosen because they had a better chance to survive the middle passage of the triangle trade and get to the destination chosen for them.

[Firestarter]

Ah west side story. I remember being a kid watching it with Natalie Wood, I cried my eyes out at the end of it. It was just plain wrong, cause they were meant to be together. Like Romeo and Juliet.