World Affairs
Politics & OpinionsBy ddjango
5 months ago
 I know I'm not the only one, but I have to ask ...
Who's watching the store? Who is leading the Cabinet? Who is corralling the Democrats? Where does the buck stop? Instead of a presidency, we've bought into nothing more than a traveling wild west variety show, complete with gunslingers and the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief. The deluge of words over the weekend was simply over the top. For once, Faux Noose had the right idea in snubbing the guy.
Maybe it just ain't so great that we got ourselves a president that can string a few intelligible words together. At least Dubbleduh tended to be hilarious on the podium from time to time and we really didn't have to listen to him very much. This Obama cat just won't shut up. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the game plan is supposed to get us.
It's not just the volume of words in his grand speechification tour. It's that the content still means no more than "hope" and "change". This man brings nothing to the table but thousands of vague generalities.
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World AffairsPolitics & OpinionsBy ddjango
6 months ago
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ~ Dwight Eisenhower
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World AffairsPolitics & OpinionsBy ddjango
7 months ago
 In my previous post (Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk), I asked, "If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012?" Let me suggest a partial response to the question ...
There is strong evidence at present that, in spite of the anger in the electorate, our choices are more limited than ever before and it will take an enormous amount of work on the part of the disenfranchised to create the necessary movement that will create cohesion around specific principles, goals, and strategies, that will result in breaking the status quo stranglehold. Such a movement is as critical as it is nearly impossible.
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World AffairsPolitics & OpinionsBy ddjango
7 months ago
 Physicians at Guantanamo violate medical ethics: study
(AFP) – July 24, 2009
WASHINGTON — The use of physicians at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay has forced medical professionals to violate their ethics codes, according to findings published Thursday in the UK journal Lancet.
The roles that medical professionals have been called on to play at the controversial detention facility "has damaged the integrity of the physicians working for the military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," the study said.
"These physicians had a conflict of loyalty because of their ethical obligations to their imprisoned patients and the Bush administration's demands to further the goals and interests of military commanders and intelligence officials." [...] Most Americans, I imagine, remain under the impression that torture of prisoners and their use as subjects of human experimentation was the province of evil Japanese and Nazi military scientists and doctors during WWII. Many may also assume that such practices have occurred within the extended Soviet Union and, perhaps, by the governments of China, |
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