The Science Police

The scientist being arrested in the photo probably wonders who thought up the idea of the federal science police:

Each year, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) investigates dozens of charges of scientific misconduct. And each year, the ORI adds a handful of names to a list of researchers found guilty of falsifying figures, fabricating data, or committing other academic infractions. As of April 1, 2009, this Administrative Actions list, presented on the ORI Web site, carried 38 names. These people are barred from receiving federal funds and/or serving on a Public Health Service committee, typically for a period of 3–5 years. Once the debarment term is up, the name disappears from the list. In theory, the punishment—and the shame — of the ordeal is over.

(The Scientist, Life After Fraud). Yet the reality is that these scientists who stuff their test tubes are treated like sex offenders:

But even then, the stain of guilt can pursue them through every aspect of their life, professional and personal.This is surely not the intention. Any system of justice worthy of the name must mete out the applicable punishment alongside opportunities for rehabilitation and measures of crime prevention.

(The Scientist, Fairness For Fraudsters). Gosh golly gee, sex guy and the science guy being put on lists, like terrorists? Whoa!

Dredd Blog has complained about the expanding universe in a tongue and cheek post, however, we did not mean to push Uncle Sam And The Pharoahs over the edge into Wooly Bully land and into ever expanding lists.

Run Climate Change Deniers, Run!!! And if Sarah Palin becomes head of this agency, Run Einstein Run!!

Wikipedia has an article on the Office of Research Integrity which focuses on scientific misconduct.

Does anyone else worry that this type of government office could become a political football to push or prevent certain scientific endeavours?

Scientists confirm that the Bush II regime suppressed science that did not agree with the regime's political platform:

Most scientists had heard at least a little about claims that government scientists were not allowed to report research findings that conflicted with the Bush administration’s point of view. And the vast majority (77%) says that these claims are true.

(Pew Research). When you combine government science police with government suppression of science the government does not agree with, you can easily have the institutionalization of propaganda.

The next post in this series is here.

Independence From What?

Of the many grievances listed in The Unanimous Declaration, the following is a most interesting one:

He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

(Declaration of Independence). One of our warrior presidents warned us that this rendering of "the military independent of and superior to civil power" was a danger that was threatening to become institutionalized into our system:

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

(President Dwight Eisenhower, emphasis added). In other words our independence as a free nation depends on there being no rendering of "the military independent of and superior to civil power", or the nation as we have known it will perish from the face of the earth, and something else will rise in its place.

The "there is a shadow government" proponents say that what we declared our independence from, and what Eisenhower feared would happen, has happened behind the scenes; and for the most part happened so slowly as to be undetected.

There is undoubtedly behind the scenes dynamics that account for much of the strange goings on the popular TV Series Burn Notice depicts:

WEAPONS inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death.

He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the ­British and American invasion.

(Daily Express, UK). Whether those mysterious deaths we hear about from time to time are official or rogue operations by military commanders is only one possibility.

Michael, the burned agent on Burn Notice, recently told the Miami Police investigator "we are on the same side", which is the gist of the matter ... are we?

The Fog of War - McWarster McNamara

Robert McNamara has died.

I did not like him during the Vietnam war; but did like him after his confessions to war crimes in the documentary The Fog of War; which interestingly had to do with WW II and the "campaign" against Japan, not Vietnam.

At least I liked his final grasp of honesty and his willingness to share it.

The mother of all wars loves her children, like all mothers who eat their own young do.

The McNamara type remorse currently being felt in the U.S., and the world at large, is causing neoCons to be busy about moving their money, power, and influence over to the democratic party, and away from the increasingly losing republican party and the intense scrutiny it is pulling to itself.

It explains why Bush II and the bushie warsters are not being prosecuted for anything from criminal torture to other war crimes. McNamara explained why this happens.

Notice some patterns; McNamara was a republican Secretary of Defense, like Gates; bipartisan rhetoric abounds; the republicans seem to be self-destructing with media help; Obama is morphing to the right and has talked about one term only; like Johnson eventually did.

While history in no way follows fixed structures, it does help to notice patterns if we are to grasp some of history's lessons.

Keep your eye on the morph which begins within those exposed to power.

Complete Idiot's Guide To Green Jobs

The actual title of the book I am reading is "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Green Careers", written by Barbara Parks and Jodi Helmer.

There is a letter on the inside front cover of the book which is addressed to the reader.

Among other things, that letter says:

Green careers are more than just a trend. Consider this: In 2007, Congress passed the Green Jobs Act, a $125 million investment to train workers for careers in renewable energy, energy-efficient transportation, and green building. The Apollo Alliance, a national coalition dedicated to the advancement of the green economy, has proposed a $300 billion influx of federal funding over the next decade to support environmental initiatives, which would lead to the creation of more than 3 million green careers.

The media buzz over green jobs has Americans scrambling to understand what a growing green job market means. What, exactly is a green job? Are they hard to find? Where do you look? That's where we come in.

(ibid). Well there is much talk about jobs, and a "career" is really just a long lasting job.

There is a Dredd Blog post "Clean Coal Mythology", where it is pointed out that there are more jobs in wind energy generation than there are in coal mining even as we speak!

So, this revolution is already in the making, so lets continue to make it so.

Check it out.

If, in the final analysis, we do have to save this human species ourselves, perhaps it will be done one job and one career at a time.

Lets make a career out of saving our planet and our species and have green fun doing it.

9/11 Conspiracy Theorists Take A Hit - 3

Several medical and mental health doctors have joined together to deal another blow to official 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

One of the co-founders, Jonathan Weisbuch, MD, MPH, has an impressive medical career, and questions the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Another co-founder, Dr. Barry Komisaruk, PhD, also questions the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

I have provided posts, as have other publishers, concerning missing airliner documentation, and missing jet fuel quantity which also bring doubt down upon the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

We are waiting for replies from those who formulated the official 9/11 conspiracy theory to clear up these doubts, and when that information is provided this post will be updated accordingly.

Meanwhile, hundreds of professional architects will be in Washington D.C. in a few days for a July 14 - 16 professional convention.

Some of them will be talking to peer professionals and congress members about the weakness in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Who Would Allah Vote For?

My recent take on the Iranian election was that the Iranian neoCons had fooled some progressive election integrity folk here in the U.S.A.

Evidently many mullahs in Iran have not been fooled, however, and they are now making more noise:

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
...

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

(NY Times). This seems to be evidence of a difference of opinion which the neoCon crushers of the demonstrators will not be able to subdue willy nilly.

This dissent comes from a substantial Iranian source.

A source that can mould opinion, and which has the type of respect which the Ahmadinejadians will not be able to taint by frivolous references and allegations of ties to external western corrupting influences, such as the CIA or MI5; nor can they pin this on the Mossad of Israel.

The plot thickeneth.

The Unanimous Declaration

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

---

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776 UPDATE: The above language in italics is the unedited text of the Declaration of Independence from England. To show they were not just whining hypocrites, the founders went on to forge out a constitution. It was to be the medicine to cure the ills they had declared themselves free of. Our human struggle for immunity from the toxins in power continues to this very day. CELEBRATE!!

The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine

This post has been moved to the Toxins of Power blog.

The Velvet Green Smoker Electolution

This post has been moved to prepare for next year's posts.

The Icy Stares Of The Ice Wars

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology blog.

When Accountability Is A Plague

We have seen the emergence of a new type of "accountability" during the past decade.

We could describe it as stealth accountability, which is being framed and presented as "policy differences".

Instead of political wrongs, crimes, or sources for proper retribution, the worst of governance is accepted simply as bad policy for which impeachment is off the table.

The official story line designed to launder egregious and treaty violating government behaviour is composed of a one liner something like "one administration cannot punish a prior administration for what that prior administration did based on policy differences between the two administrations".

Having declared that premise, the official exercise then becomes one of describing everything the prior administration and everyone in it did as "policy", even to the degree of calling war crimes a policy of government.

When such a position is unleashed and promulgated, each current administration is then relieved of the dirty, hard, and painful work of applying the principles of accountability to any previous administration, and instead, can focus on re-election.

This evaporation of accountability is one of the primary signs of a or the decline of the U.S. Republic.

Most any academician will have a rap for this subject of accountability, which will go something like:

Accountability is the missing conceptual link in the current debate over how best to advance democracy. Democracy affirms the need to justify decisions made by citizens and their representatives: it is a system that connects the values of the individual with the decisions of the collective. The preferences of citizens revealed by fair elections (representation) or organized and definitive discussion (deliberation) are the starting points of democratic legitimacy.
...
A clearly defined accountability system is crucial to any system of representative democracy because citizens, through their vote, legitimize or give authority to leaders to act.

(The Accountability Ladder, PDF, emphasis added). As it turns out, accountability is an important, required, and essential ingredient for U.S. Democracy.

That essential, which is the DNA of true democracy and constitutional government, is the constitutional foundation of American government.

It is actually the essence of any government by, of, and for the people because in this specific application we speak of here, it applies only to government officials.

The first leg or phase of accountability is a free press.

To the extent the press can be subverted is the extent to which accountability can be subverted, and thus the extent to which U.S. Democracy can be subverted.

In the new administration we have heard a lot of talk about open government, yet open government without accountability is like bragging about doing public wrong.

The rhetoric "hey, look what we are doing, torture, spying on Americans, destroying the economy, see how open we are" rings hollow without accountability, and does not sound at all like the American liberty bell.

The next post in this series is here.

Iraq's April 30 4th Of July & Iran's Win

The results of the 8 year war are now in.

Iran won.

Iraq and Iran fought an 8 year war in the 1980's during Saddam Hussein's reign, which ended as a stalemate that cost a million male lives and left a population composed of a majority of women in Iran.

The U.S. backed Saddam Hussein in that war.

When the luv affair with Hussein ended after he invaded Kuwait, and the U.S. later invaded Iraq during Bush II, things began to change.

The Shia radicals who had been expatriated to Iran and elsewhere became activated and they returned to Iraq.

Soon they embedded themselves into the Iraqi government when the Baathists were banned, during the Bremer leadership, soon after the U.S. invasion and at the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Bremer, like Bush II, knew nothing of the Shia v. Sunni dynamics and the religious struggle between them so he, like most Americans, had no idea what was going on in that regard.

Today and back then the Shia of Iraq and Iran are aligned against the Iraqi and Saudi Sunni, and the Kurds to the north care not a lot for either; hence the U.S. has sown the seeds for the future political crop which will not be and is not now pro-American.

The Iraqi April 30 celebrations about the Americans leaving can be compared to the U.S. 4th of July alignment against the British Empire and for U.S. independence from Britain long, long ago.

Nationalism held the U.S. together then, after its independence, and will hold Iraq together for awhile now, but so will closer ties to Iran mixed with a hatred of America they now share.

These types of energies too, however, will wane eventually and those ancient divisions within Iraq will sprout once again, helping the greater problems to return to the surface and blossom.

Shia, Sunni, and Kurd will march again with Shia support from Iran, and with Sunni support from other neighbouring countries.

The U.S. civil war took a long time to develop following the exuberant 4th of July, but it came, and the April 30th Iraqi exuberance will also give way to Iraqi civil war in due time.

But it will not be as bad as the U.S. civil war was.

From an oil baron perspective, all that remains to be seen is whether the oil barons can keep a hold on the Iraqi oil they greedily went for under the oil baron regime of Bush II.