Peter ORourke's blog

John Yoo and Others Banned From Entering Russia

John Yoo, Dick Cheney and others have been banned from entering Russia in a move designed to retaliate, tit for tat, with Washington's ban on 18 Russian Citizens to the United States citing human rights violation. John Yoo tops the list. The story can be found at HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/13/russia-responds-to-us-mag_n_3075795.html

John Yoo is at the top of the list. He wrote "The Torture Memos" that allowed the U.S. to torture captured "terrorists." It was Yoo who created an environment that enabled the government to do this: in other words he weasel worded the law to make people think what they were doing was legal. Yoo with Viet Dihn wroteThe Patriot Act. Yoo, who teaches at Berkeley, is under constant scrutiny by the public: http://www.firejohnyoo.net/

Yoo, who like Obama, passes under the sobriquet of "constitutional scholar," shows his complete weakness of character in the short nonpareil video produced by Chasers War on Everything , a comedic group out of Australia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwTPQjT0hA

 

Free Men: A Movie Review of a 9/11 Related Film

Free Men A Film Review

Recently it has been reported that the New York City Police in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency has been spying on Muslims in New York City and surrounding states. The French film Free Men (Les Hommes Libres) covers this exact topic in an historical sense. A brief synopsis of the film from Netflix states: Getting by selling black market goods in Nazi-occupied Paris, a young Algerian immigrant is arrested and made to become a police spy. But when his activities expose him to a beautiful Arab Jewish singer, his loyalties soon change. The film elucidates the fact that spying on Muslims, and get this, is a Gestapo technique, well them and the Schutzstaffel, the SS. But that's OK, right? Right? I also recently watched yet another Nazi movie and the director's mise en scene to promote the horror of the German Occupation of France was to use water-boarding as a torture technique, imagine that. In his play Hamlet, Shakespeare evinces the importance of Art and Drama by the statement: "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Is Free Men then an allegory for today's political climate? It certainly seems so. The plot of this movie should be very familiar to any awake American. According to the associated press these same Gestapo techniques are alive in The United States today: "AP's investigation has revealed that the NYPD dispatched undercover officers into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program. Police also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing." While Top Critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a high rating (and they hate everything) I found the film to lack edginess and dramatic tension. Yet despite my feelings about the films limitations I highly recommend it; I got a brilliant history lesson from it.

This film is available for Instant Viewing on Netflix

Obama Pardons Turkeys

In a tired old tradition Obama has pardoned two turkeys for Thanksgiving that go by the saccharin appellations of Cobbler and Gobbler. Obama was quoted as saying in a not funny joke, jokes that poke fun at the unjustly dead are never funny, : “the American people have spoken, and these birds are moving forward!” This, according to the reporter was "in a reference to his campaign slogan of 'Forward.' " What the fatuous Dallas News (dot) Com reporter failed to mention is that this self same "Forward" was Obama's weasel worded mantra to fend off questions regarding criminal acts by the Bush/Cheney regime. It seems that Obama is trying to "take back" this vulgar phrase by putting a different and positive spin on it and by mentioning it over and over in order to relegate the initial utterance into obscurity.

Other not funny jokes: Bush's Correspondents Dinner search for WMD's and Obama's threat to use Predator Drones on the Jonas Brothers, both vulgar and tasteless. Anyone know any good Hiroshima jokes?

Have a good holiday everyone and to justice: avanti

Kill Your Television!

The first time I saw a kill your TV sticker I thought it a little extreme; I mean watching TV was keeping me out of the bars. I read all day at work and didn't feel like reading at night and the internet was a way off. I have since killed my TV. Look at what I just found; I think it is quite interesting: "Until the early 1970's the Stasi used to monitor the angle of people antennae hanging out of their apartments punishing them if they were turned to the west, later they gave up; the benefits of soporific commercial programming outweighed the dangers of news bulletins from the free world." From: Stasiland: True Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder.

NIST SCIENTIST AWARDED NOBEL PRIZE

In an agency press release dated October 9, 2012 NIST , The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced that one of its scientists, David J. Wineland, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. NIST is a branch of The Department of Commerce a Cabinet level department within the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. This years prize was divided between two recipients, the other is Frenchman Serge Haroche. Wineland is also a lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Says NIST of the award: “We’re so excited for Dave, along with his many colleagues and friends around the world, for this recognition of decades of world-leading research...”

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