Book Your Flight With The Pentagon

Is this the real reason that they turfed Rumsfeld? And they don't give out airmiles either.

Pentagon pays for $500M travel site, but would Orbitz work better?:
You can apparently add a $500 million travel booking system to the $600 toilet seat cover, the $434 hammer and other expensive boondoggles approved –- and paid for -– by the Pentagon. The latest effort is the travel booking site, which Senate investigators say "fails to find the cheapest airfares, offers an incomplete list of flights and hotels and won't recognize travel categories used by the National Guard and Reserves," according to The Associated Press. A Senate investigation committee looked at the half-billion-dollar "Defense Travel System." The Pentagon implemented the system hoping that it would be a money-saving travel portal to help its workers book travel. But, in addition to faults like not finding all available airfares, workers say the clunky system takes 30 minutes to complete a booking that can be done in as little as five minutes by a travel agent or at sites like Travelocity or Expedia.

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Harper Treats Us Like Idiots

Guardian columnist George Monbiot is touring Canada promoting his new book on Climate Change.

And what does he think of Canada's Clean Air Act?

"Oh!" he says, his disgust clear in that single syllable. "It seems, to a complete outsider, to be a misreading of the national mood. That bill was treating people like idiots, both lumping together local pollution with carbon dioxide pollution, and talking about the intensity of carbon emissions. It's almost like putting up a sign saying 'I think the people of this nation are suckers." The Harper government, he says, is becoming an international embarrassment because of its environmental policies.

See:

Ambrose

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Cheese Science

Missing a day at the Cheese Factory allowed for the creation of the periodic table of elements.


UCLA Chemist Provides New Insights into one of Science's Icons and its History

Mendelev, who called himself the Newton of chemistry, conceived the periodic system while writing a textbook, "The Principles of Chemistry," and spent at least four years refining the periodic table. He also developed the Russian oil industry, served as director of the Russian institute for weights and measures and was a consultant to Russian cheese factories. On the day he devised the periodic system, he was supposed to inspect a cheese factory, Scerri said, and decided not to go; Mendelev sketched his first periodic table on the back of an invitation that day, Feb. 17, 1869.

Mendelev produced the first version of a full periodic table that included most of the known elements, even though the background ideas may have been developing over a period of about 10 years, Scerri said. The first published periodic system of Mendelev's contains divisions into main and subgroups. Significantly, there are several vacant spaces in the table, and in this first publication, Mendelev made several predictions, anticipating many unknown elements -- far more predictions than any of the co-discoverers of the periodic system.

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Bush Finally Gets It

Three years after everyone else got it Bush finally figures it out. Amazing what that loss of 'political capital' to the Democrats can do to ones political insight.

Bush draws parallels with Iraq in Vietnam

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Murder Most Foul

Had this happened to a MSM journalist it would be all over the news. However the death of freelance reporter Brad Will in Oaxaca is as under reported as the events in that province itself. Because it challenges the fact that the current self appointed el Presidente of Mexico is facing a crisis of dual power.

The Inconvenient Death of Brad Will Mexican police gun down a counterculture hero by Sarah Ferguson November 14th, 2006 11:51 AM

The last time I saw independent journalist and activist Brad Will was in September in an East Village yoga studio. I turned my head and found him lying on the mat next to me in the darkened room, his pale, flat stomach rising and falling serenely with the rhythm of his breathing. So on October 27, when I saw the photos posted on the Internet showing the 36-year-old Will's mortally wounded body laid out on a street in Oaxaca, Mexico, I cringed. There was that same pale, flat stomach now punctured by a bullet.

Around the world, activists and friends who knew Will—and many people who didn't—were having the same visceral reaction. Within hours of his shooting by plainclothes gunmen firing on a group of striking demonstrators, images of his murder ricocheted around the Web. There were photos of Will's limp body being carried through the streets by frantic demonstrators screaming for help. Equally shocking were the pictures posted by El Universal and other Mexican media showing his alleged killers firing brazenly into the crowd, as if aiming at the cameras. The same gunmen who shot Will also wounded a photographer for the Mexico City daily Milenio, who was at Will's side.

When images of the shooters aired on Mexican TV, viewers began phoning in to identify the gunmen. They have since been confirmed in the media as the police chief and two officers from Santa Lucia del Camino, the municipality where Will was shot, along with the town councillor for the state governing party, his chief of security, and the former head of a neighboring barrio.

Then came the most horrifying evidence of all: Will's final videotape, uploaded on the Web the next day. In his zeal to capture the state-backed repression of the popular uprising that has rocked Oaxaca for the last five months, Will succeeded in recording his own murder.

Armed with an HD camera he had picked up on eBay, Will went to Oaxaca to document the broad-based movement of striking teachers, peasants, urban residents, and left-wing forces that had seized control of government offices and taken over the central square to demand the removal of governor Ulises Ruiz.

But by becoming the first American journalist killed in the unrest, Will became a pretext for Mexican president Vicente Fox to send in 4,000 federal police officers to put down the revolt, which Fox characterized as "radical groups, out of control," who "had put at risk the peace of the citizenry." Since then at least two more protesters have died in the heavy clashes with federal police, who stormed the barricades with tear gas and water cannons, and more than 80 demonstrators have been arrested as the federales continue to vie for control of the city.

See:

Oaxaca Mexican Revolution Continues

Dual Power In Mexico

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No Nukes

Our PM denounces nukes in North Korea but remains silent about that other rogue nation that has nukes and does not belong to the Non-Proliferation Pact; India.

Opps thats right we sold them the nuclear reactors.

See:

India





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More On Friedman

Two good articles on the death of the daddy of neo-conservative economics; Milton Friedman.

Relentlessly Progressive Economics

and

Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire


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Made In Canda Kyoto Accord

Looks like the Conservatives convinced the world that it is 'impossible' for any country to meet its Kyoto obligations.

Congratulations to Rona Ambrose for getting the UN to sign on to her Made In Canada Kyoto accord.

It is a pragmatic decision, one that recognizes that you cannot reform capitalism to make it sustainable. Now lets get on with making lots of money before the heat death of the planet.

Canada has joined more than 165 countries in agreeing to review the Kyoto Protocol in 2008, setting the stage for the next phase of the treaty to combat global warming.

The agreement imposes no new emissions-cutting commitments on countries but it keeps the Kyoto process alive at a time when some feared the whole effort could collapse.

"Canada's very pleased with the outcomes," Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said.

Member countries acknowledged for the first time that global carbon dioxide emissions must be cut 50 per cent to avoid dangerous climate change.

Industrial countries hope the next phase of the treaty will involve new commitments by developing countries, especially China and India, but this is not a sure thing.

Environmentalists were disappointed, saying the conference did not recognize the need for urgent action.

Following a long week of criticism, blame and damage control, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said she was finally ready to show the world Canada can make the Kyoto Protocol a success back at home.

"When I was appointed as environment minister, we were faced with a very difficult challenge, and at that time, I was very hesitant about saying that we would participate in this protocol in the way that we hoped we could," she said.

"We've made a lot of progress in the last nine months to make sure that we can align our domestic policy with what we'd like to do internationally _ with our international obligations _ and so now we can say that."

See:

Ambrose

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Censorship and Art

Very early on, proponents of modernism were demagogued as radicals, anarchists, and communists. This strategy proved spectacularly effective for opponents of modernist designs for public murals, such as Diego Rivera’s infamous Man at the Crossroads. Rivera included an image of Vladimir Lenin that outraged the press and led to the mural’s destruction by angry workmen. Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture


Actually the so called angry workmen were nothing of the sort, they were hired hands of Rockefeller who commissioned the mural by Diego Rivera for the Rockefeller Center. Controversy erupted over the mural and the managers of the Rockefeller Center demanded the removal of Lenin.


"Seeking a compromise, Rockefeller suggested that Rivera should replace Lenin with some unknown face; the artist offered to add Lincoln but refused to expunge Lenin. Charged with willful propagandizing, he declared only that "All art is propaganda." Since he had accepted his payment, Rivera was unable to force the Rockefellers to exhibit or even keep his work. The mural was subsequently removed from the wall..." The Encyclopedia of Censorship, J. Green, Facts on File, pg. 254

Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art

Diego Rivera & André Breton

See:

100 years of the Avante Garde 1905 2005

Oriental Origins of Post modernism

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Reds Under The Bed

In the early days of the Cold War and during the Post McCarthy Anti-Communist Witch hunts paranoid nutbars of the extreme right found communist conspiracies everywhere. It was the politics of fear; Reds Under The Bed of the None Dare Call It Conspiracy crowd.

With the decline of the New Left at the end of the seventies, McCarthyism rose again in the New Right under Reagan. They launched the new culture wars of the eighties and ninties. The same McCartyhite mentality was used to attack academics, universities etc. It is still going on. As one can see daily on American cable news TV or the attacks on unothodox academics of the left such as Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky.

The Culture War of the Right is really just good old McCarthyism without the power of the Senate and HUAC. But it is no less paranoid, and no less ridiculous. Oh yes it is now being called The War On Christianity.


Marxist Subversion And Perversion Of America's Youth
By Linda Kimball

The plain truth is that both the GSA and Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), the organization that registers GSAs, are part of a vast, interconnected network of Cultural Marxist front groups known collectively as the New Left. For over forty years, the New Left -- a collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and anarchists have been waging a Gramscian style "quiet revolution" for the overthrow of Christianity and America's Constitution, Rule of Law, sovereignty, and way of life.

While propagandists in the media have deftly kept the attention of most folks riveted on what they've been told to believe are the 'real threats' to America, such as gas prices, genuine Christianity, and mad cow disease, Marxist-trained psychopoliticians, propagandists, and change agents have descended upon the schools and are subjecting children and older youth to thought control and social re-engineering methodologies.

Intellectual Indoctrination and Academic Fraud at Temple University
By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin

The faculty treatments of Marx on the Intellectual Heritage Department website lack the basic apparatus of academic inquiry. No critical literature on Marx and Marxism is offered. There is no confrontation with the most serious question that a thinker like Marx poses, since his ideas have had a vast and vastly destructive impact on the history of mankind, namely: Did these ideas lead directly to the murder of 100 million human beings and the poverty of billions? Judging from the Intellectual Heritage webpages, Temple students are not even aware that this question needs to be asked.

Linda Kimball a fundamentalist evangelical born again right winger goes at it again falsifying history and the facts to create confusion, hysteria to justify her political witchhunt. She is in good company with former New Leftist turned right wing conspiracy theorist David Horowitz.

Kimball blames Gramsci for the subversion of America. Funny that he spent his years in an Italian jail under Mussolini, and died there. His prison notebooks are not exactly a dick and jane reader issued to students in schools.

Horowitz makes the usual right wing claim that Marx=Stalin, which of course is a perjorative canard. That's like saying Adam Smith=The Great Depression which is equally untrue.

For folks complaining of the Left taking over society these intellectual dunces use some flimsy arguments. But then again the basis of the right wing attack on the left is the Big Lie. Repeat the same unfounded accusations over and over again. Hence Kimball and Horowitz=Goebbels.









See:

Secular Democracy



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