U.S. Refuses to Ban Cluster Bombs

I was reading a story that tells of how 111 countries have decided to ban one of the most indiscriminate and long lasting explosive devices man has ever devised, besides the landmine. Cluster bombs incorporate many smaller bombs inside one tube used as a delivery devise that is designed to break apart in flight to scatter hundreds of smaller bomblets over an 18 square mile area. They do not all explode upon impact. Therefore, there is a very great danger that long after the conflict is over, these unexploded bombs are left to be found by children who then pick them up with horrible results.

As I was reading this story, in the back of my mind I was thinking, I’ll bet the United States did not sign this ban. And sure enough I learned they did not. Neither did Russia, China or Israel. Why am I not surprised that the four biggest users of this inhumane device not sign the ban? For one thing I am American and therefore know firsthand that this nation will never easily give up anything that earns them a financial profit. Even if it means indiscriminate killing of innocent children.

I am appalled that with the vast array of killing devices these four nations have available to them that they still choose to continue what the International Committee of the Red Cross has called a "persistent humanitarian problem."

The U.S. even had the temerity to imply that the ban on clusters would prevent it from undertaking or participating in humanitarian operations!

If these devices were being dropped on American soil you can bet they would sign that ban in a heartbeat. This is just another instance of military powers thumbing their noses at smaller countries who don’t have the power to stand up to them. And it further exemplifies why other countries hate us so much.

Vatican Men’s Club Tries to Maintain Purity??

Being able to teach religious ethics and morality is not dependent on testosterone. In fact, in almost every situation, too much testosterone is detrimental to teaching anything worthwhile. The Vatican, by threatening to excommunicate any woman priest and the guy who ordained her, seems to have allowed their self imposed celibacy to cloud their logic.

A priest is a priest is a priest. Being able to teach the word of God only requires a thorough knowledge of the Bible, a good heart and moral character, and a willingness to speak to large masses of people.

How can they with any clear conscience demand human rights throughout the world and then deem a person unworthy to be a spiritual leader because that person has breasts?

My experience, through attending several different churches of different faiths, has taught me that religious teachings, in the Catholic religion in particular, is riddled with hypocrisy. To see these delusional old men who decorate themselves in ecclesiastical vestments in an attempt to convey that they themselves are the only chosen few worthy of spreading God’s words, formally ban women from their exclusive club, only illustrates their small-mindedness and willingness to divide church membership just to placate their ego.

The long list of atrocities that have been committed against humankind in the name of God, under male leadership, proves that men are not stalwarts of morality. They have failed miserably.

It is unconscionable that church leadership would serve up pedophiles as examples of morality than to welcome the natural nurturing ability of women who are willing to offer their services in God’s name. Again, hypocrisy at its finest.

This in-fighting just to maintain control over that tiny piece of real estate called the pulpit will only limit the number of persons willing to take on this important social need.

Perhaps they are afraid of having to build separate dressing rooms. Maybe they don’t want to have to put the toilet seat down. Or, do they think only men look good in those gaudy robes?

We need all the moral and ethical teachings we can get from anyone with the ability to get people to listen. Spreading the word of God is not exclusive to only those of us who can pee standing up.

Fox News Goes Over the Line, Again

Fox News is quickly becoming famous for spinning it’s own brand of sensationalism on any and every news story that crosses its desk. All in the name of ratings.

Their ratings chase went too far again this past weekend when political pundit Liz Trotta stepped once again into the realm of poor taste by jokingly admitting that Barrack Obama be assassinated.

She had first "mistakenly" referred to Obama as "Osama" while discussing theories that Hillary Clinton's recent comments about the RFK assassination was in fact a suggestion that someone "knock off Osama." When she was corrected and reminded that she meant "Obama," she then said, "Well, both if we could."

Fox News needs to show some ethical leadership and come down hard on Liz Trotta and her foolish, lame attempt at “humor”.

Assassination is nothing to make light of and if Liz Trotta and Fox News had any inkling of the immorality of making such comments they might aspire to be a valuable news service instead of the lesser entertainment venue it is. But evidently in their reckless attempt to entertain they have become desensitized to how heinous the crime of murder is.

It is unconscionable for Hillary Clinton to link any connection about the RFK assassination to a running mate, it is unethical and contemptible for a purveyor of news, such as what Fox News is attempting to be, to present the story in any other fashion than for what it actually is, a news story.

Humans Can Be Disgusting, Selfish Animals

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing children in war-ravished and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said. Children as young as 6 are among those who have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday. After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity says it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

These individuals have abused their power and committed disgusting, filthy, degrading acts against children under the cover of humanitarian aid. Humanitarian my ass. These are foul vermin of the worst kind and should be eradicated from every society on this planet. There is no amount of good that these people can do to override the damage they have perpetrated on these children and themselves.

These people will lower themselves for their own selfish pleasure because they think they will not get caught. Self-governing morality is lost to these people.

I do not understand what drives a man to think that if he has something someone needs, especially if it means the difference between life and death, he envisions himself in control of that person. This is the crux of the problem and needs to be addressed immediately and effectively. Morality and human dignity mean nothing to these scumbags.

Human rights will never be attained for everyone as long as this filth is allowed to roam free and these actions are allowed to continue. As far as I am concerned, these individuals have given up their rights to be a part of this worlds’ society.

Putting more humans in the role of “watchdog”, as is suggested, as a means of controlling this behavior is just allowing more filthy pigs to be in power which will most likely lead to further abuse.

Police State 2.0: Soon To Be Released

Rolling Stone Magazine recently published a story of such tremendous import that every freedom loving American needs to read it. We are slowly being lulled into a surveillance society so complete that privacy will be something you can only read about in history books. There is big money to be made in high-tech surveillance so don’t be fooled into believing it cannot happen here.

London is under constant surveillance via CCTV cameras o every street corner, China’s internet has become a conduit through which Chinese authorities can monitor internet sites in real time and identify both the site owners and visitors, America’s police departments are salivating at the possibility of having drones and other high-tech security toys they can use ‘for our protection’. Homeland Security wants national ID cards that can track everywhere you go, the FBI wants massive databases on every American complete with every bit of biometric data they can get their paranoid hands on. Corporations have been tracking employee email. The NSA, under the direction of a very paranoid White House, has already used telecom companies to spy on our cell phone calls and internet traffic, and it is only a matter of time before banks and credit card companies will fall under the same directives.

How far away are we from having facial recognition software that can match a human face to a database within one second? We are less than one year away. Why is this ability being developed? Where is this ability being tested and perfected? China. Right now. You think they won’t sell this technology to any country who wants it? It’s all about money and control.

L-1 Identity Solutions, based in Connecticut, already has a stake in China’s development of software they, L-1, developed. L-1 is a one-stop shop for biometrics. Thanks to board members like former CIA director George Tenet, the company rapidly became a homeland-security heavy hitter. L-1 projects its annual revenues will hit $1 billion by 2011, much of it from U.S. government contracts. Licensing their software to any Chinese company is against U.S. policy, but it obviously didn’t concern L-1. Like I said, it’s all about the money. And the government contracts that L-1 is thriving on is of course our tax dollars.

Many other U.S. companies are charging into China, eager to make a profit from helping China spy on its citizens. The risk of violating the law does not deter these companies from helping the Communist Party spend billions of dollars building Police State 2.0. As long as they make big profit, they will do it. This isn't an unfortunate cost of doing business in China: It's the goal of doing business in China.

Taken from the article:

As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to "set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing's most populated districts." General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls "thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running." IBM, meanwhile, is installing its "Smart Surveillance System" in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a "2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010." By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq.

All of this activity in China is just a run up to what we can expect to see here in the U.S. Every Chinese security firm is hatching some kind of plan to break into the U.S. market.

The Defense Department has already attempted China’s grand experiment with something called Total Information Awareness, a virtual, centralized grand database that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.

Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases.

We condemn China for human rights violations and yet we have Guantanamo Bay. Our constitution prohibits illegal search and seizure yet police departments and the federal government find ways around it all in the name of fighting crime, immigration and terrorism.

China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

There are a lot of people in our federal government that would do what China is doing in many of its cities, if they could. And we already have proof that they are not intimidated by the law.