RAWA

The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan is still doing their work, to help the women of Afghanistan. They've been battling since 1977, and still going strong. Help them today. RAWA.org

Treasure Trove of WWII Spy Info Released

Julia Child, spy?

I know the article leads in with Julia Child, but what amazes me is that a Supreme Court Justice was a spy. Holy crap!

Lifted wholesale from Twistedchick

Lifted wholesale from Twistedchick:

1. Why is the federal DEA raiding legal medical marijuana users in California?

2. What are Blackwater mercenaries doing working on these raids?

3. Why haven't more newspapers picked up on this?

Now, with all this in mind, consider the following: John McCain's idea of law enforcement in the cities is to do Iraqi Surge-style military raids. Martial law.

We are already at war in Iran. The public just hasn't been told.

10 of the most important economic events of the last 10 years. This is the rock bottom behind what is happening.

The real reasons for the upcoming war in Iraq: a macroeconomic and geostrategic analysis of the unspoken truty, by William Clark, revisted and updated

And Seymour Hersh says the White House has been actively brainstorming ways to fabricate justification for an Iran war.

You can't walk your dog in Riyadh any more.

Andrew Simms in The Guardian says we have 100 months to stop irreversible climate change -- and suggests how it can be done.

Writing and the Military

An ode to clear writing, in Proceedings Magazine.

I'll leave it to you to read the article, including the great translation at the very beginning and the Orwell quote, and instead zero in on this:

[B]ad writing handicaps DOD and the services in their communication with important external audiences like Congress, other federal agencies, and the general public. Jargon is especially problematic. Overly formal, technical language alienates the audience whose support the Defense Department seeks.

This is why, no matter how lawyerly I become (I hope), my instinct to continuously rephrase things in simple, straightforward language, will pay off. Why? Because who wants a lawyer who can't explain stuff to them unless they're already a lawyer themselves?

Yes, you should speak precisely, but there is a difference between jargon and precise language.

Great quote

Snagged from Will Shetterly's blog:

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.” —Thomas Paine

Peruvian Glaciers Melting

Peru mountain glaciers 'receding rapidly'

"At present, there are more melting glaciers and therefore there is a relative increase in flows in rivers and streams", Nelson Santillan, a researcher at the INRENA glaciology unit, told SciDev.Net.

Santillan says that, while this currently does not have any significant negative effects, people must be warned about the correlation of this with the increased glacier melting and the future halt in water flow. INRENA estimates this could be as soon as 2020.

Powerful Stuff

The Conquest and Theft of América, Pt. 13

“You all do and undo,” he said. “So you can do whatever you want with me.” To him we were part of the system keeping him from being deported back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and sister depended on him. He was their sole support and did not know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5 months. None of the “options” really mattered to him. Caught between despair and hopelessness, he just wept. He had failed his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but he refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he superstitiously declined, saying it could be “poisoned.” His Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer think. He stared for a while at the signature page pretending to read it, although I knew he was actually praying for guidance and protection. Before he signed with a scribble, he said: “God knows you are just doing your job to support your families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine.”

There was my conflict of interest, well put by a weeping, illiterate man.

EPA: Climate Change Puts US Way of Life at Risk

Interesting framing. I mean, you could say, 'climate change opportunity facing America', instead, and it would be the same, wouldn't it?

Dr. Horrible Rocks!

Watch Act I & II now (and III on Saturday), then buy the DVD/download when it comes out!

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. It's a supervillain musical! Hooray!

Lysistrata, Anyone?

I mean, honestly, if we all closed our legs until these yahoos grew a brain, it might improve things.

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

We Must Put Things Right

War Crimes? Yes. To our great shame. There is only one way to cleanse this stain from our dishonor, and that's to put the perpetrators on trial. Which is more than detainees got.

A Blind Eye to Guantanamo?

A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were “enemy combatants” subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration’s terrorism policies.

The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration’s claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists — the “worst of the worst,” as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases, author Jane Mayer writes in “The Dark Side,” scheduled for release next week.

“There will be no review,” the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.”

(H/T The Agitator)

The rest of the world knows the truth. American military deserters may have an asylum claim in Canada now. Read it here.

Cool! Real-Time Tracking of Intl Space Station

Real-time satellite and space station tracking. You can watch the International Space Station move. Cool.

WTF?

what?:

"CAL THOMAS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: In this campaign, we are being asked to accept three things simultaneously, the first woman with a credible chance of being president, the first African-American with the chance to being president and, whoever Michelle Obama is going to be styled, the angry black woman, first lady? This is an awful lot."

I'm sorry, what?

What was that? What was that? What was that?

This isn't an awful lot to be asked to accept. You idiots just need to stop pining for your rose-tinted-glasses version of the 1950s. Michelle Obama is a modern black woman, thank god.

(HT to angry black woman.)

Latest Story Rejection

Weird Tales rejected The Red Sea, which definitely qualifies as a weird tale, and the thought has cross my mind that it's really an excerpt, or spinoff, of something quite a bit longer in a universe that's been evolving in some dank corner of my brain.

In other news, my apartment is hot and that does not make me happy. Fortunately, in New England, summer is one of MANY seasons. Unlike Southern California.

Prison Ships

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

You know what's so shameful? The title of the article may say "US accused," but there's no question in my mind.

How can we recover from this?