Frac Attack

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Administrator

Frac Attack World Premiere at Cinemapolis
December 10, 2009
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

When the town of Ithaca, New York gets fracked by natural gas drilling, the water goes sour and the citizens start craving human flesh. Anna and other survivors band together to save their community.

Come one, come all, to the World Premiere of the environmental zombie short Frac Attack: Dawn of the Watershed at Cinemapolis!

7:00 Family Screening
7:30 Q&A with Filmmakers
8:00 R-Rated
After Party TBA
$5-10 suggested donation
Tickets at the door – come early!
Cinemapolis, 120 E. Green St, Ithaca, NY

Frac Attack is a co-production of Shirari Industries and The Dacha Project, in association with the Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance. Made on location in Ithaca by over seventy members of the community!

Winner of a 2009 Sustainable Tompkins Signs of Sustainability Award

Watch the trailer and take action:

Check out the article in the Ithaca Journal

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Another Pointless War

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Administrator

An Irrelevant Distraction

“Forty some-odd years ago, the editor of This Olde Rag would be called upon from time to time to fill in for the Vietnamese guard of a medical lab in Saigon, who had the habit of disappearing from his post whenever a free-range chicken would wander, clucking, past his little bunker.

But surely that’s all irrelevant now.”

– Steven Fowle, Editor of  The New Hampshire Gazette

The Hashish Army, Afghanistan (March 2009)


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“Tis the season to be Jolly”

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Administrator

It’s the holiday season and the temptation to “party” a wee bit can be irresistible.  So, if you’re going to drink — don’t drive — which is often easier said than done, especially if your local pub is close to home.

If you do drink and drive, drive carefully and be wary — the police are the predators and you are the prey.

If you do get pulled over do not — repeat do not — admit to drinking and driving. Telling a cop that “I just had one” can open up a Pandora’s Box of woes. Admitting to having one drink gives the police officer “good cause” to demand that you take a Breathalyzer test — and you’re screwed — even if you only had one drink.

According to Prof. David J. Hanson Ph.D,  Breath alcohol analyzers (Breathalyzer, Intoxilyzer, Alcosensor, Alcoscan and BAC Datamaster being common brand names) are prone to error, which can lead to serious legal problems. However, they can also lead to seriously mistaken medical diagnoses.

An apparently intoxicated middle-aged man was found in a public park. An alcohol breath analyzer (Intoxilyzer) recorded a 0.288 blood alcohol concentration (BAC). However, tests of his blood and urine were negative for beverage alcohol (ethanol or ethyl alcohol). He had consumed HEET Gas-Line antifreeze, which is 99% methanol. The alcohol breath tester had falsely identified the poisonous methyl alcohol as the beverage alcohol, ethanol…Read the whole story

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Lying Bastards Update

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Administrator

Marijuana’s addiction potential may be no big deal, but it’s certainly big business.

The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t — by Paul Armentano

According to a widely publicized 1999 Institute of Medicine report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of “drug dependence” (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for “drug dependence.”

Nevertheless, it is pot — not booze or cigarettes — that has the federal government seeing red and clinical investigators seeing green. As I reported for AlterNet last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which overseas more than 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, recently appropriated some $4 million in taxpayers’ dollars to establish the nation’s first-ever Center for Cannabis Addiction. Its mission: to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”

Of course, what good is a research center if it isn’t conducting clinical research? To this end, the U.S. National Institutes of Health recently made millions of dollars in grant funding available “to support research studies that focus on the identification, and preclinical and clinical evaluation, of medications that can be safe and effective for the treatment of cannabis-use and -induced disorders.”

According to NIH’s request for applications,

“Cannabis-related disorders (CRDs), including cannabis abuse or dependence and cannabis induced disorders (e.g., intoxication, delirium, psychotic disorder, and anxiety disorder), are a major public health issue. … Nearly one million people are seeking treatment for marijuana dependence every year and sufficient research has been carried out to confirm that the use of cannabis can produce serious physical and psychological consequences.

“Currently, there are no medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of CRDs. Given the extent of the use of cannabis in the general population, and the medical and psychological consequences of its use … there is a great public health need to develop safe and effective therapeutic interventions. The need to develop treatments targeting adolescents and young adults is particularly relevant in view of their disproportionate use patterns.”

Sounds dire, huh? It’s meant to. But as usual, the devil is in the details…READ MORE

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Police State Update

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Administrator

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse. — Brendan Behan

crimescene
Police seize DJs’ laptops
New police chief apparently condones policy that critics call illegal and punitive – by Joshua Emerson Smith

San Francisco Police Department officers have added a controversial tactic to their aggressive raids on house parties (see “Fun under siege,” 4/22/09): they’re seizing laptop computers from DJs at the events.

While SFPD officials deny the laptop seizures is a new policy, they admit it has been condoned by Police Chief George Gascón, who took over in August and last month told the Guardian’s editorial board he wants to make the SFPD more transparent and accountable to the public (see “New coach, new approach,” 10/14/09).

“The police chief is aware that officers are being proactive in gathering evidence,” Sgt. Lyn Tomioka told the Guardian when asked about a string of laptop seizures by undercover cops over the last 10 months, most of them in cases in which the DJs weren’t even charged with a crime.

Many of the raids have occurred in SoMa, and were spearheaded by undercover officers who penetrated the parties and were followed by uniformed officers. San Francisco Entertainment Commission member Terrance Alan called the crackdown a “disappointing and dangerous trend…Read More

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U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Administrator

Editor’s Note:

During the 2004 election cycle a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth took issue with Presidential candidate John Kerry’s remarks 30 years earlier that “war crimes” took place in Vietnam “on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

In a May 2004 letter to Kerry, the SBVT wrote “It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us.) Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.”

Deborah Nelson’s research and subsequent book proves that John Kerry and his fellow Vietnam Veterans Against the War were right; and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth(?) were “full of shit!”

“Our research found that Army investigators had secretly confirmed cases involving 300 or more incidents, including massacres, murders, torture, mutilation of corpses, indiscriminate fire in civilian areas, wanton destruction of property and cover-ups. Yet the public was not told of the findings.” – Deborah Nelson

The war behind me: Vietnam veterans confront the truth about US war crimes

Deborah Nelson/Crimes of War Project – Mr. Froehlke wrote that he had read the book and didn’t enjoy it. He assured me that I should not take this personally, as he could not imagine reading a book on the Vietnam War and enjoying it.

“But your facts are correct,” he said, “and you can’t ask for more than that”.

The facts in The War Behind Me were drawn from a declassified Army Staff archive of reports on U.S. atrocities, and from interviews with the Pentagon officials who compiled the records and combat veterans named in them. The picture that emerged contrasted sharply with the military’s official version of the facts. The Army then and since maintained that My Lai was an aberration and that, while other atrocities occurred, they were “isolated incidents” not indicative of a systemic problem.

Claims to the contrary were disparaged as enemy propaganda The existence of an alternate reality in the Army’s own files remained a closely held secret long after the war ended. Finally declassified around 1990, the files lingered in obscurity on the storeroom shelves of the National Archives and Records Administration for another decade, until a handful of scholars and journalists took notice. I learned about the collection in 2005 from Nick Turse, who had analyzed the documents for his dissertation at Columbia University. Over the next year and a half, we entered data from the files into spreadsheets, conducted scores of interviews, visited Vietnam and published a two-part series in the Los Angeles Times.

READ MORE

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Word

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Administrator

People who complain about the threat of socialism remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran’s hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment insurance and then got a SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. When he retired he went on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, parked in the public lot, took Amtrak to Washington and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman to get the government off his back.

– Sam Smith Progressive Review

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Cannon Fodder

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Administrator

Lambs headed to the slaughterThe objective here is to create a uniform national effort intended to “prepare young people for a life of military service”?

Get Your Kids Fit For Slaughter! — William Norman Grigg

Although ancient Sparta was not without its virtues — among them courage, loyalty, and discipline — it wasn’t a free society in any sense. It was said that Sparta was always either at war or preparing for war, and those preparations began at the earliest possible age.

The Spartan state made a proprietary claim on each child shortly after he was born. The infant would be given a physical examination for defects that would impair his ability to serve as a soldier. If such imperfections were found, Plutarch informs us, the child would be cast off a cliff to his death. If the child passed that inspection he would soon be bonded to an older warrior who would raise him as the state’s child and prepare him to fight the state’s wars.

While Sparta’s virtues are difficult to find in contemporary America, some of its vices are well-represented. For instance, our ruling elite has arranged things in such a way that they are always sending Americans to war, or searching for new enemies to justify the permanent warfare state.

READ MORE

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What do you do with a broken soldier?

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Administrator

VeteranThe  American soldier is — for all intents and purposes –  a unit that comprises U.S. armament. He or she is there to be used; and when they no longer function as needed, they are discarded with the rest of the trash.

A Morally Bankrupt Military: When Soldiers and Their Families Become Expendable
– by: Dahr Jamail, truthout – Op-Ed

The military operates through indoctrination. Soldiers are programmed to develop a mindset that resists any acknowledgment of injury and sickness, be it physical or psychological. As a consequence, tens of thousands of soldiers continue to serve, even being deployed to combat zones like Iraq and/or Afghanistan, despite persistent injuries. According to military records, over 43,000 troops classified as “nondeployable for medical reasons” have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan nevertheless.

The recent atrocity at Fort Hood is an example of this. Maj. Nidal Hasan had worked as a counselor at Walter Reed, hearing countless stories of bloodshed, horror and death from dismembered veterans from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. While he had not yet served in Iraq or Afghanistan, the major was overloaded with secondary trauma, coupled with ongoing harassment about his being a Muslim. This, along with other factors, contributed towards Hasan falling into a desperation so deep he was willing to slaughter fellow soldiers, and is indicative of fissures running deep into the crumbling edifice upon which the US military stands.

The case of Pvt. Timothy Rich also demonstrates the disastrous implications of the apathetic attitude of the military toward its own. Not dissimilar from Major Hasan, who clearly would have benefited from treatment for the secondary trauma he was experiencing from his work with psychologically wounded veterans, one of the main factors that forced Private Rich to go absent without leave (AWOL) was the failure of the military to treat his mental issues.

Rich told Truthout, “In my unit, to go to sick call for mental health was looked down upon. Our acting 1st Sergeant believed that we shouldn’t have mental issues because we were too ‘high speed.’ So I was afraid to go because I didn’t want to be labeled as a weak soldier.”

What followed was more harrowing… Read the whole story

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Protecting and Serving Themselves

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Administrator

“Civil asset forfeiture has allowed police to view all of America as some giant national K-Mart, where prices are not just lower, but non-existent — a sort of law enforcement ‘pick-and-don’t-pay.’” — U.S. Representative Henry Hyde

Police property seizures ensnare even the innocent
Money raised by Metro Detroit agencies increases 50% in five years
George Hunter and Doug Guthrie -- The Detroit News

crimesceneLocal law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed — and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed.

The money raised by confiscating goods in Metro Detroit soared more than 50 percent to at least $20.62 million from 2003 to 2007, according to a Detroit News analysis of records from 58 law enforcement agencies. In some communities, amounts raised went from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands — and, in one case, into the millions.

“It’s like legalized stealing,” said Jacque Sutton, a 21-year-old college student from Mount Clemens whose 1989 Mustang was seized by Detroit police raiding a party. Charges against him and more than 100 others were dropped, but he still paid more than $1,000 to get the car back.

“According to the law, I did nothing wrong — but they’re allowed to take my property anyway. It doesn’t make sense.”

While courts have maintained the government’s right to take property involved in crimes, police seizures — also known as forfeitures — are a growing source of friction in Michigan, especially as law enforcement agencies struggle to balance budgets.

“Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way to offset the costs of doing business,” said Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who runs Canton Township’s forfeiture unit, which raised $343,699 in 2008. “You’ll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they’ve got to — they’re running out of money and they’ve got to find it somewhere.”

The increase in property seizures merely is a by-product of diligent law enforcement, some law enforcement officials say.

“We’re trying to fight crime,” said Police Chief Mike Pachla of Roseville, where the money raised from forfeitures jumped more than tenfold, from $33,890 to $393,014.

“We would be just as aggressive even if there wasn’t any money involved.”

Roseville had among the most dramatic increases over the five-year period examined by The News. But several other agencies also more than doubled their takes, including Novi, Trenton, Farmington Hills, Southfield, the Michigan State Police, Shelby Township, Livonia, Warren and Romulus.

The increase in money coming in leads to a higher percentage of the police budget being covered by seizures. In Roseville, the share of the police budget raised from forfeitures went from 0.3 percent to 4.2 percent. In Romulus, it jumped from 4.5 percent to 11.2 percent from 2003-2007, the most recent years for which comparable records were available. Some agencies said records weren’t available.

Police and prosecutors profit because citizens must either pay to get their confiscated property back or lose their cars, homes and other seized assets to the arresting agencies, which auction them off.

The increased reliance on seized property to fund police operations amounts to a trade-off for law enforcement. The tough economy may be prompting law enforcement agencies to use an “entrepreneurial spirit,” but that makes for bad public relations, said Tom Hendrickson, director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police.

Read More About a Cop’s Right to Steal

ON THE NET:

FEAR — Forfeiture Endangers American Rights

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