Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Confesses To Confessing Under Torture

Beyond the orange curtain

A time for peace

A symbol of peace in Budapest. From the LA Times.

Daily Activism

Tell the Presidential Candidates to Make Global Warming a Priority!

bear hug from Care2

More Care2 Stickies Here!

the train to nowhere

illogical legal thinking

From the MoJo Blog: Gonzales Argues Against Certainty of the Right Of Habeas Corpus

And this guy is Attorney General? Someone in High School Civics could do a better job of interpreting the Constitution.

cute nephew photos

Holiday photos are available to view online at yahoo photos. Let's just say, I'm the proudest aunty there is.

Poverty is a Threat to Peace

From Muhammad Yunus's acceptance speech for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.

Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.

I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.

A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a whole.

Don't be fooled by the Dems

Although I am very happy about the election results -- I think any rational thinking human being would be -- I am still skeptical about what the D's are going to be able to accomplish. How are they going to come together to find unity within the "big tent" to pass meangingful social and economic reform measures? It will certainly be an interesting two years in Washington.

Come 2008, Will Kucinich and the “New Democrats” Fool
Us Again?

“Escalating conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the all-volunteer force to the breaking point,” declares an October report by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the “centrist” (read: neocon lite) Democratic Leadership Council. “Democrats should step forward with a plan to repair the damage, by adding more troops, replenishing depleted stocks of equipment, and reorganizing the force around the new missions of unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and civil reconstruction.”...

sunday afternoon radio

"With just one senate seat, Connecticut gets a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent." - Peter Sagal on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, a radio show that almost makes the week's worth of nasty depressing news worth it.

nature

"It has been said that wildness is a luxury, a commodity that man will be forced to dispense with as his occupancy of the earth approaches saturation. If this happens, he is finished. Wildness must be preserved; it is a spiritual necessity. Even though few may visit wilderness areas they remain an open back door, a safety valve for those who never enter them." - Eliot Porter

Happy Labor Day

There Is Power In A Union
by Billy Bragg

There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hand of the worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses way, sir

The Union forever,defending our rights
Down with the blackleg,all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far-off lands
There is power in a Union

Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws cannot defeat us
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackeys out to cheat us?

Money speaks for money,the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
What a comfort for the widow,a light to the child
There is power in a Union

The Union forever,defending our rights
Down with the blackleg,all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters together we will stand
There is power in a Union

internet polls

I hate to admit it, but I often am a sucker for those side-bar polls that you find on internet websites. Yes, as a political science major I know just how unreliable polling is, and as a decently intelligent person, I can pretty much figure how inaccurate internet polls are. However, there is something fascinating about them -- I think it goes into the whole "click activism" phenom - that we can feel like we're being active & connected even though we're at home on our computers.

Anyway -- I just took one of these polls and the results were quite scary. 70% of those answered said that terrorism is the "greatest threat of our times" while less than 1% said global warming. And these are Slate readers, so I'd only hate to guess what the results would be like on foxnews.com Another question asked what communications do you consider to be "most personal." 70% said cell phone conversations, while less than 1% said banking information or medical records. Whoa -- I guess those polled believe that their completely unsecured conversations in the grocery store are "more personal" than their doctor-patient privileged medical records? Ah, geeze.