The Longest War
by Peter L. Bergen
Free Press, New York, 2011
Writing history is a matter of placing points in time as bookends or markers for significant events that have occurred around the world. Generally this is done by the winners of the particular struggles that create the events of history in order to highlight their own prowess and beneficence as compared to the other parties backwardness and ignorance.
Peter Bergen, representing the U.S. as putative winner of the war on terror, bookends the "war on terror" with the dates spanning Sept 11, 2001 to the extra-judicial assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The latter date is not written in stone yet, as Bergen's last statement is "In 2011, the Longest War, finally, began to wind down." I will return to that final statement later, partly because of the convenient name change from the "war on terror" and partly because of the "winding down" aspect.
Mastercard's dolphin cruelty
Discounted tickets to watch wild dolphins suffer in captivity: Priceless.
Mastercard is offering discounted tickets to the infamous Resorts World Sentosa, a resort in Singapore that recently kidnapped 27 wild dolphins for an exhibit. Two of those dolphins have already died, and the 25 other dolphins are being held in brutal conditions until construction of the exhibit is complete. The surviving dolphins' risks of illness and death increase with each day of captivity.
100,000 Change.org members have already called on Resorts World Sentosa to release its captive dolphins. If Mastercard cancels its ticket discount promotion, it will put big financial pressure on the resort to finally set the dolphins free.
Please sign dolphin activist Barbara Napoles's petition on Change.org calling for Mastercard to stop offering discounted tickets to Resorts World Sentosa.
Statistics for captive dolphins are bleak. While dolphins in the wild usually live for 45 years, more than half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity.
Leonard Peltier moved again
The United States Penitentiary I in Coleman is a high security facility located in central Florida approximately 50 miles northwest of Orlando, 60 miles northeast of Tampa, and 35 miles south of Ocala.
LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132
USP COLEMAN I
U.S. PENITENTIARY
P.O. BOX 1033
COLEMAN, FL 33521
This is nearly 2,000 miles from Leonard's Nation, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, in North Dakota! Tell the Federal Bureau of Prisons that the only acceptable transfer is one to a medium security facility in close proximity to (within a 500-mile radius of) his family and Nation. Ideally, Leonard should be moved to the medium security facility at Oxford, WI.
Dr. Thomas Kane, Acting Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
320 1st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Phone: (202) 307-3250 (Director); (202) 307-3198 (Switchboard)
Fax: (202) 514-6620
Launched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg endorses Norman Solomon for Congress: Will join the candidate on campaign trail
Once referred to by President Nixon’s adviser Henry Kissinger as “the most dangerous man in America,” Ellsberg is an enthusiastic supporter of Norman Solomon for Congress. The famed whistleblower will speak at a house-party fundraiser for the Solomon campaign in Marin County on Sept. 22, an event bringing together two generations of antiwar leaders.
Solomon is running for Congress in the new coastal district that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border.
For details on scheduled campaign events, please click here.
On Thursday, Ellsberg issued the following statement in support of Solomon for Congress:
The theology of armageddon
Well actually, turns out the point of the mandatory course recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and TruthOut published an exposé in July — was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory, cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training.
“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.”
The theft of 2012
In 2004, we uncovered the "caging lists" which 're-elected' George Bush.
That was nuthin' too ... compared to the theft of 2012 that is now in the making.
Major TV and print outlets are finally recognizing that the Palast team has the expertise, the cojones and the nose to sniff out mass vote bending.
We are planning our strategy right now for the hard-core, dig deep, multi-state research that we need to get the details, the documents and the proof of the fix of 2012.
So, for the first time in this entire year, I am asking—frankly, I'm pleading—for your financial support to get this investigation going right now.
First, I'm looking for 24 donors to commit to provide $2,000 each, at minimum, to launch the Missing Ballot Investigation. It's tax deductible, it's non-partisan, it's hard-core journalism, "so relevant it threatens to alter history," says the Chicago Tribune. Donate and I'll proudly list you as a producer of our Election year prime-time broadcast.
You've convinced me...Now go out and make me do it.
The story of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying that during a meeting with activists in the 1930s is apocryphal, but Ellen Baumgartner is a local activist who is holding on to the "make-me-do-it" method for getting Obama to deliver at least some of the changes he promised during his campaign in '08. A couple of weeks after being jailed for civil disobedience in front of the White House during protests against the Keystone XL tars sands pipeline, Baumgartner said she supports Obama's reelection.
"I believe in Obama. I think he has had tremendous challenges. But he has done a number of good things. People are expecting too much of him, because he has inherited a mess. Now, with the Congress being so antagonistic and determined to not give him anything that he wants, it's very discouraging. However, if the choice is between Obama and a Republican of the ilk we have been seeing, it's Obama hands-down."
Fracking (if done right) is a way to combat Global Warming, says Congressman Tim Ryan
I'm inspired because it seems that ordinary people such as myself can engage with politicians. I'm surprised because Ryan said fracking (if done right) is a way to address Global Warming by using clean natural gas. And I'm confused by his support for a flat tax that is somehow progressive. I didn't know the two were compatible.
First, the congressman's remarks about fracking, then on to taxes and rebuilding US manufacturing.
Tom Over: Why do you support fracking ?