Distracting The Public From Real News: Boobs

The front page of Yahoo News today was positively shocking!!! I have never been so appalled in my life. The nerve of those reporters....  just tasteless and tacky if you ask me.

Hey. I learned something today. Wanna know what? 

Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL need more boob pictures to further 

distract the public from the real issues which we should be discussing!   

What? You don't like boobs? You don't think they should be on the front page of every major news source online or in paper format? Well, I disagree with you. We should be working with human nature and not against it. So the next time a reporter, publisher, or wise neighbor has something really profound to say and they want to get your attention they need to flash them if they've got them and if they don't(hairy cave-man chests aren't sexy, sorry) then they need to find a picture of some and paste it next to the title! Hell, use little boobie icon pictures like commas and semi-colons.

Of course GirlsGoneWild's profits my take a plunge once pubescent teenagers become desensitized but... I think that's just something they're going to have to suck up and take for the team called Humanity Cares.

Because we do care. But with all the hustle and bustle and politically cherry picked stories of the day, we really don't get a chance to see the truth for what it is. The truth isn't always pretty and a lot of times the cleavage isn't punctuated with perky bits- it's scarred and pocked with indecency; but not from the indecency from being what it naturally is- indecency from what it's become because of us. A rock is just a rock but once you throw it then it becomes a weapon.

Let's make love not war. Let's not make it a cliche, let's make it a real thing by daring to get up and show just how much we love our freedom.

Let's use breasts as weapons. The next time you see an article which is obviously a frivolous page filler to distract you from what matters spam the crap out of the comments area with "WE NEED TO SEE MORE BREASTS! Why are you depriving us of the necessity of seeing breasts?! We demand to see them now!" or some other such inane nonsense that you can think of on the fly. Doesn't really matter because they're feeding us shit so let's let them know that we know they're feeding us shit and hand it right back to them. Call them out on their asshat behavior.

Haven't you noticed that rarely, if ever, a news story exists for more than six hours in the public domain before the audience members turn on one another, nit picking, splitting hairs, spitting insults, calling every fifth person a filthy atheist who is going to aych-ee-double toothpicks, and after everyone is aware that Suzy12q3w5 can't spell worth a shit and failed every spelling test she ever took, the mob then finally turns to the real culprit because everyone knows what it's all REALLY about-- whether our current president was born in Hawaii or Kenya. Or, "Bush did it!" 

Grow up. Grow a pair. Then wave those suckers around and yell, "I let it happen!" because ultimately that is what happened. We all let it happen. We were in a daydream. So what are we going to do about it?

Me? I blog. I spread the word to every family member and friend who will still talk to me about politics and/or religion.

Do you know that when I moved to Florida I missed being able to vote in the last presidential election by only a week? I changed over my driver's license a week too late. Shucks. But now, looking back, I don't feel so bad. I would have felt like an even bigger douche bag for voting the way I would have. Not like we're being given much of a choice, though. I guess we're just lucky that we didn't have any more pregnant chads showing up this time around. We would have had to throw welfare money at them for daring to show their promiscuous selves.

I'm not voting this November.  I'm not even going to the voting booth. I'd be tempted to flash my own breasts with a red-white-and-blue finger painted sign saying, "WMD for Peace." So yes, let us use breasts for peace.

Want to join in the good fight for freedom for all those who want to breast feed in public, don't want to have to worry about what third-world country our country is currently plundering, and/or just plain hates the unemployment rate? Here are a few logos you can slap on your own website.

 
Canada: Squarely in the Red stands for the 'in the red'(DEBT!) status of the country itself and it's pissed off students who were recently told that it was now illegal (Law 78) to protest at all. That's a good Canuck. Just roll over and play dead.... no. They're not taking it and neither should we. So show your support and spread the word. They're out there banging pots, painting body parts, and screaming at the very police officers who are told to enforce an illegal mandate from the Canadian court system. Let's show our neighbors to the north that their fight is our fight too!

The 99% is, as 99% of the world probably knows by now, the formal slogan for Occupy. Occupy Wallstreet, Occupy your local government offices, Occupy around the lake with the swans and ducks... we actually did that here. It was a nice turnout. Just Occupy. Occupy your own spiritual and physical space and ask the big bold questions: "Where would my children work tomorrow if they had to put a roof over their head and while they're working there could they hold their head up high or would it be lowered in shame from the immoral things they're being told to do on a daily or weekly basis? Can my child feel like they are part of something decent and humane or something which should be broken apart and never seen the likes of again?"

Sorry honey, no tuna helper tonight!

Just when I wanted to whip up a great batch of chilled tuna helper with peas(strangely yummy combo) for dinner tonight I find this article on MSN: Tuna Carry Fukushima Radiation Across Pacific to US.  The article is pretty funny if you just had your head in the cabinet and were contemplating opening up a few cans of the stuff and then you remember seeing those articles about traveling radiation on those alternative news sources that have been popping up for MONTHS....then it all makes sense. See, this is how the FDA is going to break the news to us gently-- we're fucked.  

First it's the tuna. Then it's the clams and shrimp. And oh no *dramatic gasp* however could we foresee that it would affect the dolphins and sharks?  Oh well. I guess we'll have to roll out the story about the tuna we tested 'today.' 

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Really, Nicholas? You're startled that radiation will travel through a large body of water like the Pacific Ocean which has such powerful currents? Here in Florida we're always startled by the pollen, sand storms, and hurricane spawning winds coming over from Africa during certain times of the year and yet somehow we know to expect it. We have calendars and we're not stupid. 1 + 1, my friend. It always equals two.

I am finding that alternate news sources from the mainstream have proven to be pretty reliable in forecasting what the future holds for corporate media. So now when I read about something on say, Yahoo or MSN, I can chuckle to myself and say, "What a coincidence." 

As of today I am adding a module of links to the side of the blog titled "Alternative News." I'd like to thank the members of ProjectCensored.org for publishing such a fine compilation series of books as well as keeping up the work on a daily basis. Their website and books are amazing and I recommend them to anyone wanting to know the real story of what journalists are seeing but are not allowed to publish in the national papers.

UNCRC- Important Parental Rights Law video!

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child(wiki link): When I stumbled across the video I've embedded below I was shocked, but not so shocked that I was falling on the floor twitching dumbfounded. Why? We've had enough run ins with our local elementary school which made me pull both my boys out to do cyber schooling two years ago. But this!! this is absolutely insane- and the USA is the only country so far which hasn't accepted it. Read how here. I find it positively nauseating to think that our current method of raising our two sons in Customary International Law, is illegal. If I didn't set boundaries for these boys they'd run over me and burn our apartment down. Or kill us. But hey, what's a little blood and gore between parents and kids if it's what the kids want, right?



Watch for yourself. It's true. After you watch the video think think long and hard about whether or not you want to have more children added to your family. And maybe in the end that's the whole point? Because if the government has control over your children and how you raise them then where has our freedom gone? We've signed them away. We're nothing more than a breeding workforce. There is hope. People are fighting this law. Keep reading and watching.

Here are some main points from the video:

• Uganda and other countries in the middle east: still figuring out whether or not honor killings should still be legal and yet they have passed the UNCRC for their country. So killing women who are raped is/maybe alright but disciplining your children is wrong? Who's raising who here? The parents or the state?
  
• Holland: children start sex education at the age of four. Why? I'm pretty sure they've seen body parts from both parents or siblings by then to say that there are differences between boys and girls. So why formally educate? So they can learn even earlier how to damage someone? As if the Terrible Two's weren't enough, for crying outloud. Next we're going to have eight year olds raping each other.
  
• Sweden: homeschooling is illegal. Only state indoctrination for the Swedes, it appears.
  
• Belgium: doctors can murder a child under a year old if they find the child physically or mentally deficient/disabled. In 16% of cases they didn’t even ask for the parent’s consent. Government sanctioned murder.
  

US courts are more frequently using ‘Customary International Law’ to decide domestic case outcomes. So we have not ratified the UNCRC here but it is still beginning to take effect in public schools and in the home itself.

Once enough of these bits and pieces of international law have passed here in the USA then a precedent is created and… UNCRC will be passed. Clinton(Mrs.) signed it already in the UN but Clinton(Mr.) didn't push it forward for ratification. And so it sits on the shelf scaring the crap out of parents in the US while it is slowly being obeyed by local family courts even without official ratification.

Taking the opinion of the child into consideration is the priority with CRC:

• The parent cannot have access to medical tests unless the child gives the doctor permission. Think your kid is high and up to no good? Good luck proving it! Even if the child is a danger to the rest of the family because of their mental state you can't do anything because the child will not allow the parents to see the drug tests.
  
• Anything the parents state the child must do to fulfill family obligations is subject to state approval. Real court case example given in movie: child doesn’t feel like going to church three times a week. Child complains to the school counselor. Child is removed from school and put into foster care and parents not even notified until after the fact. No court case is presented for abuse of any kind or imminent danger. The child simply doesn’t feel like complying with the family’s schedule. “I don’t wanna” becomes “I get put in foster care.” Surprising to the kid but then they decide to go along with it because it's how they can get what they want. Does this sound surprising to most parents? NO! (What, don't you remember being a headstrong little punk and driving your parents up the wall? I can answer honestly- yes, I do. I was a hellion.) Three times a week is too much for a thirteen year old but once a week sounds about right, according to Washington state law for a few years until it was thrown out. Many more cases were brought before family courts before it was taken out of the state’s law.
• Spanking? Forget about it. Grounding them? No can do. They have a right to freedom. Standing them in the corner or have them write a repetitive paper on their infraction(That's my personal fave. They hate handwriting assignments)? Get sued by your own child because they disagree with you. Can you imagine it, getting called into court because you tried to discipline your child and every spat turning into a legal battle? It'd be enough to give any sane person the chills when that pregnancy test comes up positive. At that point you might as well hand the child over to the state because everything you say or do is up for review in a court of law. I can see abortion rates rising exponentially as the generations get more and more unruly because to be a parent is to be the ultimate schmuck.
  

3) From the ParentalRights.org website an example was given of the ‘perfect storm’ which will rise up from the CRC being passed in the US: In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter's participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter's life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent's actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was "conflict between parent and child." Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila's parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

The moral I take from that story is that it's alright to say, "Sweety, we think your friends are a horrible influence," but it's not ok to keep your child safe inside your home from getting into trouble with those same horrible friends. What rights do we have left as parents??

ParentalRights.org has put together a Constitutional amendment(SR 99) which will actually spell out parents’ rights since currently there is nothing to protect a parent from saying no to their child and it being Constitutionally legal. That's right. It's not legal to tell your child NO! or that they must comply with your decisions about their friends, medical testings, education, etc. Let's just let the little darlings run wild, yes?

This is the proposed amendment SR99:

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

Sign the petition to pass the Constitutional amendment!

Reading the 'Parental Rights in the Courts' and 'Families in the News' examples on the site will blow your mind. This is real, people. The state believes it can raise your child better in foster care than you can!

• Parker v. Hurley(2007)
  
• Brown v. Hot, Safer and Sexy Productions
  
• Fields v. Palmdale School District
  
• Graham v. Florida(2012)
• + dozens more in the past twenty years.
  

More lawsuits are coming and things are coming to a head now.

Here is a direct link to the current 2012 update to the ratification process and who has has/has not supported the adoption of the International Treaty or the UNCRC. The statistics are appalling. The Democrats are trying to collectively throw our children under a bus.

So Readers, what is your opinion of the legislation? What have you seen or heard about it?

Democracy vs. Egyptian Pharaoh

Like a lot of you, I have been watching the news concerning affairs in Egypt the past few weeks. Found some enlightening pictures online, too!

Today in an article: Asked about U.S. President Barack Obama's counsel for him to leave office swiftly, Mubarak said he told him, "You don't understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now."

Yeah, buddy. I know what you mean. All those youngsters today below the age of THIRTY! What the hell do they know about what's good for them? They see the world going to shit all around them and lo and behold- on YouTube and Facebook there are concepts totally unheard of in their hometowns. Of course they're jealous.

They see us enjoying the ability to kiss whomever we want without sharia law prompting acid being thrown in your face. Or Googling(I hate the fact that this word is now a verb) information on anything from illegal whaling practices to Justin Bieber. (ACK. I can't believe I just wrote that.)(The last part. 'Cause he's just kinda weird looking with the whole 'I just got swirlied' hairdo.)

In any case, Egyptians are pissed. Jealous mad pissed and they have a right to be. Thirty years is too long to have one guy looking down his hairy nose at you. The people have spoken: with Molotov cocktails no less. And spray paint. And when the spray paint and alcohol ran out they resorted to throwing sticks and stones. They haven't let up yet and to them I tip my hat. They deserve the right to choose their representatives.

These pics were priceless, although the political implications in a few of them did leave me asking quite a few questions and none of them good.

Very cute. I can totally see the resemblance!

As opposed to Argentina or some other South American country hide-away? hmm....

Catch that sign in the far right? It's about our beloved White House couple. Here's the sign blown up a bit bigger:

"Game over Hillary. Obama stop supporting Tyranny." Or is that Tyrants? Kinda fuzzy. But the effect is the same.

It's not the message on the signs that have me worried it's the number of pictures I saw with Muslim women looking awfully pissed off in their hijab. I think we should be very concerned with the power vacuum when Pharaoh leaves office.

I'm sensing that Egypt is going to become the new South Vietnam.

Ground Zero Mosque

I regularly receive updates from the Judicial Watch legal organization. I've copied/pasted below the email notification I received just today. The links in my email worked perfectly. Why Blogger isn't accepting them is a mystery at this current time. I've edited and edited the html and it's just not working. Here is a direct link to the Judicial Watch update directly from their site. The links work there. I've tested them.

Judicial Watch doesn't just 'watch.' They actually file lawsuits against various branches of the US Government to obtain information about hidden actions in order to get the truth out. The fact that our representatives state that asking questions is "un-American" scares the hell out of me.


From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Mayor Bloomberg’s Office Spearheaded Drive for

Ground Zero Mosque, New Docs Show

On July 2010, Mayor Bloomberg outrageously told reporters it was “un-American” to investigate the individuals behind the Ground Zero Mosque. Now we know why he wanted no one to look into the controversy.

Judicial Watch just obtained a new batch of documents from New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s office that show his office was instrumental in helping radical anti-American Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, his wife Daisy Khan and their partner Sharif el-Gamal obtain approval for a 13-story massive mosque and “community center” to be built in the shadow of Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

These documents, which we obtained through open records requests and a related lawsuit, earned widespread press coverage in New York and around the country. (Here’s the New York Observer’s take to give just one example.) They included email correspondence between top officials inside the Mayor’s office and supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque, a project spearheaded by the Rauf-led Cordoba Initiative. The documents were made available to us on December 23. This unseemly Christmas dump is a well-known ploy by politicians to use the holidays to release bad news in the hopes that it will go unnoticed. (It didn’t work this time.)

Here are some of the documents’ key highlights:

• A May 10, 2010, email from Daisy Khan, listed as Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, to Fatima Shama, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs: “Is there a good time to chat tomorrow. We need some guidance on how to tackle the opposition.”
• A letter supporting the Ground Zero Mosque drafted by Nazi Parvizi, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit, to Julie Menin, Chairman of Manhattan’s Community Board 1, which had considered a resolution supporting the mosque. Parvizi crafted the letter for Daisy Khan’s signature, asking the board to temporarily withdraw the mosque resolution due to public outrage over the project. Parvizi described the purpose of the letter in a May 15, 2010, email: “What the letter will do, I hope, is get the media’s attention off everyone’s backs and give you guys time to regroup on your strategy as discussed…”
• A legal review of the Menin letter sent to the Mayor’s office by Rauf on May 15, 2010. The letter contemplates the impact that withdrawing the Community Board 1 resolution could have on the effort to de-designate the mosque site as a historical landmark at a June 22, 2010, Landmark Commission meeting, thus allowing the project to move forward:

  The Borough President (and Councilmember Chin) have a firm policy at speaking up at public agencies only after the community board has taken a position on an item. So withdrawing the resolution may affect their thinking about how helpful they can be on June 22. That in itself may not be fatal to getting [the site] de-designated but I do know that [Landmark Commission] Chairman Tierney was looking forward to having the "political cover" their support would bring him.

  The Landmark Commission ultimately decided to de-designate the property.

• A May 7, 2010, congratulations email from Shama to Rauf, Khan and el-Gamal after the Community Board 1 finance subcommittee expressed support for the Ground Zero Mosque project: “Again-congratulations!!! This is very exciting for all of you and the community at large! Daisy, as always – you were AMAZING last night – thank you!”
• A May 7, 2010, email from Khan to Rauf, el-Gamal and Shama after the finance subcommittee vote: “Just spoke with Commissioner Nazli Parvizi. She will call Julie Mennon [sic] to thank them for passing the resolution and ask how she can assist.”
• A January 2010 email exchange documenting Shama’s successful attempt to expedite a temporary public assembly permit so supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque could conduct prayers at the site.
• A series of email exchanges regarding a September 18, 2009, meeting between Shama, Rauf, el-Gamal, Khan and others from the Ground Zero Mosque project. A September 22, 2009, follow-up email summarized the meeting: “It was wonderful to be with everyone…on Friday night…Fatima mentioned that there are a number of concrete next steps that need to be undertaken re: the Cordoba House. In terms of a point person and centralized contact, please advise Fatima as to whom she should be in direct contact with on these and all other Cordoba House matters moving forward.”
• An April 22, 2010, email from Khan to Shama asking Shama to sign a letter of support for the Ground Zero Mosque project. “We have been honored to have developed a relationship with you over the last years…we consider you amongst our closest allies and friends.” The email included a draft letter for Shama to sign.

On August 9, 2010, Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the Mayor’s office, seeking contacts between city officials and Rauf and controversial Muslim organizations. (Click here to review my post from a few weeks ago that highlighted some of the sordid details about these so-called “mainstream” Muslim organizations.)

After we received no response from Mayor Bloomberg’s office to our request and a subsequent administrative appeal, we filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court on November 4, 2010 to compel the Mayor’s office to comply with the open records requests. Our petition apparently got their attention.

Now there is no doubt. Mayor Bloomberg’s office was working hand-in-glove with the Muslim activists driving the unpopular Ground Zero mosque project. Now we know what the Mayor was trying to hide and why his office did not bother to comply with the Freedom of Information Law. But it shouldn’t have taken a lawsuit to get the details. New Yorkers want honesty and transparency from their Mayor, not obfuscation. They deserve to know the truth about this mosque.

And just to give you a sense of the close “allies and friends” of Mayor Bloomberg’s staff…

Feisal Abdul Rauf is well known for making a number of radical and controversial statements regarding Islamic extremism, particularly the terrorist attacks of 9/11. For example, during a 60 Minutes interview about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rauf said: “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened…we have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”

Now Rauf wants to build a Muslim complex adjacent to the spot where Muslim radicals murdered 3,000 innocents. And thanks to Mayor Bloomberg and his staff, it looks like he may get his wish.

Sterilization of Populations- The Akha, WHO, UNPF, & Obama's Science Advisor

The Sterilizations of Populations is going to be an ongoing series here on GU as I find more info.

Info about the Akha people.

The video's poster says, "Akha women are made to take the tetanus toxoid vaccination repeatedly during pregnancy despite the fact that we have documented cases of spontaneous abortion as a result. The Akha are told if they don't agree to the vaccination they will not be given an ID card for the baby. We just LOVE what the Thai government does to the Akha!"(that last bit was sarcasm on part of the poster.)

Vid #2: Forced vaccinations of Akha women during pregnancy cause miscarriages.

People commenting to these vids on YouTube are saying, "where's your documentation? Where's your proof? What does the World Health Organization(WHO) say about it?"

The answer is that they don't have anything to say about it except denial. Who(pun intended) do you think funds the research for these vaccines? The Rockefeller Foundation. "The foundation also has traditionally held a major portion of its shares portfolio in the family's oil companies, beginning with Standard Oil and now with its corporate descendants, including Exxon Mobil.[20]

And how about the United Nations Population Fund? Pay careful attention to the last section "Relations to the US Government." Forced abortions and sterilizations. The US cut off funding so EU stepped up. How nice. And now Obama gives thumbs up to money once again being sent to China to fund god-knows-what other kinds of reproductive atrocities.

Obama also hired John Holdren as Science Adviser. This article will horrify you.

Oh, and we can't forget about Bill Gates and his family's wonderful legacy in Africa and other third-world countries.

Treason for telling the truth?

If you rat on your government you get charged with treason. Especially when
a) your government likes to spit polish its image using the flags which were buried with its honorable military dead and
b) it's embarrassed such indiscriminate violence against civilians was published ONLINE right under their noses.

My guess is that this soldier isn't going to be seen stateside again for a very long time. If ever. They're going to keep him in Baghdad. We'll never hear any thing more about him unless an absolute ruckus is created by Wikileaks and their lawyers.

For those not in the know, Wikileaks.org is an off-shoot of Wikipedia.org which is the world's best free online encyclopedia. Boundaries do not exist in their mind. Wiki's founders and directors have fought for years on the issue of freedom of speech- especially crossing country divisions where people simply do not have access to uncensored information by their government. A grade school child in China cannot do a search on "Tienanmen Square" without getting the red screen of death meaning that they've chosen to search for an illegal term. There are servers which have popped up sporadically in countries like this to offset the totalitarian thought control, however the majority of populations in countries with censorship still do not know a great deal of what is really going on in the world around them. Everything is hearsay.

A few months ago when I first learned of the Wikileaks organization I immediately put up a link to it in the Human Rights Sites and Organizations module on the blog. It will remain a permanent link.

As far as 'gnosis' is concerned- Wikileaks is right up our ally. Why censor, denounce, classify, or withhold information unless it is damaging to an entity's perceived image? And if something isn't broke then it doesn't need fixing, right? But if it is.....

{Link to another interesting article: US Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks, 18 March 2008}

Charges filed against soldier in Wikileaks case.

Army private allegedly leaked classified video of deadly Baghad attack

msnbc.com and NBC News

updated 7/6/2010 12:06:11 PM ET

Criminal charges have been filed against a 22-year old Army private accussed of leaking classified video of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a number of civilians to the Wikileaks.org website.

Private First Class Bradley Manning faces two charges and 12 counts of illegally providing classified information to an unauthorized source.

The charge sheet claims that PFC Manning unlawfully accessed the gun camera video of an Apache helicopter attack on July 12, 2007 against suspected insurgents killing an undetermined number of civilians. Then Manning allegedly passed that video onto Wikileaks, which is known for posting such controversial documents as the Army’s Guantánamo Bay procedures, Church of Scientology documents and contents from Sarah Palin’s e-mail account.

Wikileaks posted two versions of the now-infamous Baghdad airstrike video, a 39-minute unedited version and an annotated 18-minute version, on April 5, 2010. Titling it “Collateral Murder,” Wikileaks cited the video as evidence of a Pentagon coverup. Two Reuters employees and a Baghdad man were three of the more than a dozen killed during the attack. Two children were also seriously injured.

Manning is also charged with unlawfully tapping into the military's secret Internet protocol router network to obtain the video, and more than 200,000 classified State Department cables.

The Associated Press reported previously that former computer Hacker Adrian Lamo says that Manning claimed in a series of online chats that he downloaded 260,000 classified or sensitive State Department cables and transmitted them by computer to Wikileaks.

Manning remains in custody in Kuwait but will be returned to Baghdad shortly to face an Article 32 hearing, the military's equivalent of a grand jury hearing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Chris" commented on the article:

I am just an old guy. But I was career military intelligence and served in Vietnam. While there I had the "privilege" of watching Nixon on TV swearing "on his mother's grave" that were not bombing in Laos or Cambodia while interviewing pilots who were returning from bombing in Laos and Cambodia. We constantly received TWX's (teletype messages) telling us that we could go to jail for disclosing any information at all to journalists, Congressmen, FBI agents, or any other person, official or not, who asked. While I was in Vietnam I read Bernard Fall's book, "Rue Sans Joi" and when I returned it to the base library, watched in horror as the librarian tore the book to pieces, because it was considered to be harmful to morale.

In another later incident, I had a NSA employee show me the radar tapes of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that Johnson used to justify new ROE's for bombing of the North. There were no torpedo boats on the tapes. There were no intercepted communications with the non-existent boats.

I got to see infants who had been killed with M-16 fire (where I was it could have been either Americans or Koreans who did the shooting) and was ordered to count dead babies as "main force NVA soldiers."

I had friends who died and friends who were wounded (including myself) in Vietnam. I didn't come back with PTSD or Agent Orange poisoning, just some scalp and facial holes and a great deal of hearing loss. But what I did bring home was a sense of guilt that I did not make an attempt to disclose what I knew. Sometimes not telling the truth is the same as telling a lie.

But I did what, at the time, I perceived as the "honorable" thing --- when my hitch was up, I threw away 10 years of service and did not re-up. My heart simply was no longer in watching my government under both Johnson and Nixon tell lie after lie about the war.

So I can well understand how a soldier, when confronted with situation where the military acted inappropriately and with ill-conceived malice would find it easier to tell and suffer the consequences rather that have to live with the knowledge that he did nothing.

And for those who call it treason. Telling the truth has never been treasonous. And treason is strictly limited to giving aid to the enemy in a declared war. The military has a long history of classifying documents and such in order to keep the truth from the American public and the victims' families. A good example is the Tillman affair in which McChrystal knew that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, in violation of the RoE's and in a situation where training and "best practices" had been disregarded. McChrystal proposed awarding Tillman a Silver Star instead and had everything related to the incident classified "Top Secret." The people who "blew the whistle" on the Tillman situation was an Army physician who did the autopsy and several of the Seals who were with Tillman. Was that treason?

Does The Internet Need A Kill Switch?

I caught this article today on MSN. Read it and weep. The Republicans are showing just what kind of future they want for us- right under their thumb.

Article by Megan Gibson, 6/24/10, on Time NewsFeed

A proposed bill could effectively give the president an Internet “kill switch.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman has proposed the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), a bill that would give the president the power to control or even shut down the Internet in emergency situations. Citing the need for cybersecurity, Lieberman said in a press release that the U.S.’s “economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

The bill requires that U.S.-based companies such as Google and Yahoo, as well as broadband providers and software firms, comply with any and all measures that the government sees fit in an emergency.

Technology trade association, TechAmerica, has already expressed worry at the level of control the bill would grant the president if passed — levels that could have “unintended consequences.” Other countries are also decrying the bill, fearing the impact on their own security if the U.S. were to shut down essential parts of the Internet. (via CNET)

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/06/18/does-the-internet-need-a-kill-switch/#ixzz0rkIUQWAX

One Nation Under God?

Nope. No way. No how.

This country was not founded on Abraham principals, commandments, or even "I wish we could have's." Sorry all you literalist indoctrinated Bible Belters. It just ain't so.

And before my loyal Readers have a conniption- no, I haven't suddenly become atheist. Yes, this is still a gnostic blog. But I like to think that even gnostics have enough braincells to rub together to realize fact from fiction. Reality and logic is a gnostic's university.

The Founding Fathers abhorred organized religion as they saw the tyranny it eventually led to. Want proof?

Article XI, Treaty of Tripoli. Passed by Congress 1797:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

This was a document which was passed around and signed by the heads of state of two countries. The reason? The United States did not have a Navy at the time and could not protect its fleet of commercial goods traders traveling around Tripoli and piracy was killing trade. So the government did the only thing which seemed plausible: they bribed the government of Tripoli with gold and jewels.

The Treaty of Tripoli was bought and paid for to keep Tripoli and nearby pirates from looting our American ships. Buying off pirates for safe passage is one thing. But the fact that there was such a large amount of continual trade going on meant that the government and people of Tripoli feared the Americans would do what the British do with any other country they find lucrative for business- stake their imperial claim.

There is still argument to this day concerning Article XI and how exactly it was interpreted between the Arabic translation and the English. Legal scholars can disagree and spit back and forth at each other all they want but the fact remains: the document was read before the Senate on June 7th, 1797 and every Senator present agreed upon the terms unanimously.

The Treaty of Tripoli and portions of the Federalist Papers have since been interpreted as meaning the United States does not have an official religion and will not sanction or protect one over another. A smart move to make since the United States is a nation founded on immigrants from over a hundred countries. Why would someone come to "the land of the free" only to be told they have to abide by Abrahamic convention and thought? It is understood worldwide that the United States will open it's doors to any nationality or creed. And what is a creed?

Main Entry:	creed
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	belief, principles
Synonyms:	articles of faith, canon, catechism, church, confession, conviction, cult, doctrine, dogma, faith, ideology, persuasion, profession, religion, tenet, weltanschauung

Main Entry:	belief
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	something regarded as true
Synonyms:	assumption, concept, credence, credo, creed, doctrine, dogma, faith, fundamental, gospel, gospel truth, hypothesis, idea, ideology, law, opinion, postulate, precept, principle, say-so, tenet, theorem, theory

My final question is this: why is it that parents still teach their young and impressionable children differently? Why would they tell their children something which legally just isn't true? They may want it to be true but any of our courts will throw out a religious argument of "but I thought that it was" faster than our government can hand out stimulus checks. Wanting doesn't make it so. So why perpetuate the lie at home? Why don't our public schools(I'm not even going to entertain the religious private school angle) teach our children about factual law anymore?

The Pledge of Alligence was altered in 1954 by Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus. The words 'under God,' were added. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer. Thank you Eisenhower for that religious insertion and attempt to make atheists seem unpatriotic to the rest of their countrymen. Not seeing a reason to believe in God does not make you unable to believe in the need for security and freedom for your nation.

ReligousTolerence.org states:

On 2002-JUN-26, a three judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2 to 1 to declare the Pledge unconstitutional because of the addition of the phrase "under God." This decision only affects the states of AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, MT, NV, OR and WA. The ruling stating that "the text of the official Pledge, codified in federal law, impermissibly takes a position with respect to the purely religious question of the existence and identity of God."

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Circuit Court of Appeals reading. They did not rule on the basis of the Pledge violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, they ruled that the plaintiff Michael Newdow did not have primary custody of his daughter and thus did not have standing to take the case to the federal court system.

It is interesting to note that this decision happened to occur one day after the 40th anniversary of the Engel v. Vitale decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared unconstitutional the inclusion of state-sponsored school prayer as a part of instruction in public schools. The Texas Justice Foundation had declared that anniversary a day of mourning.

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I'll mourn right along with the Texans. It's not every day that our Constitution is trampled upon so deeply and soundly that the American public willingly pulls the wool over their own eyes to go right back to sleep.