tragedy trumps absurdity for the moment

Notes 76
Looking for hope in sea of government propaganda, while the public happily drinks its ration of koolaid
John Pilger | How the So-Called Guardians of Free Speech Are Silencing the Messenger
John Pilger, Truthout: "As the United States and Britain look for an excuse to invade another oil-rich Arab country, the hypocrisy is familiar. Colonel Gaddafi is 'delusional' and 'blood-drenched' while the authors of an invasion that killed a million Iraqis, who have kidnapped and tortured in our name, are entirely sane, never blood-drenched and once again the arbiters of 'stability.' But something has changed. Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is. Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks."
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The ultimate victims of U.S. policy of sanctions against offending countries
Humanitarian Pays With Life for Feeding the Children of Iraq
Katherine Hughes, Truthout: "February 26, 2011, marks the eighth anniversary of the imprisonment of Dr. Rafil Dhafir. Dhafir continues to pay the price for feeding the children of Iraq during the US- and UK-sponsored UN sanctions against that country. According to the United Nations' own statistics, every month throughout the 1990's, 6,000 children under the age of five in Iraq were dying from lack of food and access to simple medicines. Three senior UN officials resigned because of what they considered a 'genocidal' policy of sanctions against Iraq. Dhafir's charity, Help the Needy (HTN), openly sent food and medicines to starving civilians in Iraq during the brutal embargo. Seven government agencies investigated Dhafir and HTN for many years. They intercepted his mail, email, faxes and telephone calls; bugged his office and hotel rooms; went through his trash; and conducted physical surveillance. They were unable to find any evidence of links to terrorism, and no charges of terrorism were ever brought against Dhafir."
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A catastrophe for the Japanese and a hard way to find out how FEMA performed during Katrina\
Explosion at Japan nuke plant, disaster toll rises
By Associated Press Eric Talmadge And Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press –
IWAKI, Japan – An explosion at a nuclear power station Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor amid fears that it was close to a disastrous meltdown after being hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami.
Footage on Japanese TV showed that the walls of the reactor's building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing. Puffs of smoke were spewing out of the plant in Fukushima, 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Iwaki.
"We are now trying to analyze what is behind the explosion," said government spokesman Yukio Edano, stressing that people should quickly evacuate a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius. "We ask everyone to take action to secure safety."
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What can be said
Japan Nuclear Crisis Spreads to Third Plant
Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times News Service: "Japanese officials struggled on Sunday to contain a widening nuclear crisis in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, saying they presumed that partial meltdowns had occurred at two crippled reactors and that they were facing serious cooling problems at three more. The emergency appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. The developments at two separate nuclear plants prompted the evacuation of more than 200,000 people. Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defense Forces since World War II to assist in the relief effort."
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Screw the public. Drill, Baby drill. The rewards of oil production now trump the education of the kids, not just defense and diplomatic policy.

Pennsylvania's Corbett Expands Conservative War on the Middle Class
Linn Washington Jr., This Can't Be Happening: "Swinging a sledge hammer, Pennsylvania's first-term Republican Governor Tom Corbett smashed into educational spending and state worker jobs during his first-ever budget address, following in the footsteps of his conservative cost-cutting confederates across the nation. While Corbett proposes slashing over a billion dollars in funds for pre-K through college, he spares the Keystone State's burgeoning billion-dollar Marcellus Shale natural gas industry from his call for 'shared sacrifice' to close a $4-billion gap in the state's budget."
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Cost is not the issue for the military industrial complex when it comes to manufacturing a failed plane.
One Creature That Deserves Extinction: The V-22 Osprey
John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus: "Some animals should be endangered. Consider the V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft, which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane, costs more than a $100 million apiece, killed 30 personnel in crashes during its development stage, and survived four attempts by none other than Dick Cheney to deep-six the program. Although it is no longer as crash-prone as it once was, the Osprey's performance in Iraq was still sub-par and it remains a woefully expensive creature. Although canceling the program would save the U.S. government $10-12 billion over the next decade, the Osprey somehow avoided the budget axe in the latest round of cuts on Capitol Hill.
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May they all learn the lesson of the Midas Touch. Nobody deserves to earn 9 billion dollars from some muscle bound cretans hammering each other into unconsciousness except in a society that has gone insane.
Lockout, decertification leave NFL in limbo
NFL labor talks break off, leading to lockout, decertification -- and limbo for 2011 season

Howard Fendrich, AP Pro Football Writer, On Saturday March 12, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) -- All along, the NFL said it was certain the players' union would decertify and head to court.
All along, the union insisted the league's owners were planning to lock out the players.
And that's exactly what happened.
Unable to decide how to divvy up $9 billion a year, NFL owners and players put the country's most popular sport in limbo by breaking off labor negotiations hours before their contract expired. At midnight, as Friday became Saturday, the owners locked out the players -- creating the NFL's first work stoppage since 1987 and putting the 2011 season in jeopardy.