www.bradleymanning.org/  Investigated! Yes, the Army has investigated the Bradley Manning Support Network. So the Network must be doing something right! We know this fact because the BMSN filed a FOIA suit to find outt if it was being investigated.  The FOIA request was turned down because...wait for it...an investigation was underway.  So the FOIA suit worked! Some days everything just tumbles down Serendipity Lane...

A Drone of Your Own...

America’s few remaining responsible, engaged citizens, civil libertarians and militant nudists have expressed the quintessential heebie-jeebies at the nightmare-inducing prospect of drones hovering overhead (or over whatever body part reveals itself to the contraption’s cameras).  It’s difficult to imagine a situation in which the presence of a drone might make me feel safer. 

On the other hand (you know; the one being examined right this moment by a tiny ‘pocket drone’…).

Post Digression Stress Disorder…I can easily imagine enterprising college kids – or even Middle School Mugwumps – selling Mummy’s Ativan and Xanax stash and buying the necessary parts to required to pirate party a couple of military drones and “make them fight”

Over Bakersfield…

Right.  Now let’s talk about ‘civilian casualties’ and ‘the value of a human life’ or ‘bereavement compensation’ (That’s when a couple of 19 year-old hillbillies in desert camo, one with lumps of gold braid on the shoulders, arrives at what was once the front door of what was once your home and try to get you to take $5,000 to stop crying; $10 if you promise not to talk to the guys from Fox and CNN.

ardrone.parrot.com/press-photos

Think Cascadia is immune from the weather maelstrom?  When the rest of the country has become uninhabitable the population pressure imposed by 'Climate Refugees' will tank what's left of our environment.  You never missthe forests 'til the water is gone...

Now.  As in Right Now, the Corn Belt is a desert: that's right America's "breadbasket" is empty, running on fumes - literally.  Big Ag is entirely dependent on petro by-products.  When the oil runs dry, so will the chemical fertilizertss that fuel the food flow.  The soil is literally gone already.

Read Joe Romm's piece in  American Progress.      Romm is a senior fellow at American Progress, edits Climate Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. He recently wrote the piece "Hell And High Water Strikes, Media Miss the Forest for the Burning Trees."  Here's the link:

thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/27/507119/hell-and-high-water-strikes-media-miss-the-forest-for-the-burning-trees/

And does Kitz care?  No. No the Guv does not; he'll keep on selling off our public land - our old growth forests - to private timber interests until the trees run out.  That's millions of years of glacial increments building soil structure, creating layers of ecospheres on ecospheres, the co-evolution of the forest's attendanyt creatures..,.,all of it gone with one fell cut. 

"I do not love theee, Dr. Fell.

The reason why, I cannot tell,

But this I know and know full well,

I do not love htee Dr. Fell.

Strange but true:  Oregon officials have suspended timber sales on hundreds of acres amid a legal battle with conservation groups over the threatened marbled murrelet.   The deferrals, which include suspending planned timber bids and halting logging, apply to areas in Tillamook, Clatsop and Elliott state forests that are used by the threatened seabird. All the lawsuits paid off but that only happened because of the high profile protests and demonstrations that highlighted public displeaseure with logging our old growth forests to the ground.

-- three sites in Tillamook and Elliott state forests that were due to go up for bid in June

 -- three sites in Elliott State Forest that have already been put out to bid but haven't been harvested yet

 -- two sites -- one in Clatsop State Forest and one in Elliott State Forest -- where logging operations have begun

 -- two sites in Elliott State Forest that were due to go up for bid in the next few months

'Hotel Rwanda' or 'No Tell' Rwanda?

Why is the US military backing Rwandan militias hitting SE Congo?

Could it be the vast rare earth mineral resources?

Kambale Musevuli is back Thursday on 'Air Cascadia' and he's got the answers...

State Secrets

How much is 'too little,' exactly how overdue is 'too late'?  We won't know unless ,” New York's Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler's proposed legislation is passed.

The State Secrets Protection Act, H.R. 5956, would be the first law to rein in the president’s “state secrets privilege.'  Said privilege amounts to a nearly limitless power to kill litigation by claiming a lawsuit would expose national security information to the benefit of America’s enemies.

Obama and his successors in the White House would be banned from using false claims of national security to conceal “embarrassing or unlawful conduct” by the government, under new legislation proposed by lawmakers on both sides of the House.

First recognized by the US Supreme Court in a McCarthy-era lawsuit in 1953, the privilege (.pdf) has been increasingly and successfully invoked in the post-9/11 era to shield the government and its agents from court scrutiny in cases involving rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and the lethal targeting of U.S. citizens.

Also signing on to the legislation is Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin), John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan), and Zoe Lofgren (D-California).

The bill, which has not been placed for a committee hearing, would require judges to find alternatives to dismissing lawsuits when the privilege is invoked. Nearly every time the privilege is asserted, judges toss lawsuits.

Yesterday, the one and only Wednesday, June 20, 2012, the Senate bestirred itself and  moving with rarely-seen speed and efficiency (Maybe it was all that ‘sugar’ in the campaign tea pots…) and approved a pair of amendments.  The well-meant Byzantium  written by Ron Wyden , as the chamber finished work on a sprawling farm bill

.www.centerforfoodsafety.org/

One amendment would set up "pilot projects" to encourage school districts to purchase locally produced food. The other gives the federal Department of Agriculture authority to make micro-loans to "gleaners."   Wyden says that both would increase the availability of healthy produce to schools and consumers.

But wait...What's this?   As in the past, the old positions held as the Senate voted not to tamper with the Depression-era program that protects U.S. sugar growers.

The sugar program, which controls supply levels, sets prices and limits imports, has long been a target of those who say the government supports agribusiness over the interests of consumers.

So goes the official statement:  “This amendment will give innovative states with established farm to school infrastructure the ability to buy locally, support their own communities and help to make their children’s meals healthier.”

The micro-loan provision opens a USDA program to gleaners, who salvage un-picked or damaged food from fields that can still be consumed. The loans  range from $500 to $5,000, would be used to purchase equipment such as refrigerators or vehicles needed to assistant and expand the gleaners' work.

The action on Wyden's amendments came after the Senate passed a separate measure written by Jeff Merkley, that would make it easier for organic farmers to enroll in federal crop insurance programs.

 The amendments by Wyden and Merkley were small pieces in a larger bill that governs everything from the amount of subsidies farmers can receive to nutrition standards that shape almost every meal.  And Wow! How these meals have shaped Americans! The sugar industry need only look out the window of that big corner office and observed the employees parking lot to confirm that their every wish has come to pass.

 The sugar vote was one of the few remaining contentious issues as the Senate worked through some 73 amendments to the 1,000-page measure that establishes safety nets for farmers, authorizes conservation programs and funds the food stamp program.