The ramblings of an inquisitive idiot

Archive for the ‘Activism’ Category

Great news for wolf lovers. Wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho who were about to be slaughtered in wolf hunts this fall have been given a temporary reprieve in the decision of U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy who in a forty page decision over ruled the federal governments new rules that took wolves off the endangered species list. Environmentalists had sued the courts to overturn the decision by the federal government to allow wolf hunts. As many as five hundred of the estimated one thousand wolves could have been killed in hunts scheduled to begin in the fall.
In his ruling?Molloy said the federal government had not met its own standard for wolf recovery, including interbreeding of wolves between the three states to ensure healthy genetics. He also said that the killing of wolves in hunts and for livestock attacks would likely “eliminate any chance for genetic exchange to occur.” Look for resistance from both sides on this issue. It is a delicate balancing act keeping enough wolves for genetic diversity while keeping them away from livestock predation

We are in the middle of an economic crisis brought on by our dependence upon foreign oil imports that are running the prices of necessary commodities up to astronomical prices. The dependence on foreign oil is the biggest threat we as a country face today. Prices of food and any product that relies upon transportation to your stores is going up in price. Way up and hurting America as it does. Plus the money we spend on foreign oil helps feed the coffers of terrorists. It is insane to send money to people who hate us and are dedicated to destroying us and driving us out of the region.

In the long term we need to build non petroleum cars and trucks, expand our oil drilling into possible offshore wells. It is being done safely already, we need to at least look into it. Right now I am still against drilling in the ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] as I feel that right now they will not protect sensitive species that depend upon it for their survival. Also with more studies and new technologies we may have the ability to protect wildlife species in the future when oil will be at even more of a premium than it is now. Besides there is nothing like having an ace to hold in the hole. We need to give incentives to companies and individuals to invest in green technologies. Hybrids, electric, hydrogen, clean liquid coal and a myriad of technologies that we may have not even thought of yet. The sky is the limit if we break the foreign oil dependency that has a strangle hold on us right now.

Across the country low income senior citizens and disabled people will lose help paying their Medicare part B premiums next Monday because the federal money that funded the program has dried up. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted for the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act by a margin of 355 to 60. But once it made it to the Senate it has died because it fell two votes short of reaching the required sixty votes to bring it to the floor for a full Senate vote. My Congressional Representative voted for it in the house but both of my Senators voted against it. I applaud Bob Inglis and denounce Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham for voting against a program that helps seniors who need it badly in favor of a bill that helps the insurance companies. Losing part “B” will cost these low income seniors and disabled people to the tune of $96.40 a month but it will also cause a drop of 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. This will cause more doctors to cut the number of Medicare patients they accept, or refuse them all together. The American Medical Association said it was “outraged that the senators voted to protect insurance companies at the expense of seniors”. Check and see how your senator voted on this issue and vote accordingly in the fall, I will.

To see how your Senator voted click here.

Question: What’s your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline?

A little over 3 months away there it was. As many places in the country are paying $4.00 or more per gallon of gas. We are lucky in that it has not gotten that high here yet except for the premium grades. It is just another indication of Bush being out of touch with America. Bush and all his cronies are bad for individual Americans. Maybe good for the wealthiest of America but surely not for anyone anywhere near the poverty levels that the high price of food and fuel has put the average American. Maybe I exaggerate a little with the use of poverty but not that much. I am afraid that McCain would be 4 more years of the same failed policies. He already says he is “not too concerned” with the length of time our troops will be in Iraq. What else does he plan on taking the lead from Bush on?

I know that today they are going to the polls in my neighboring state of North Carolina and in Indiana as well but what has really gotten my attention is a Judge in Ohio. He has ruled that medical examiners autopsies be overturned when they had ruled that tasers contributed to their death. How can a judge know more than a trained medical examiner? What it is, is the fact that Taser International is trying to intimidate medical examiners across the country from telling the truth as they see it. They [Taser International] have done absolutely no medical research into the 50,000 volt devices yet have the arrogance to force a change in autopsy reports. This is just a ploy for them to keep selling them to police across the country and say they are safe. They may be safer than a bullet but they can still kill some people. Police must know this and not have cases decided by Taser International or a judge who sees things in a favorable light to them. The U.N. of which we are a charter member has denounced the use of tasers as torture but we go right on using them without a thought to the safety of those on the receiving end of one. From the numerous videos across the web you can see police officers reaching for a taster first thing rather than trying any other method of subduing a suspect, even those that are not violent routinely get tasered as some officers seem to enjoy see a suspect getting 50,000 volt jolts of electricity coursing through their body. This case is going to be appealed. Lets hope that this time they get a judge with some common sense.

In a stunning admission to ABC news Friday night, President Bush declared that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA’s use of torture. Bush reportedly told ABC, “I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush also defended the use of waterboarding.

We need to be calling on Congress to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.

We must be above all this type of treatment. We need to be a nation of laws. We need to open up the tribunals for the ones suspected of masterminding the attacks on September 11th. We must remain true to our core beliefs – even in the most trying of times – and our forefathers vision of what this country would become. America does not stand for trials that rely on torture to gain confessions, or on secret evidence that a defendant cannot rebut, or on hearsay evidence.

President Bush‘s refusal to outlaw torture may lie in the fact that we have been torturing hapless victims that we hold without even a chance for criminal proceedings to take place. This is a story of a German citizen – on a religious pilgrimage – who was picked up off a bus on his way to the airport in Pakistan trying to return home to Germany. He was pulled off the bus by a Pakistani police officer who turned him over to U.S. intelligence who was paying $3,000 a head for suspicious foreigners from there he was loaded onto an airplane bound for a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. There he was given the identity of “#53″. If they had listened to the FBI, U.S. and German intelligence then he would have been released from his outdoor pen in subfreezing weather and allowed to go home. Instead he was questioned everyday then when his answers did not satisfy them they turned to torture to try and extract the information they wanted from him. But he steadfastly stuck to the story of only traveling in Pakistan and not having any knowledge of al Qaeda or the Taliban. He claims to have had his head dunked into water and beat in the abdomen at the same time, shocked by electricity until numb then hung by his arms from chains for days on end with the only respite being when they would bring in a doctor to check to make sure he could take a little more. This is terrible how can our government allow something such as this to happen? I know they are going to deny that this man was ever tortured but they will have a hard time denying that he was held captive. He was first picked up in 2001 and did not gain release despite the fact that intelligence agencys said he was no threat to the U.S., sometime in 2002 at Guantanamo -where he endured more beatings and was chained to the floor – a memo was written saying “USA considers Murat Kurnaz?s innocence to be proven. He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.” Three and one half years later he was finally released after the Supreme Court had ordered in 2004 that inmates at Guantanamo were eligible for legal counsel despite what the Bush administration had claimed. That was when he was surprised by the visit of a lawyer who helped gain his release ,after debunking some of the ridiculous charges that had been laid onto him since his arrival.

If this is indeed true then we are harboring war criminals plain and simple. After WW II we charged and prosecuted war criminals who had used some of the same tactics on our soldiers. The question is how far up the chain of command does this go? Does anyone even think to realize how this makes us look to other nations? The world? How dangerous it becomes for our military now that it appears that we not only allow torture to go on but it is sanctioned by the highest leader in the military and President of the United States?

See 60 Minutes interview with Murat Kurnaz.

Today is an anniversary of sorts. Today five years ago we as a nation invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. At the time we were led to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction pointed at us and our allies. Our military, the finest in the world, went through the Iraq's like a dose of salts through a widow woman. In a matter of a few weeks we had captured anything and everything worth capturing, but still - after five years - have not found those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to have been pointed at us. We have seen that there was absolutely no plan in place for what to do after winning the ground war. Five years after invading them and having Bush stand on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with a huge banner in the background stating mission accomplished. This is the same image that once graced the White House page but has since been removed as the mission has not been accomplished. What has happened is that nearly four thousand of our brave soldiers have been killed and countless many more injured for life. We have seen cronyism at its worst, as corporations like Halliburton - who the vice president is in bed with being a former vice president of the corporation and still a stock holder - were given no bid contracts. A free reign to grab up all the cash they could milk out of us the tax payers. And the abuses were terrible and have yet to have any repercussions. The wool was pulled over our collective eyes and we were deceived by President Bush and his administration. We investigate or our congress will investigate so many things that though they do matter seem trivial to this, will not investigate who did the lying to bring us to this point. Being the referee in a civil war. Being in the position as an invader - something no one would like in his or her country. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Leaving without security in place leaves a mess for the poor people in Iraq who have suffered mightily over the past five years. Staying only encourages more extremists to attack us as invaders and infidels. Any way we go we can't win. It is a lose lose situation. If only we had listened to voices of reason objecting to the invasion we might be ahead of the game still. Instead we are stuck in Iraq for now with no real solution in sight.

The shameful presidency of Bush has fallen to a new low – even for him. President Bush has vetoed legislation on Saturday that would have outlawed waterboarding – a technique that simulates drowning when interrogating terror suspects. Bush says it will harm the governments ability to prevent future terrorist attacks. The bills supporters assure us that the government can still gain information via interrogation while maintaining our high moral standing at home and abroad. Waterboarding is a known method of torture. We should be above that. We signed the original UN charter that prohibits torture amongst member nations. But that is too inconvenient as far as Bush is concerned. Even though it is a known fact that torture yields unreliable information as a rule. The tortured will tell their interrogator anything at all that they think they want to hear so as to stop the torture.

In a statement Friday, Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. said, “President Bush‘s veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency. Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world.” This will make us look bad to allies and enemies alike. Hopefully Congress will override his stupid veto.

Well it has been nearly a full year since the Environmental Protection Agency was ordered by the Supreme Court to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles should be regulated. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson (a Bush appointee) is apparently following the Bush administrations stance that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and has opposed mandatory limits even in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

Tuesday in front of the Senate Appropriations environment subcommittee Johnson was grilled by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif who repeatedly asked him [Johnson] “Is anyone working on this at the present time, Mr. Johnson?” she asked. “How many members of your staff are currently working on this?” “I don’t know the answer to that,” Johnson replied. She then remarked that it was strange that the EPA chief “can’t give me a number (of people engaged) on something that is a Supreme Court finding.”

Myself I feel it is only par for the course for an administration that is dedicated to raping and pillaging the country as a whole. They have no concern for anything or anyone except their friends in big industry. I don’t know how long it will take to dig our way out of the tremendous hole they have dug for us the country.