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POPSWolves, Whales and Warming in Alaska Whales Beluga Whale, U.S. Navy Conserving Cook Inlet Belugas You can help conservation efforts! Defenders will soon be launching a Cook Inlet Beluga Citizen Scientist program to monitor beluga sightings in and around Anchorage. Email Karla Dutton at KDutton@Defenders.org if you’re interested in helping out! We’re also fighting to make sure belugas are protected against the construction of the Knik Arm Bridge, one of the famous pork-barrel Bridges to Nowhere.
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POPSLawmakers Seek Probe of ‘Media Generals’
‘Not only must the inspector general now account for what it did and did not know about this state-sponsored propaganda effort, but they must also explain why, if they knew about the propaganda campaign, it was allowed to proceed,’ DeLauro said. ‘Additionally, we are calling for the inspector general to launch an investigation to ensure no detail surrounding this programme remains hidden,’ she added. The House members also want to know if the inspector general considers the programme to be illegal. Retired officers who acted as military analysts for major news outlets were given V.I.P. access to the Pentagon, with regular briefings by then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a sponsored trip to the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. The operation was abruptly halted after it was reported by The New York Times. The paper’s massive probe revealed that some 75 retired military officers, prepped by the Pentagon, served as paid television commentators since the run-up to the
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POPSIf We Really supported the Troops... Go to http://anysoldier.com/WhereToSend/ and then click on a soldier-contact's name, read the blurb he or she has posted about what his or her unit wants, and then click again to request a form (asking for your own addy and name) to get the appropriate address for that unit. You must not send porn, and you must not send packages that contain both food and soap/sunscreen/etc in the same box. No pork products. No anti-islamic tracts in bulk. No political content. No flea collars. No depictions of naked or partly naked people. No explosives, firearms, other shit that is illegal to mail anyway. Don't send chocolate, it melts. You must request the address to send your package to on the same day you mail it, so it's hard to really meet the requests. I am thinking of assembling a bunch of common cheap items, and boxing them up at the last minute. even someone as poor as me can spring for toothbrushes and lip balm, for crying out loud. Things particularly in need: * Personal letters from
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POPSThe Loathsome Smearing of Israel’s Critics The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups — including Honest Reporting and Camera — said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked. Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, “Honest Reporting” claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained — in labour — by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, “Honest Reporting” will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on.
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POPSGotta keep up with the doom and gloom! Aging systems releasing sewage into rivers, streams. “Local governments across the USA plan to spend billions modernizing failing wastewater systems — some of which are more than 100 years old — over the next 10 to 20 years, EPA, state and local sewer authority officials said. Those improvement efforts face a huge challenge mitigating problems in what the EPA estimates to be 1.2 million miles of sewers snaking underground across the USA.” Bodies rot in cyclone-hit Burma. “Piles of rotting corpses are stacking up in remote villages of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, with residents saying they don't have enough fuel to cremate victims of deadly Cyclone Nargis.” Deadly battles as Hezbollah says Lebabon 'declares war'. “Deadly gunbattles erupted in Beirut on Thursday after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah charged that a Lebanese government crackdown on his group was tantamount to a 'declaration of war,' stoking fears of a full-blown sectarian conflict."
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POPSMickey Mouse-opatamia: Disneyland comes to Baghdad But, just like in a Disney fairy tale, the souls of these dead animals will inhabit the bodies of the cartoon characters who will serve as ushers and greeters at the thrilling new "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience." The $525 million project, says C3's owner, "will be managed by the Iraqis" (ha, ha, that's a good one, just like the oil fields) and the "experience" will be "culturally sensitive" (ha, ha, that's an even better one). Even though there's no running water in parts of Baghdad, the electricity is sparse at best, and suicide bombers are still killing an average of 100 civilians a week, this will, in the words of C3's director, be a welcome sight to Iraqis. He told the London Times, "The people need this kind of positive influence. It's going to have a huge psychological impact." Another big supporter of the Disney "experience" is Bush lapdog, General David Petraeus, who said Baghdad was otherwise "lacking in entertainment." If this weren't all so predictably ha
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POPSApology denied: Once we recognize their humanity, we've lost some deep sarcasm here. continuing... Nothing drives this truth home quite as blatantly as America's mercenary army in Iraq, which is immune from prosecution under either Iraqi or U.S. law. And the baddest of the American privateers are the Blackwater guys, about whom a rival security contractor told Fortune magazine: "They always shoot first and ask questions later. When we're out in country, we often fear Blackwater more than the Iraqis." Back on Sept. 16, Blackwater personnel -- not for the first time -- convulsed the people to whom we are bringing democracy with an unprovoked shooting rampage. While providing security for a U.S. embassy mission, they opened fire in the crowded square. By the time they stopped, 17 Iraqis lay dead and another several dozen were wounded. These were just ordinary people going about their lives. No one had fired at the security team first, witnesses insisted. But apparently something spooked them, and when you're not accountable under any law, why
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POPS It's The Stupid, Stupid--The Media gets a FAIL Nevertheless, we get nonstop coverage of this man for two solid weeks from major television, radio, and newspapers. And yet the worst of the lot, television, when confronted with the fact that they were complicit in disseminating Pentagon propaganda by using retired generals as paid shills for the Iraq war effort, has less to say about it than Bill O'Reilly on the difference between a loofah and a falafel. Part of the problem is that modern news editors hate "policy," because "policy isn't news." But in times like these, it isn't hard to make a case that, yes, policy is news--but today's media is too vapid and too hard up for rapidly vanishing eyeballs to care. Four months in a row of job losses on the edge of recession calls for some sort of policy change (and the president is doing the Charleston trying to avoid saying the R-word). Gas prices are skyrocketing toward the $4/gallon mark, and two of the three presidential candidates are saying that cutting the gas tax--in effect, giv
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