Massacre National Park, USA
In what looks like the establishment of a state religion, federal- and state-funded monuments to nuclear weapons are popping up all over the country.
Hoping perhaps to enshrine the myth that the god of the underworld, after which Plutonium was named, can be transformed from a vengeful, bloodthirsty self-destructive nightmare demon, into a benign peace-loving fairytale prince, government propagandists are establishing nuclear war theme parks — but without the uncomfortable taint of mass murder or Cold War hatreds.
Tours recently began being offered at the “B Reactor” on the Hanford Reservation in Washington State where for decades plutonium for the nuclear arsenal was extracted in a way that permanently threatens the Columbia River. At Rocky Flats, Colo., where the machining of plutonium poisoned tens of square miles, a National Wildlife Refuge has been established. Near Fargo, N.D., the State Historical Society now owns a deactivated intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch control center, has dubbed it “Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site” and opened it to tourism. In South Dakota, a disarmed ICBM launch center run by the National Park Service is called the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and you can go underground to personally simulate at attack that could murder multiple millions of people.
This summer, just in time for the 66th anniversary of the U.S. atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar recommended to Congress that a national historic park be established to honor the Manhattan Project — the secret World War II program that built the bombs that massacred 140,000 people at Hiroshima and another 70,000 at Nagasaki.
National Park Director Jonathan Jarvis said in a July 17 Park Service press release, “Once a tightly guarded secret, the story of the atomic bomb’s creation needs to be shared with this and future generations.” Jarvis feigns ignorance of the vast literature on the Manhattan Project available from any good library, and his acting the dunce insults both the conscience of the living and the memory of the dead.
Richard Rhodes’s 1986 Pulitzer Prize winning “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” and his 1995 sequel to it, “Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb,” Robert Lifton’s “Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial” (1995) or his 1982 study “Indefensible Weapons,” and Gar Alperovitz’s definitive 1995 history, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”— the product of 30 years of research into the subject — are all gripping and devastating in their treatment of the Bomb’s development, its terroristic uses and its billion-year environmental consequences.
But the state wants us to forget this downside, and at least two agendas are at work. First, treating nuclear weapons nostalgically teaches the sham lesson that H-bombs are a thing of the past and not still in need of abolishing. South Dakota’s doomsday tour website says, “At Minuteman Missile NHS, it is possible to learn how the threat of nuclear war came to haunt the world” — as if 450 Minuteman ICBMs weren’t still set to launch on “alert” status and prepared to kill millions on 31 seconds notice.
Secondly, official memorials devoted to nuclear weapons self-consciously deny or rewrite the horrifying and persistent results of having brought the Nuclear Age upon the world. This “Columbus Day” style of American history — lionizing heroic efforts while ignoring the butchery and mass murder committed by the hero — is the sort that is being carved into stone at these government circuses.
Nobody will learn at these idol-worshiping places that the Bomb was borne of a will to death, used unnecessarily against Japanese civilians without warning, and tested in the atmosphere over 100 times in ways that caused at least 75,000 thyroid cancers among U.S. residents, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Students will have to look elsewhere to learn that the Bomb has been condemned by every major religion on earth and that in 1996 the International Court of Justice declared that the mere threat to use it in a sneak attack (like keeping Minuteman and submarine missiles on “alert” status) is a violation of International Humanitarian Law forbidding the planning and preparation of massacres.
Today’s string of H-bomb monuments never acknowledge the weapon’s legacy of uncontrollable and persistent radiation poisoning and nuclear industry’s resulting plague of radiation-induced genetic damage and cancers the world over. Nor will the memorials note that in the annals of war and war crimes, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are more controversial than any other.
Official U.S. histories and wartime propaganda claim that the atomic attacks “ended the war” by preventing a land invasion, and this is repeated endlessly at these Bomb-loving churches. Yet historical facts unearthed since then show that in August 1945 Japan was already defeated, no invasion would ever have occurred even without the use of the Bomb, and, indeed, the mass murder at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not just unnecessary but “known in advance not to be necessary” ¾ as Alperovitz has found.
President Dwight Eisenhower wrote, “First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
And Admiral William Leahy, wartime Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, wrote in his book “I Was There,” that “I was not taught to make war in that fashion and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
With the Obama Administration working now to build three giant new Bomb-building facilities, we should confront official myth-making and take a lesson from arch-Cold Warrior and former right-wing Reagan administration national security advisor Paul Nitze.
Writing Oct. 28, 1999, in the New York Times, Nitze said, “I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them … adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us ….”
Such are the words to carve into an atom bomb theme park.
John LaForge works for Nukewatch, the nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin and edits its quarterly newsletter.
Are Politicians’ Brains Superior?
A man visited an organ bank, looking for a brain for his brother-in-law who was to undergo a transplant. He noticed a brain that had a $5,000 an ounce price tag on it and inquired about it.
“That’s just an ordinary blue-collar brain,” he was told.
“How about that one?” he asked, pointing to another with a $10,000 per ounce tag on it.
“Oh, that one is an accountant’s brain.”
Suddenly, the man scanned the row of increasingly expensive brains and spotted one that cost $50,000 per ounce.
“Tell me, what kind of brain is that one?”
“That’s a politician’s brain,” the answer came.
“A politician’s brain!” he exclaimed. “Why in the world would a politician’s brain be worth $50,000 an ounce?”
“Well,” the other fellow replied. “Just stop and think how many politicians it took to get an ounce of brains!”
Our Past vs. Our Future…
When Reality Swims Upstream
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/08/our-past-vs.html
Collectively, most of us Americans seem to be experiencing the same common thread running through our lives right now — we used to have a whole lot of stuff but are now facing a future with not so much. And almost each of us has a story to tell about his or her own personal loss of stuff. And almost all of us also have stories to tell about our childhoods, our expectations for when we would become grownups, our reality today and what we think will happen to us in the future.
This week I too went on a quest for my past. My first stop? Brad Pitt’s latest movie, “The Tree of Life”. Pitt’s film could have been based on my own childhood experiences too, back in the 1950s, when we all had a whole lot of stuff (Somalian famine victims would have LOVED to be you and me back in 1953) — but somehow, back then, a lot of us were miserably unhappy as well.
My mother used to sit on a fancy leatherette couch in our spiffy new tract house front room and cry her heart out. She cried every day for a whole year. My sister tried to run away from home. My father lived for the moment when he could walk out our door and go back to his job the next morning. I was an outcast loner who had no friends at school, even in kindergarten. And in the midst of all this 1950s prosperity, we all suffered in silence and tormented each other — just like in “The Tree of Life”.
For the next stop on my journey back into the past, I actually went off to visit my old childhood home. My strict old elementary school had gone all Montessori. My former neighbors had mostly moved out or died. All the new residents have remodeled. No one is a McCarthy Republican any more. The bowling alley is gone but the ice cream shop is still there (only with new owners and a new name). I couldn’t see any signs of foreclosures, however, because my former home town is still sort of posh in its own small suburban way.
Next I stopped by the big house across the street from where I was raised, met its new owner and told her some of the history of her house. “This whole housing tract was built for veterans returning from World War II,” I said, “but before that, your big old home used to be the only one for miles around, built by some wealthy gambler in order to live next to Green Hills Country Club so that he could play golf. Then he died of a heart attack while hitting his ball onto the first green.” I also heard that the gambler was from Texas, drove a new yellow Cadillac convertible and had ten slot machines installed in his front room.
“Then Col C.W. Jones and his wife Rita moved in. She used to be an FBI secret agent.” How exciting that seemed to me, just a bored, awkward and lonely little suburban kid. “The colonel and his wife served as a haven for all us kids in the neighborhood who had no place else to go.”
After that, I went off to visit my parents’ graves. Much as I hated my mom growing up, I always visited her grave first. “Hi, Mom. How are things going wit’ you up in Heaven?”
Next to my mother’s grave, workers had dug out a large pit and lined it with copper in preparation for a funeral later that afternoon. What? They think that if they line their grave site with copper, it will keep out the worms? Not.
And like we all have our own individual pasts, every single one of us Americans also has a future. What will that be? Of course we’ll all die in the end, but before that happens, over 300 million different American stories will be lived out.
What will the rest of my story be like? And what will the rest of your story be like too?
What I am hoping will happen is that whether it turns out that we are to be well-off and surrounded with stuff in the future or poor and surrounded with little more than cardboard boxes and shopping carts, that on the inside, deep down in our souls, that we will all be living a meaningful life and be relatively content with what we have — just the oppose to what happened to Brad Pitt’s family in “The Tree of Life”. And also the opposite of what happened to me back in the 1950s.
PS: I just finished watching “Citizen Kane” as well. Charles Foster Kane’s story fits right in here nicely. Material stuff isn’t the end-all and be-all in that movie either.
PPS: The moral of this story? Americans might consider the benefits of ceasing to live in denial about the future and then actually start preparing to not only survive but to thrive in a future that contains a lot less stuff. We all seem to be still living in the fantasyland that our whole happy future depends solely on the accumulation of things. However. If we continue to think that our entire happiness rests on how much stuff we have, what will happen to us if we start to have less stuff? We’re screwed.
And another big fantasy that we have is that America’s future happiness is based solely on getting its annual gross national product to grow. If we think that this fantasy is ever gonna be true in the future — when it was hardly ever even true in the past, then our reality is definitely swimming upstream for sure.
And another moral here might be that Americans need to start becoming much nicer people if we are ever going to survive these coming hard times ahead gracefully. My country’s current “I’ll do anything for money” attitude has gone on for far too long. “Lie for money? Steal for money? Kill for money? Sure!” Are we sick of that yet? Obviously not.
And the most important moral of all? We need to start getting rid of the corporatists and oligarchs who got us into our current economic mess and our slavish dependence on stuff in the first place. Let’s start taking away their “stuff” too. I personally would love to see how gracefully they can live their lives like the rest of us do — without a billion extra dollars to prop them up.
Their greed has gotten us into our current economic folly — but their greed ain’t gonna get us out.
‘Cannabinomics’ – The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point
The gutting of our economic democracy has been occurring for years and can be found in reams of books and volumes of eyewitness testimony, but nowhere has the case for the theft of American health by their supposed corporate protectors been laid out as brilliantly as when Dr. Christopher Glenn Fichtner clears all the smoke and mirrors with his new book, Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point (Well Mind Books, 2010).
A firestorm of controversy has erupted over Dr. Fichtner’s new book Cannabinomics that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what happens behind the iron medical curtain when Americans are shown how to take ownership of this homegrown commodity and facilitate system-learning that could help solve larger global drug war problems.
Marijuana use is illegal throughout many countries of the world for reasons that are not clear. This book is important because it provides a scientific critique of the medical benefits of marijuana in light of the social, political, and legal hysteria that have been attached to it.
Cannabinomics, as Phillip Smith of the Drug War Chronicle puts it, is “Chris Fichtner’s eye-grabbing term for managing our relationship with cannabis,” in order to move from pot prohibition to regulation. Jettison the “M” word, acknowledge that cannabis is a highly valued homegrown American commodity, and get on with the task of managing its commercial integration into the economy! Why not generate new tax revenue, and create opportunities for American entrepreneurs to enter the global medicinal cannabis market?
Cannabinomics is not a medical handbook, a drug war treatise, or an economic model, so much as a work of patient and public policy advocacy. It looks at real-world medical cases, recent trends in successful policy reform, drug war costs, and the potential economic benefits of cannabis change. Brilliantly, Dr. Fichtner examines—then debunks—many of the common misconceptions about marijuana. From medical renaissance to revolution, from drug war prohibition to public health, from economic reefer madness to recovery—trajectories in public policy are converging toward regulation and economic integration of the herbal cannabis trade.
Dr. Christopher Glenn Fichtner
The incongruity of our political policies that legally prohibit individuals from gaining access to natural plant material they find indispensable for relieving debilitating systems borders on the absurd. This conversation is going on in state legislatures, like New York’s, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted.
The state-level medical cannabis movement is growing rapidly, but California was the only state to allow for mental health applications—until New Mexico specifically included post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on its list of acceptable indications for medicinal use of herbal cannabis. Among the many interesting ideas in Cannabinomics, Fichtner—who began his career treating combat veterans with PTSD in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—suggests that PTSD may be a disorder for which herbal cannabis can provide broad-spectrum symptom relief. And he makes this suggestion after a very thorough discussion of how, even with FDA-approved medications like Zoloft and Paxil, it is rare to see the full spectrum of PTSD symptoms respond to treatment with just one medication. Fichtner’s extended discussion of evidence-based practice in this context is just one example of the kind of rigorous analysis—cutting across medicine, science, ethics and philosophy—that establishes this work as a unique book for our time.
There are also more puckish signs of a zeitgeist shift. All polls conducted on behalf of Cannabis usage show a public obsessed with the legalization of marijuana and its medical use. Moreover, there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is America’s largest cash crop, and potential annual revenue estimates range from $14 to $40 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.5 billion in California alone. And that’s probably a fraction of the revenues that would become available — and of the economic impact, with an estimated 36,000 to 58,000 new jobs in California in agriculture, packaging, marketing, and advertising.
But there are still bigger issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. It’s increasingly clear that the criminalization of marijuana creates more problems than it solves. Cannabis prohibition deprives needy individuals of medicinal benefits, unnecessarily creates crimes and criminals, fuels the black market, and deprives the mainstream economy of important taxable revenue, the book points out. The U.S. is, by far, the most “criminal” country in the world, with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. “We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public,” it was noted.
Inhaled, eaten, taken sublingually, vaporized, or patched onto the skin, individuals experiencing nausea, pain or muscle spasms often find immediate relief. In particular, herbal cannabis has been reported to be beneficial in cases of migraine, multiple sclerosis, chronic cancer pain, epilepsy, arthritis, AIDS, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Unlike tobacco, which exacerbates cancer, use of marijuana is associated with significantly decreased risk of some types of head and neck cancers.
Criminalization related to cannabis has proved to be unsustainable. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences. Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition.
Dr. Fichtner weeds out all the negatives regarding drug criminalization and concludes: “Cannabis change is the low-hanging fruit of drug policy reform, and medical marijuana is so ripe it’s falling off the trees in front of us.”
Last year – the city of Philadelphia changed its law enforcement approach to marijuana – and stopped jailing people for having less than 30 grams of marijuana. Now – the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office admits this new approach has saved the city over $2 million. A lot of savings can be found when a city doesn’t need to pay for defense attorney’s prosecutors, and lab tests just to bust someone for having some pot on them. Police also admit that more relaxed marijuana laws have had no effect on the city’s quality of life. “We need to take a lesson from Philadelphia – and end Richard Nixon’s Drug War,” notes Fichtner.
The author’s background: University of California, Riverside (B.S., psychobiology, 1977); University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (M.D., 1987); psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago; Certificate in Medical Management awarded jointly by the University of Southern California and the American College of Physician Executives; and board-certification in psychiatry. Between college and medical school, he attended Columbia University in the City of New York (M.A., psychology, 1979) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div., 1982), and completed a year of doctoral level work in religion and psychological studies at the University of Chicago. Dr. Fichtner has served on the faculty of several medical schools, including the University of Chicago, and currently holds an appointment as Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Since 2008, he has worked as a staff psychiatrist for the Riverside County Department of Mental Health in southern California.
Letter: On The Debt Ceiling Package
It seems, President Obama, that you’ve let us down. You’ve succumbed in the name of bi-partisanship to the witless demands of irrational, ignorant bullies and their craven lackeys who are apparently unaware that they too, in time, will fall victim to their brazen, boastful, shameless victory.
You, Mr. President, could have pushed through a just and simple solution. It was in the realm of your Constitutional authority.
Other presidents are remembered for their reforms, benefiting generations, not for the arduous and forceful mechanics of their execution, overcoming the vitriol of their opposition. Nor will those generations care that another president tolerantly accomodated an unbalanced bi-partisanship to approve a diluted product. They will not praise him. They will not thank him.
This was pure extortion and you, Mr. President, have forfeited your principles and your extraordinary political talent, your opportunity for fearless leadership.
You assure us that in time, the issues in abeyance willl be equitably resolved. Time will tell. The Tea Partyers are not going to quit.
Elizabeth Gerteiny, Westport, Connecticut
Little Johnny’s Story
At 5 a.m. little Johnny awoke and asked his mother to tell him a story.
“Shh,” soothed his Mother, “any minute now your daddy will be home to tell us both one.”
Your Guide To The Stars: September
September 2011
Your guide to the stars
You can use the chart as a guide when looking at the night sky. The chart shows the sky as it will be at 10:30 p.m. on Sep. 1; 9:30 p.m. on Sep. 15; and 8:30 p.m. on Sep. 30.
Hold the chart so the direction you are facing is at the bottom. For example, if you are facing north, turn the chart around so the “N” representing north is at the bottom as you hold it out in front of you. The center of the chart represents the portion of the sky you see if you look straight up.
To keep your eyes adjusted to the darkness as you look a the night sky, use a red-light flashlight to view the chart. You can make your own by putting red cellophane over the light or by coloring the lens of the flashlight with a red marker pen.
Sun: Sep. 1 – Sunrise: 7:04 a.m.; Sunset: 7:52 p.m. / Sep. 15 – Sunrise: 7:13 a.m.; Sunset: 7:34 p.m. / Sep. 30 – Sunrise: 7:22 a.m.; Sunset: 7:15 p.m. (exact for Waco, TX)
Moon: Sep. 4: 1st Quarter / Sep. 12: Full / Sep. 20: 3rd Quarter / Sep. 27: New
Night Sky Events
Held at arm’s length, the width of your fist is 10º and the width of your index finger is 1º . The width of a full Moon is ½º .
September
Note: September is a good month to see the zodiacal light in the morning.
4 Sun. evening: The Moon is at 1st quarter.
12 Mon.: The full Moon is called the Harvest Moon, Fruit Moon, and Corn Moon.
16 Fri. morning: Bright Jupiter is to the left of the much brighter waning gibbous Moon in the west southwest, and the next morning is below the Moon.
20 Tue. morning: The Moon is at 3rd quarter.
23 Fri. morning: Mars is to the upper left of the crescent Moon low in the east.
23 Fri.: Autumn equinox – the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere when night and day are of approximately equal length.
27 Tue.: The Moon is new.
Naked-eye Planets
The Sun, Moon and planets rise in the east and set in the west due to Earth’s west-to-east rotation on its axis.
Evenings: Saturn (early evening, setting in west), Jupiter (late evening, rising in east)
Mornings: Mars, Jupiter (east), Mercury (early in month)
* Mercury is low in the east early in the month.
* Venus is still hidden the glare of glare of the Sun.
* Mars is up in the east well before sunrise.
* Jupiter rises in the late evening and is high in the south by morning.
* Saturn, very low in the west in the early evening at the beginning of the month, is all but lost in the Sun’s glare by month’s end.
Constellation of the Month
Cygnus as depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c.1825.
Cygnus has one bright 1st-magnitude star, Deneb, which represents the swan’s tail. Its head (actually beak) is a fainter but special star named Albireo. Those two plus three other central stars form an informal pattern (called an asterism) known as the Northern Cross with Deneb at the top and Albireo at the bottom.
Deneb also combines with the brightest stars of two other constellations, Vega (in Lyra the Lyre) and Altair (in Aquila the Eagle), to form the large Milky Way Triangle (also known as the Summer Triangle), currently seen high overhead.
There are several myths related to Cygnus dating back at least to the Greeks. In the most commonly told story, Zeus (Jupiter), the king of the gods, had the hots for the beautiful but human Leda., wife of a local king. (It made no matter to Zeus that both were married as he had the hots for many women – mortal and immortal – and fathered more children than Genghis Khan.) To seduce Leda, he disguised himself as a handsome swan; among their demigod (half-god, half-human) offspring were Helen of Troy and the Gemini twins, Pollux and Castor.
In my favorite story, a minor Greek god named Cygnus and the mortal Phaeton were close friends who liked to compete with each other as young lads often do. Once they decided to race through the sky to the Sun and back. Unfortunately, they rounded the Sun too closely and their chariots were burned, causing both to fall back to Earth. When Cygnus regained consciousness, he set out to find his buddy. Sadly, he found that the dead body of Phaeton was entangled in roots at the bottom of the River Eridanus. When he tried to retrieve his friend’s body for burial, he was unable to dive deep enough, and while grieving on the river’s bank, called out for help from Zeus. The king of the gods offered to turn him into a swan whereby he could dive deeply enough to reach Phaeton’s body – but it would come at a price: he would have to give up his immortality and remain a moral swan until he died. Cygnus agreed to the terms, recovered his friend’s body, and gave him a proper burial so his spirit could move on to the afterlife. When Cygnus eventually died, Zeus placed him in the night sky to honor him for his unselfish loyalty to his friend.
Star of the Month
Albireo from Wikimedia Commons
Albireo, the star representing Cygnus the Swan’s head or beak, is more than meets the eye. Located 380 light-years away, to naked eyes and even through most binoculars, Albireo is an ordinary-looking 3rd-magnitude star, fainter even than the stars forming the Big Dipper. But seen through a telescope, even at low power, it will knock your socks off. It is a breathtaking double star – a bright golden yellow star with a fainter pastel blue companion – considered by many, including myself, to be the most beautiful of all double stars. The two stars may be a binary star system, bound gravitationally and orbiting each other, but if so they are widely separated and take 75,000 years to complete one orbit.
Astro Milestone. Sept. 23, 1846, astronomers Johann Galle & Heimrich d’Arrest discovered the planet Neptune from Germany’s Berlin Observatory. Their discovery was made based on the predictions and position-calculations of Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier of France.
Star Parties
The Central Texas Astronomical Society’s simultaneous free monthly star parties are Sat., Sep. 17, at the Lake Waco Wetlands, Belton’s Overlook Park on Stillhouse Hollow, and Hubbard City Lakes Park beginning at 7:30 p.m. CTAS also owns and operates the Meyer Observatory at the Turner Research Station near Clifton, TX; the next monthly observatory open house is Sat., Sep. 10, from 7-9 p.m. See www.centexastronomy.org for more information.
Paul Derrick is an amateur astronomer who lives in Waco. His website (www.stargazerpaul.com) contains an archive of past Stargazer columns, a schedule of his upcoming programs, star parties and classes, and other basic stargazing information. Contact him at: paulderrickwaco@aol.com, or 254-723-6346, or 918 N. 30th St., Waco, TX 76707.
School Board Votes To Take Homes From Residents
Increases Operations Taxes to Maximum Rate
The Dripping Springs School Board vote to increase the tax rate to the highest level under the law during one of the worst economic depressions ever in the state. How does the Board justify doing so? This is going to hit residents hard.
Superintendent Mard Herrick resigned on the same night the Board voted to raise the tax rate. Hays County (near Austin) currently has the highest home foreclosure number in its history. It is raising taxes when Texas has the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The DSISD Board continues to show that it is out of touch with the residents it serves.
Public Education is supposed to serve the community, NOT destroy it.
In large part this is occurring because Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Legislature continue to divert the State’s Constitutional responsibility onto local county government and Texas homeowners to provide a public education for Texas children.
This is a bad move by the Board. If other school districts follow suit, it will enable opposing forces to challenge the very existence of public education. Some of those forces are an increase in home schooling, public education will be unaffordable for many more poor and middle class residents, there may be a surge in home foreclosures in the district, a school voucher program may be passed this time when the Legislature convenes that will draw tax dollars from school districts that will enable parents to use their school taxes to pay for their children’s private and charter school education.
Texas already is at the bottom of the list of states providing a quality education for its children. With this latest ploy, the DSISD Board is striving to be last on the list.
Property owner would be wise to challenge the Boards decision.
Peter Stern, of Driftwood, Texas, writes on political issues, is a former Director of Information Services in private industry and government, a university professor, public school administrator and teacher, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and holds three post-graduate degrees.
Pelosi: ‘Workers Are People, Too!’
THE STILLWATER BLOG
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/08/nancy-pelosi-workers-are-people-too.html
When I was in Minneapolis in June, I was fortunate enough to attend the kick-off event for this summer’s “Speakout fo
r Good Jobs Now” tour, sponsored by http://action.progressivecongress.org/t/5854/content.jsp?key=3369, wherein various members of the progressive caucus of the U.S. Congress spoke to their constituents regarding the desperate need for creating more jobs in America. At this first event, Rep. Alan Grayson and Rep. Raul Grijalva fired us all up.
And so when the Speakout tour arrived in Oakland this week, I really wanted to go to this event, too.
Pelosi said, "They claim that corporations are people? Well, workers are people, too!" Too? Guess what, Nancy. "Corporations are NOT people." Never have been and never will be. Repeat after me.
And Reps. Grijalva, Mike Honda, and Barbara Lee would be speaking this time. Doesn’t get much better than that.
At the Acts Full Gospel Church on 66th Avenue in East Oakland where the event was being held, the parking lot was jammed but I found a space. Inside, perhaps 700 people were already in attendance. I was late. And the warm-up speaker was already asking everyone to stand up if they had been laid off, were jobless, had college loans they couldn’t pay, couldn’t even get into college, who had no health insurance, who had a home threatened with foreclosure or had already been foreclosed upon, who had lost their benefits, who felt that their Social Security was threatened, was currently on unemployment, etc. Almost everyone there stood up.
Then the speaker asked everyone to stand up who thought that the current Republican-dominated Congress was doing anything to help all us Americans — not just helping rich people. Two people stood up.
Then Barbara Lee spoke about how she was fighting as hard as she could to get Americans more jobs. Yay Barbara Lee!
Then Nancy Pelosi spoke too — and said all the right things about how progressive she was and how hard she too was working in Congress for us. We all applauded. And then she made one little slip. Should I forgive her for that? Can’t yet decide.
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Brad Pitt is currently making a zombie movie in Glasgow, Scotland — right across the street from war correspondent David Pratt’s home. Why is this important? Because I met Pratt in Iraq, where the Pentagon sent its zombies back in 2003. And now American zombies have invaded Scotland as well — not just Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Palestine (and Texas)! http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/dramatic-crash-sequence-from-brad-pitt-s-new-zombie-movie-1.1118741
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Want something good to read? Buy my book! “Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East,” available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1. It’s like if Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and/or Janet Evanovich went to war.
False Flag Attacks Enrich War Profiteers
Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor:
Thirty-nine years before the 9/11 attacks a top secret military plan called Operation Northwoods was proposed by the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was in 1962. The details of the plan were released to the public 35 years later in 1997 by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. I doubt that one person out of a thousand has heard of this operation because the Review Board release was censored by major news corporations. It was kept totally secret for so long because it revealed how top military leaders were planning to have innocent civilians including U.S. citizens murdered in order to wage a war with Cuba.
False Flag
Operation Northwoods was an elaborate plan which, if implemented, would allow U.S. military leaders and CIA operatives to conduct covert false flag terrorist attacks on American ships and planes in Cuban waters and surrounding airspace. These attacks would be blamed on Cuba with the help of the corporate news media. It is obvious that some, perhaps many, American lives would be sacrificed in these attacks. The attacks would then be used to garner international backing for a war with Cuba.
The plan was submitted to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by the Joint Chiefs of Staff headed by General Lyman Lemnitzer. President John F. Kennedy was not willing to carry out a plan that involved deception and murder of U.S. citizens. He removed General Lemnitzer as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, along with other top CIA officials.
The following year JFK was assassinated. The generals never got their war with Cuba, but with war-friendly LBJ in power, they were able to convince the news media that U.S. destroyer Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on Aug 4, 1964. The attacks never happened but this did not prevent LBJ from using the Gulf of Tonkin hoax as an excuse to escalate the Vietnam war which then lasted 12 more years, killing 58,000 U.S. soldiers.
Who benefited from the war? Huge fortunes were made by weapons manufacturers, war equipment suppliers and war service corporations. Big banks profited enormously while financing the war effort. The long war vastly expanded U.S. military bases worldwide. Military leaders were rewarded with fast-track wartime promotions.
Who paid for the war? Taxpayers like you and me.
Public paranoia brought on by the 9/11 attacks enabled military and political leaders to wage war against Afghanistan and Iraq even though no convincing proof of who planned and executed the attacks was ever revealed to the public. The government provided no concrete proof that would stand up in a court of law. The 911 Commission consisted of members hand-picked by the Bush administration. The Bush Administration specified that the Commission’s primary goal was not to prove who was to blame but instead to determine what steps needed to be taken to avoid future attacks. Many think the 911 Commission was a whitewash patterned after the Warren Commission.
There are so many important questions that the 911 Commission ignored or refused to answer. How many more years will pass before we learn the truth about what happened on that day?
Details of Operation Northwoods plan can be found online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Larry Payne, Castell, Texas
Got Ants In Your Pantry?
Tiny Ants Can Be Big Bother To Many South Central Texas Homeowners
- Pharaoh ants, such as the one shown above, and rover ants can easily be mistaken for one other at first glance due to their diminutive size and the fact both species travel single-file in a row — or trail. (Texas AgriLife Extension Service photo by Bart Drees)
SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS – Pharaohs and rovers sighted in homes throughout South Central Texas!
No, it’s not a tabloid headline. The pharaohs aren’t related to King Tut or Ramses, and the rovers aren’t really too wild. However, these two diminutive ant species – found in pantries, on kitchen counters, and in and around sinks — can be a big bother for many South Central Texas residents, said Texas AgriLife Extension Service experts.
“These ants typically become more active in the summer,” said Wizzie Brown, integrated pest management specialist for AgriLife Extension in Travis County. “Usually people immediately think any small, abundant ants making trails – usually to and from food or water sources in the home — are pharaoh ants, but they might be rover ants. Though different species, both types of ant are very small and move single-file in a row, so it’s easy to be confused.”
Brown said, however, that rover ants are darker – a dark brown or almost black color as opposed to the pharaoh ant’s orange or rust color. Also, rovers are outdoor ants that come indoors searching for food and water – an activity that has become more prevalent with the region’s prolonged drought.
“Pharaoh ants are also known as sugar ants due to their preference for sugary or sweet foods, and are also called pissants,” she said.
While rover ants come indoors from the outside, pharaoh ants are already in the home, and only need a little encouragement to come out, Brown said.
“The pharaoh ant is really about the only ant you can call a strictly urban ant in that it usually lives indoors, making its home behind walls or under appliances or carpet,” said Molly Keck, integrated pest management specialist in Bexar County. “They’re often found going into or coming out of the cover plates of electrical outlets. The outlets make it easier for them to access interior walls and they can use the wires as their super-highway to your kitchen or bathroom.”
Rover ants typically make their home in the leaf litter on roofs or in gutters or under rocks, stones or concrete, she added.
“While rover ants will eat sweet foods when they get really hungry, they seem to be most attracted to foods containing protein, such as dog food or meat,” she said. “You’ll more often find them clustered around a small piece of meat than something sugary.”
Like other ants, rover ants that invade homes will often nest in damp interior walls around plumbing or near leaky window sills. Keck said the diminutive size of both species makes them relatively unobtrusive – unless moving en masse in a long trail across a household
surface — and that neither species has much of a bite.
Still, most people consider the ants a pest and are interested in ways to control them, Brown noted.
“Ant baits are the best method of control for both types,” Brown said. “You don’t want to use a spray on either of these species as that likely will split up the colony and ultimately lead to more ants in more locations,” she said. “You need to be aware of differences in baits and the safest and most effective ways to apply or set them out.”
“Typically there are only liquid baits or bait stations labeled for indoor use to control pharaoh ants, so you shouldn’t go putting a pile of ant bait in your kitchen or bathroom,” Keck warned.
Keck said she prefers to use a solid bait to control pharaoh ants and a gel or liquid bait to control rover ants.
“Rover ants can enter your house through weep holes, cracks or any other opening large enough to fit through,” she said. “For better pest control, you should seal any cracks or openings around windows and doors as well as other possible points of entry.
“Outdoors, remove the remnants of any uneaten dog food, and trim the grass touching your house and the branches touching your roof as these may provide a means of access. Indoors, remove food sources – bread, cakes, chips, etc. – from kitchen surfaces and clean those surfaces thoroughly before using the bait.”
Brown noted that removing alternative food sources makes the ant bait more appealing to the ants.
“But if the ants don’t seem to be eating the bait, you may want to try a different type,” she said. “For example, some ant baits are sugar-based and others are protein-based, so the effectiveness of the bait may depend on the type of ant and the sort of food the ants are seeking.”
Brown said placing a bait station near the area where the ants appear to be most active is likely the best approach to control.
“But if you’re using a bait, be sure to keep it out of the reach of children and pets, and particularly keep it away from places where your cat might be able to get to it,” she said. She added that since pharaoh ants often enter and exit thought electrical outlets, taking the cover plate off and dabbing a small amount of gel bait in the wall void can be very effective.
“Many people think you have to put a lot of gel in there to do any good, but a small amount is plenty to be effective,” she said. “Just remember to scrape off the old bait before putting on any new bait since the bait will dry and harden over time.”
Brown and Keck both noted that while the ants are not a major health threat, they can potentially transmit disease and contaminate sterile materials – a particular problem in a hospital or similar setting where a high level of sanitation needs to be maintained.
“For both ant species, it’s important that you choose the right type of control because of their ability to disperse and repopulate,” Brown said. “That’s why it is so difficult for some people to get rid of them. They’re persistent and can re-establish quickly, so you have to manage them properly so they don’t relocate and repopulate in multiple locations.”
Drought Fires Plague Northeast Texas
LINDEN, Texas – Wildfire activity is on the rise in Northeast Texas as the state continues to experience critical drought conditions.
Burn bans are in place in every county in Northeast Texas
So far this year, Texas Forest Service crews in the northeast part of the state have responded to 631 fires that have burned 9,705 acres. Throughout the entire 2010 calendar year, 358 fires occurred in the same region, burning 4,598 acres.
Although numerous fires in the past several weeks have been started by lightning striking extremely dry fuels, others have started accidentally by hay-baling equipment, welding and catalytic converters. Extra caution is advised when using heat-producing equipment, especially in areas with tall grass. Welders are cautioned to use a spotter and have a fire extinguisher nearby.
Although burn bans are in place in every county in Northeast Texas, the number of wildfires resulting from outdoor burning has increased recently. In addition to criminal charges, those responsible for escaped fires also are subject to civil liability. Current conditions are so dry that a single spark can create a dangerous wildfire.
In recent weeks, several counties in Northeast Texas have experienced wildfires resulting from arson. Texas Forest Service law enforcement investigates all fires of a suspicious cause. The forest services encourages citizens who witness or suspect arson activity to call 1-800-364-3740.
