Photos

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

Cable TV network MSNBC has made headlines in recent days for apparently moving away from its "Lean Foward" progressive brand, catering instead to a more center-to-right-leaning crowd. 

"People might start accusing us of leaning too far to the right," the station says in a new advertisement featuring MSNBC's conservative personalities — an array of Republican identities such as Michael Steele, Steve Schmidt and Ben Ginsberg. 

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

For the first time, DeSmogBlog has published dozens of documents obtained from the North Dakota government revealing routes and chemical composition data for oil-by-rail trains in the state carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in the Bakken Shale.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

DeSmogBlog has obtained hundreds of documents portraying the blurred lines between North Dakota's government, the oil and gas industry and the private equity world. They also offer one of the first looks inside the professional life of former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus after he resigned from the agency in 2012.

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

The southern half of Transcanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is supposed to begin pumping up to 700,000 barrels of diluted bitumen per day through the Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX route within weeks. But is it ready to operate safely?

Public Citizen has released a chilling report revealing that the 485-mile KXL southern line is plagued by dents, faulty welding, exterior damage that was patched up poorly and misshapen bends, among other troubling anomalies.

In conducting its investigative report, "Construction Problems Raise Questions About the Integrity of the Pipeline," Public Citizen worked on the ground to examine 250 miles of the 485 mile pipeline's route. The group and its citizen sources uncovered over 125 anomalies in that half of the line alone. These findings moved Public Citizen to conclude the southern half of the pipeline shouldn't begin service until the anomalies are taken care of, and ponders if the issues can ever be resolved sufficiently.

 

By Dave Lindorff

I ran the Boston Marathon back in 1968, and, my feet covered with blisters inside my Keds sneakers, dragged across the finish line to meet my waiting uncle at a time of about 3 hours and 40 minutes. It was close enough to the time that the current bombing happened in this year’s race -- about four hours from the starting gun -- that had I been running it this year, I might still been near enough to the finish line to have heard the blasts.

In Air America: Under the Imperial Eye, Chris Floyd reports on the recent revelation that Iraq's supposedly "sovereign airspace" is constantly under surveillance by a network of drones operated by the State Department. Apparently the only reason this news came to light is because of a publicly available government appeal for private bids on the project. Neither we nor Iraqis were meant to know:

"Iraqis were outraged this week to find they are being spied upon by a fleet of American drones hovering constantly in their supposedly sovereign skies, long after the supposed withdrawal of American forces."

 

By John Grant

 

As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause -- a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator -- and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story.

Patrick Howley

Editorial Assistant, The American Spectator

 

 

Here’s a story from the annals of fools posing as journalists.

 

By John Grant

 

At the end of this chaotic YouTube video, made at the end of a huge victory by the activists occupying Wall Street, and their thousands of supporters, one of many outraged demonstrators is heard hollering: "He ran over his fuckin' leg!"

Well, I've looked at the video three times and that seems a pretty accurate description of what this cop did.

At first, the scooter's front wheel seems to be in front of the young man's leg. The guy, by the way, is a clearly legal observer wearing an official National Lawyers Guild yellow observer hat. He seems to be in serious agony at this point. So it seems likely he has already been run over once.

By Laura Leigh

You learn many interesting things traveling on public lands following the wild horse issue in the American West.

You learn that after standing in sub-zero temperatures, attempting to document winter roundups, that returning to the relative warmth of your parked vehicle can make your glasses crack. You learn that chemical toe warmers are good as wrist, neck and “slip into your coveralls attach to your underwear” warmers as well. You learn that rattlesnakes don’t always rattle.

You learn the maneuvers the federal government will attempt to hide their actions when “managing” America’s wild herds: Maneuvers that range from lying about facility contracts to a roadblock on a remote dirt road operated by armed men who stop three woman from seeing the wild horses being captured.

On June 19, 1971 both houses of Congress passed the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro, act without a single dissenting vote. That act read:
 

Please sign the petition calling for a 100% hand tally.

The recount of the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin is scheduled to start today, Wednesday, 27 April 2011. In part of the state the ballots will be hand counted and in the rest of the state the ballots will be machine counted. If the machines malfunction or have been tampered with, there will be major problems with declaring an official winner. The court order mandating partial hand tallying in the Supreme Court race recount must be changed to require 100% hand tallying across the state.

Although we will have a good comparison in the parts of those 31 counties that are ordered to conduct hand counts to the machine counts in those same counties on April 5th. If the results are not the same, the voting machines will be suspect. In the remaining 41 counties ordered to do machine counts, those official counts will be suspect if there are major differences between hand and machine counts in the 31 counties. Thus the entire recount process will be thrown into confusion.

The election will still not be decided. And the up to 16 state senate recall elections coming up will also be thrown into confusion: candidates will all have to decide whether to ask the courts to order hand tallying in all of those races. Thus we, as a state, must modify the court order mandating partial hand tallying in the Supreme Court race recount to require 100% hand tallying across the state.

Please sign the petition calling for a 100% hand tally and ask you friends to sign also.

Thank you!
Buzz Davis
Citizen

Vigil Photos, Articles and Videos

 

The candlelight vigil on Friday was beautiful and heartwarming. We’re so grateful to everyone who volunteered, spoke, and recorded the event. We think you’ll enjoy these links: Visit for Backlinks to what's mentioned

Nagasaki After the Bomb: A Waste Land

Visualizing Memory, Photographing War Stories

Listen to the Story

July 4, 2010 How do you photograph memory? It's a question that fine-art photographer Jennifer Karady is exploring. Her latest project visualizes not just any memory, but memories of war brought home by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. An exhibition of photos from her ongoing project, "Soldiers' Stories of Iraq and Afghanistan," is currently on display at SF CameraWork in San Francisco.

By Dave Lindorff

Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa.  “This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, ‘It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’” he recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, ‘I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired over and over!’”

A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.

By Dave Lindorff

The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, fatally wounded in Afghanistan, AP Photo

"Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union," by David Swanson is due in stores September 1st, but the publisher has it now and you can get it straight from Seven Stories Press.

By Dave Lindorff

When I was a 17-year-old kid in my senior year of high school, I didn’t think much about Vietnam. It was 1967, the war was raging, but I didn’t personally know anyone who was over there, Tet hadn’t happened yet. If anything, the excitement of jungle warfare attracted my interest more than anything (I had a .22 cal rifle, and liked to go off in the woods and shoot at things, often, I’ll admit, imagining it was an armed enemy.)

But then I had to do a major project in my humanities program and I chose the Vietnam War. As I started researching this paper, which was supposed to be a multi-media presentation, I ran across a series of photos of civilian victims of American napalm bombing. These victims, often, were women and children—even babies.

Baracking around the world!

How the House Representatives Voted on HR 1424: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Launched on 8-8-08, MyPeace.TV is a social networking site dedicated to Co-Creating Peace through Media. We are also a strategic partner and proud sponsor of Peace.TV, a social networking site for broadcasting commercials and Public Service Announcements for Peace.

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Rally focuses on Iran, saber-rattling
Hundreds protest prospect of US acting against Iran
By Susanne Cervenka | Florida Today | Event Photo Gallery

Gillian Myers held a sign firmly over her head. Its message: "Even children know to march for peace."

The 4-year-old from Palm Bay was among about 500 people participating in Florida's First Mass March to Stop War on Iran. Rallies similar to the one Saturday -- which was led by Brevard Patriots for Peace -- have increased across the country as some believe U.S. leaders are building up to war with the Middle Eastern nation.

"We were misled into one war and we don't want it to happen again," Gillian's dad Ray Myers said. "Sitting at home and complaining doesn't do anything."

Protestors Dog Pelosi on Her LA Book Tour at American Jewish University

Inside report from Marcy Winograd:

Pelosi thanked her host, American Jewish University, proclaimed her support for Israel as a Jewish state, and then talked about the importance of women owning their power – this from the woman who upon assuming her role as Speaker of the House declared impeachment off the table, thus immediately surrendering her power to hold the Bush administration accountable for war crimes.

Mid-way through Pelosi's somewhat surreal Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters book chat in Los Angeles -- Peter Thottam, founder of the LA Impeachment Center -- couldn't take the small-talk and platitudes anymore.

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Click "Read more" for full wanted poster.

Reps. Waters to Co-Host Photo Exhibit Highlighting the Iraqi Refugee Crisis

Exhibit places a human face on this humanitarian crisis.

Washington, D.C.—Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-35) will hold a photo exhibit highlighting the Iraqi refugee crisis on Wednesday, April 30 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. in room 2220 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Rep. Waters is co-hosting the event with Reps. Alcee Hastings, Barbara Lee, and Lynn Woolsey.

Ms. Gabriela Bulisova, a documentary film photographer and adjunct professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design recently returned from Iraq and Syria, where she captured images of Iraqi refugees. Her photo exhibit places a human face on this humanitarian crisis in an effort to bring greater attention on Capitol Hill to the plight of Iraqi refugees.

For my entire life - years before Hurricane Katrina - I've fantasized about New Orleans. I dreamed of being decadent in the French Quarter in clubs where my music heroes played. I dreamed of tasting the food, studying the architecture, hearing the accents, and being cradled in the arms of the city – in the cream, black, brown and white blended arms of the city. I wanted to earn my beads at Mardi Gras, search the bayous for magic, and be transformed beyond the boundaries of my physical world. But the rigors of my life quashed my momentum and I didn’t visit the one American city I'd always longed to see -- until just last weekend -- nearly three years AFTER Katrina.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one made me speechless.

The use of torture presents one of the gravest violations of human rights and American ideals we have ever endured. We need a movement to end this crisis. We need to stand up and say: My America Doesn't Torture!

The picture may make you sick, but we have a duty to face the ugly reality of American torture that President Bush has laid upon us.

I took action to make sure no Administration allows torture to disgrace us ever again, and I hope you will too.

In my article on New Years Eve (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/29684), the night before the Pasadena Rose Parade and our White Rose Coalition's (WRC) unauthorized PEOPLE'S PARADE FOR DEMOCRACY, I questioned whether media would step up patriotically to broadcast our message to IMPEACH Bush & Cheney and END THE WAR. We were well aware that media would already be present in huge numbers, since it capitalizes handsomely on Rose Parade revenues every year. But we also knew, through previous disappointments, the difficulty in getting corporate press to broadcast negative public sentiment toward Bush, Cheney, and War.

With our Democracy in decline, an immoral war raging on, criminals and cowards controlling our government, and H.R. 1955 and S. 1959 threatening our First Amendment freedoms, our White Rose Coalition believed it had a duty to begin 2008 with the clarion call to Americans that this is the year to RISE UP. After weeks of strategizing under the inspired and frenetic leadership of Los Angeles National Impeachment Center (LANIC) Director, Peter Thottam, we ventured forward with our action. With visuals in tow, our group of 350 to 400 patriots from a dozen pro-peace/pro-impeachment organizations, embarked on our mission to usher in 2008 with THE WHOLE WORLD WATCHING.

Much to the delight of our 2008 White Rose Coalition, a substantial number of media actually did turn out. While the coverage was no where near what we would have liked, it exceeded our expectations.

Here's the follow-up report to my article: "Will Media Broadcast THE PEOPLE'S PARADE At The Rose Parade New Year's Day?":

On December 13th, Debbie and Barb lobbied Congress in festive holiday attire. As Chesapeake Carolers, they had so much fun! They even made new friends on the steps of the Capitol Building! They hope you like the pictures! And wait till you see their music videos!

Barb and Debbie take their Suburban Mom
Merry Christmas Message to Capitol Hill