March 2011 archive

Mar 20 2011

Six In The Morning

Western warplanes, missiles hit Libyan targets



REUTERS | Mar 20, 2011, 10.08am IST

TRIPOLI: Western forces hit targets along the Libyan coast on Saturday, using strikes from air and sea to force Muammar Gaddafi’s troops to cease fire and end attacks on civilians.

Libyan state television said 48 people had been killed and 150 wounded in the allied air strikes. It also said there had been a fresh wave of strikes on Tripoli early on Sunday.

There was no way to independently verify the claims. French planes fired the first shots in what is the biggest international military intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles in the region of the rebels’ eastern stronghold, Benghazi.

Mar 20 2011

Under the Radar: Where to Start?

It’s hard to know where to start with Libya and the ever progressing nuclear disaster in Japan that is complicating the human one. Events here in the US are getting overlooked. There is the ongoing corporate takeover of Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio that is threatening to spread to other Republican states with dire consequences for state workers and the under-classes, heh, even here in NY our “Democratic” governor is covering for the millionaires that put him in office. There are now 64 US Senators willing to sell out Social Security and the Federal Reserve covering for the banks, along with the state attorney generals willing to throw thousands of home owners under the bus on mortgage fraud to make the banks happy. Did I mention that there are peaceful protests in Washington, DC and outside the Marine base at Quantico, VA, objecting to the abusive treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning?

Yikes!

I’ll start with Saturday’s rally for Manning in front of the White House. Tks, Jane

  • Photos From White House Rally in Support of Bradley Manning

    Photobucket

    Daniel Ellsberg, Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, David Swanson, Medea Benjamin, Mike Malloy and over a hundred others were arrested in front of the White House today to protest President Obama’s torture of Bradley Manning.

    All photos by twolf.

    FDL will be livestreaming the demonstration at Quantico tomorrow now.

    • This is an “OK” response from our military. Translation of “OK” = “Over Kill”

  • Quantico Marine Base Issues “Threat Advisory” for Bradley Manning Protest

    by Michael Whitney at FDL

    Here is the text of the advisory:

       Subject: Possible threat to MCBQ

       Ladies and Gentlemen,

       There are substantiated indications and warning of possible denial of service attacks on MCBQ by supporters of Wiki-leaks and PFC Manning. It is possible that these attacks will be timed to coincide with protest activity that is scheduled to take place in the vicinity of MCBQ on 20 Mar. Possible threat courses of action could include denial of service attacks on phone, email, and internet services, and could include harassing phone calls (i.e. bomb threats) and mail disruption (i.e. suspicious packages). Additionally, though there is no direct threat, it is possible that actual physical penetrations onto MCBQ property may be undertaken to cause infrastructure damage, vandalism, or harass USMC personnel.

       The Base has been involved in detailed response planning with local, regional, and national authorities and is appropriately postured to minimize/mitigate likely threat activity.

       Because the exact intent of the protest groups is not known, nor the form of attack they may undertake, MCBQ commands and activities should carefully review their OPSEC and physical security posture.

       Recommended actions for MCBQ tenant commands and organizations:

       Develop alternative communication plans (i.e. installation command net and cell phones) to ensure the ability to communicate with MCBQ emergency services during a denial of service attack.

       Review MCBQ bomb threat procedures (attached).

       Review MCBQ procedures for suspicious packages (attached).

       Area commands shall ensure Installation Command net radios are fully charged and accessible.

       Ensure Command Duty Officers are briefed on the threat and know the proper response to threatening/harassing phone calls

       Ensure non-essential fax machines are turned “off”

       Remind all personnel to be alert for suspicious activity and report it immediately to the MCBQ Security Battalion using the Eagle Eyes hotline (703-432-EYES).

       Building managers should ensure building perimeters are regularly inspected and that all unmonitored exits are locked when not in use (consider limiting access to a single entrance and mandating ID checks).

       Remind personnel to avoid posting or discussing aspects of any MCBQ response on Face-Book or other social media forums.

       Remind personnel, to be aware of phishing (both email and telephone) attempts to gain information about MCBQ personnel or operations.

       Additional information concerning protest activities, to include any gate closures, changes to Force Protection Condition, excepted traffic delays, etc., will be distributed via a MCBQ FROSTCALL later this week.

       Pete Streng Director of Operations

    • Mar 20 2011

    DocuDharma Digest

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    Mar 19 2011

    from firefly-dreaming 19.3.11

    Mar 19 2011

    Evening Edition

    I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

    • West pounds Libya with air strikes, Tomahawks

      by Imed Lamloum

      TRIPOLI (AFP) – French air raids and US Tomahawk missiles pounded targets in Libya on Saturday, in an international campaign to prevent Moamer Kadhafi from crushing a month-old uprising against his rule.

      A US warship fired Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya, targeting Kadhafi’s air defence sites, a senior US military official said.

      Two days after a UN Security Council resolution authorised military action, French planes carried out an initial four air strikes, destroying several armoured vehicles of Kadhafi’s forces, the French military said.

    • Power line connected to stricken Japan reactor

      by Hiroshi Hiyama

      KITAKAMI, Japan (AFP) – Crews fighting to cool reactors at Japan’s stricken nuclear plant managed to connect a power line Saturday as the government revealed that leaking radioactivity had reached the food chain.

      The Fukushima No. 1 plant was crippled eight days ago by a terrifying earthquake and tsunami which according to the latest police tally left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan’s worst natural disaster since 1923.

    Mar 19 2011

    Health and Fitness News

    Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

    Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

    You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

    Fast Food for Harried Days

    [Photobucket

    Baked Bean and Cheese Quesadillas

    Broccoli and Red Onion Quesadillas

    Black Bean and Goat Cheese Quesadillas

    Mushroom Quesadillas

    Spinach and Goat Cheese Quesadillas

    Mar 19 2011

    Punting the Pundits

    “Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

    Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

    David Sirota: Six Sadistic Proposals From State Government

    Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that states are the “laboratories of democracy.” Oft repeated over time, the aphorism has helped impart legitimacy to the rough and tumble of state lawmaking. We’ve heard “laboratory” and we’ve imagined staid scientists in white coats rigorously testing forward-thinking theories of societal advancement.

    It’s certainly a reassuring picture-but there is a darker side of the metaphor. States are indeed laboratories. The problem is that today, those laboratories are increasingly run by mad scientists.

    We’re not talking about the usual Dr. Frankensteins trying to bring alive new corporate giveaways through harebrained cuts to social services (though there are those, too). We’re talking about true legislative sadists looking to go medieval on America. Behold just six of the most telling examples.

    Eric Boehlert: Note to NPR: Fight Back

    Why Fox News Will Keep Bullying NPR Until They Stand Up and Push Back

    In the wake of the James O’Keefe smear campaign against NPR, which arrived in the form of dishonestly edited undercover tapes (does O’Keefe know any other form?), public radio host Ira Glass expressed dismay that nobody was “fighting back” against the right-wing attacks. “I find it completely annoying, and I don’t understand it,” said Glass.

    Instead of fighting back against the right-wing attacks led by Fox News, NPR hit the panic button last week. It prematurely condemned a colleague and got busy “rolling bodies out the back of the truck,” as the New York Times’ David Carr put it, referencing the public sacking of CEO Vivian Schiller and senior fundraiser Ron Schiller, who was featured in the O’Keefe tapes. Both were made sacrificial lambs for the O’Keefe stings; lambs that were sacrificed before the full truth about theunethical tapes were revealed.

    Note to NPR: If you don’t stand up, the bullying is never going to stop.

    Robert Naiman: The UN Security Council Has Not Authorized Regime Change in Libya

    It’s a great thing that the Obama administration has resisted calls for unilateral US military action in Libya, and instead is working through the United Nations Security Council, as it is required to do by the United Nations Charter.

    Now, the administration needs to follow through on this commitment to international law by ensuring that foreign military intervention remains within the four corners of what the UN Security Council has approved. If it does not, and instead Western powers take the view that we now have a blank check to do whatever we want, the certain consequence will be that it will be much more difficult to achieve Security Council action in a similar situation in the future, and those who complain that the Security Council is too cautious will have only themselves to blame.

    Mar 19 2011

    Round of 32 Day 1

    It seems longer than it is.  Only 8 games today and 8 tomorrow.  I mentioned yesterday that we’ll be losing one of our Cinderellas today for sure.  Of course one will advance for sure too.

    Yesterday afternoon we added Florida State and last night another 3 (though a 9 over an 8 hardly counts), but the ones I was most rooting for, Long Island and Boston University, didn’t come through.  At least the announcers made a pretense of rooting for Long Island.  The Kansas shills on TBS celebrated their bias with a shamelessness that would make the Yankees blush.

    Fuck you assholes!  I hope Kansas goes down in flames as soon as possible.  The more humiliating the defeat the better.

    Yesterday Evening’s Results

    Seed Team Record Score Seed Team Record Score Region
    1 *Kansas 35 – 2 72 16 Boston U. 21 – 14 53 Southwest
    2 *North Carolina 28 – 7 101 15 Long Island 27 – 6 87 East
    3 *Purdue 27 – 7 65 14 St. Peter’s 20 – 13 43 Southwest
    6 Xavier 25 – 9 55 11 *Marquette 22 – 14 66 East
    8 UNLV 26 – 9 62 9 *Illinois 23 – 13 73 Southwest
    7 *Washington 25 – 10 68 10 Georgia 22 – 12 65 East
    6 Georgetown 21 – 11 56 11 *Virginia Commonwealth 25 – 11 74 Southwest
    3 *Syracuse 27 – 7 77 14 Indiana St. 22 – 14 60 East

    Today’s Matchups

    Time Network Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
    12:15 pm CBS 4 Kentucky 32 – 8 5 West Virginia 21 – 11 East
    3:00 pm CBS 2 Florida 29 – 7 7 UCLA 22 – 10 Southeast
    5:15 pm CBS 12 Richmond 28 – 7 13 Morehead St. 25 – 9 Southwest
    6:10 pm TNT 2 San Diego St. 34 – 2 7 Temple 26 – 7 West
    7:10 pm TBS 1 Pittsburgh 30 – 5 8 Butler 24 – 9 Southeast
    8:05 pm CBS 3 BYU 33 – 4 11 Gonzaga 28 – 7 Southeast
    8:55 pm TNT 4 Wisconsin 25 – 8 5 Kansas St. 25 – 10 Southeast
    9:55 pm TBS 3 Connecticut 29 – 9 6 Cincinnati 28 – 8 West

    Follow the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on The Stars Hollow Gazette.

    If you don’t like squeeky shoes you can look for alternate programming here-

    For a more traditional bracket try CBS Sports.  My Master Bracket Schedule is still good for today.

    Mar 19 2011

    This Week In The Dream Antilles

    A week of bread and circuses.  Pan y toros.  The shiny object of March Madness on four networks  (CBS, TBS, TNT, TruTV) attempts to eclipse world shaking nuclear disaster in Japan and the initial steps toward US involvement in yet another war, this time in Libya.  Lost in the fray: a judge temporarily enjoined Wisconsin’s union buster law.  And the moon is closest to earth since 1992.  

    This week your bloguero was distracted.  And he wasn’t prolific.  Or poetic.  As of Friday night, there wasn’t a single new Haiku on the site.  So your bloguero wrote an apologetic one just for this Digest:

    Week without Haiku.

    Your bloguero is slothful,

    Sometimes disappoints.

    At 4 am Saturday that helped your bloguero scrape enough rust off his iron manacles to escape at least temporarily from his ennui.

    So the week ended early Saturday with a Haiku.   At 4 am the moon demanded nothing less.

    War Du Jour, Part III notes that the US’s involvement in supposedly preventing violence to Libyan rebels with armed force is an engraved invitation to a quagmire in North Africa, and it’s potentially the start of a third, simultaneous US war with no end.  Apparently the PTB think that photos of Obama’s  Brazil visit will convince the world that the US isn’t really pulling the strings in Libya.  Believe that?  There’s a bridge…

    A Beautiful Day To Die notes your bloguero’s despair and concern about the enormous nuclear disaster in Japan.  Your bloguero really does not want anyone to be irradiated.  Including particulartly himself.  He would like the planet to thrive.  That doesn’t seem possible in a world with earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear power plants.

    The duck, Tricky Duck  (or maybe one of his grandchildren), has returned, El Pato Ha Vuelto.  The annual return of the traveler to the pond, a journey that began decades ago when the original  mallard who would be named Tricky Duck was mailed from an Iowa poultry farm to Blue Seal Seed and Feed in Chatham, NY, and came home with me.  An annual event, marking the start of Spring in earnest.

    Your bloguero notes that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is supposed to be posted early Sunday morning.  Yes, he knows it’s again Saturday.  Your bloguero, it turns out, likes to post on Saturday.  See you next week if the creek don’t rise on Sunday Saturday early.

    Have a wonderful weekend.  

    Mar 19 2011

    DocuDharma Digest

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