It's Memorial Day weekend and I have nothing better to do than download music online and watch C-SPAN...

That's because I'm now at an age where my friends and family are dying more often. I'm at the point where I've lost both parents, my older sister (still have my younger), and even my dog died last year. I only have a couple of friends left alive that I have managed to stay in touch with over the years, while hearing of the deaths of others I regretfully did not. On top of that I have no immediate family of my own. So, no bar-b-q here, and I lost interest in professional sports back when they had the first baseball strike. The lust for money took the "sportsmanship" out of it for me. Of course that was even before I understood how corrupt the corporate institutions behind them are.

I also recently learned of a distant family suicide connected to the housing crisis and a potential foreclosure on a home owned by Senior Citizens. A tragedy I wish I had been aware of before it transpired. I believe I could have helped them find public advocacy in their plight. I also may write about this down the road after I am able to learn more. Their being Seniors has me very intrigued.

So, and keep in mind that I have no children of my own and no other involvement with children directly, I'm watching C-SPAN and a congressional hearing begins. Held last Tuesday, May 19, 2009, by the House Committee for Education and Labor, and chaired by Representative George Miller (D-CA).

The title of the hearing was: Seclusion and Restraint of Mentally Disabled Students. Although the hearing was 2 hours, it was anything but boring. To hear about the kinds and frequencies of abuse going on in our Special Education system is shocking. And that word feels weak in description.

I was at once reminded of the 1970's public debate on corporal punishment in our traditional educational system that I always understood was about less physical abuse. Yet here we are, thirty years later, being revisited by yet another ghost from our decaying Democratic past. I get this odd feeling of Deja Vu whenever I hear of another issue that we are currently debating that was originally debated thirty years or more ago. Coming to mind would be "war", "civil rights/human rights", "labor rights", "public housing", "the environment", and on and on with the fact that our leaders prefer to lie to us always at the heart of it. I also get a sinking feeling that we are up against a "monster" that wins more often than not. Particularly when it concerns a subject where, not the corporations directly, but the inhuman influence they infect on the individual's sense of morality causes the individual to commit the immoral act. I mean how could any individual willingly commit an act of such cruelty, whether it is at the policy direction of a higher-up or by their own decision? It's not unlike the torture debate going on that analyzes, tries to justify such despicable behavior from a National Security perspective rather than from a moral perspective, such as the morality that we tried to define with our Constitution. Like most of the Bush era policies, there is still no honest conversation going on between our government and her citizens. Except the corporate citizen of course.

Chairman Miller must have been thinking along the same lines, because after hearing opening statements from the panel of witnesses, which included two parents of abused children, he made the connection between this kind of extreme reaction to child behavior and our government's interrogation policies. He made the very astute comparison between the technique of waterboarding and a method used by these special educators to restrain a child. A method that has resulted in moire than one death...

I'd like to note that both sides of the aisle on the hearing committee were appalled at what they learned was regularly going on. All that is but the committee co-chair Howard McKeon (R-CA). Again, I cannot fathom reacting to something like this in any manner other than outrage, but some politicians seem to ever confuse the challenge as policy driven, when they should be thinking about the right and wrong of it.

Below is the hearing in it's entirety. If your browser does not support this kind of embedded video (you don't see anything), here are two other options for you:

Flash video link.

Page link with video link

Whether you have children or not, you need to know about this. And if you do have children, you should consider what might be going on in our other schools and watch this with a keen ear.

There's no doubt that the higher up the power ladder you get, the more contentious you get. Maybe it feels "wobbly" up there, and too confined for too many. Maybe you just like being on top, whatever it takes.

But whatever the reasons beyond simple greed and arrogance and vanity, these top elites are no different from a bunch of spoiled kids and not enough candy to go around. Take the following for example.

It's flu season and swine flu is the headline version we're now watching kinda closely in the news.

An article from Slate talks about scientific opinion on the relationships between different types of flu and their biological targets. The consensus is looking like all bird flues may not work on other animals and humans, but all flues may work on birds. So that all flu is avian flu. Whatever kind of flu, a global pandemic is something to consider.

At least you'd think that was on the minds of congress as they debated the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Think Progress reports that some senior Republicans in the Senate were responsible for stripping funds intended for flu "preparedness".

Excerpt:

On February 5, Karl Rove took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to argue against President Obama's Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act because, in his view, the spending was not targeted to create or preserve jobs. In particular, Rove complained about the fact that the bill included "$900 million for pandemic flu preparations." He contended that such spending was unnecessary because the health care sector "added jobs last year."

These political dog-fights that have erupted since the election of President Obama are all about the Republican party feeling "wobbly" at the top. It wasn't about the flu, it was about stealing "candy"

Here's another ..

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The New York Times today printed this story exposing at least 10 years of subterfuge by the oil and gas industries to conceal their own scientists' consensus with the rest of the scientific community on the validity of the Human contribution to global warming.

Here is an excerpt:

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

Hearings began in Washington this week on the Climate Change Bill. Among the witnesses that appeared today were VP Al Gore, Senator John Warner and former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Most people could likely guess where the Speaker and the Vice President stand on the issue of Global Warming, but many people may be surprised to learn that Senator Warner has had a big change of heart, brought on partially by the urgings of his Grandchildren.

The hearings today, in one way, sounded just like others that have preceded this one. Fewer Republicans are outright denying the existence of climate change, but all who were present still could not resist disputing the modeling and severity of the consequences, and of course, the impact of the fossil fuel industry. All of them are hinting that without the inclusion of lots of nuclear and coal, they will not support any climate bill.

The hearings being held by the House Energy Subcommittee, Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA), and Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), among others took center stage on C-SPAN today and will re air later in the evening. Other hearing will be held in the forthcoming days. Anyone interested in hearing the portions that included Al Gore and John Warner can view that here. Their appearance is followed by a round of discussion with Mr. Gingrich.

Speaker Gingrich's testimony illustrates very well how deeply entrenched the Republican Party continues to be in the oil, gas and automobile industries, the nuclear industry and the coal industries, all of which are dirty by nature, and less often discussed, all have unique and dangerous environmental consequences from their mining and processing activities. When we talk about coal, we don't talk about mining. When we talk about nuclear, we fail to account for waste disposal. So we end up with marketing campaigns that tout "clean-coal" and infinite atomic energy.

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Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of Earth Day. On April 22, 1970 more Americans (over 20 million) came out in public support for this cause than had ever done before in support of the environment. President Nixon, against his personal and party political convictions, but under immense public pressure, approved the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (Click Here to view a video message from the new EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson). This was also the year that domestic oil production peaked in the United States. 3 years later, we were in the grips of OPEC and Americans were to become increasingly concerned about things like pollution & global warming, over-population, world hunger and poverty. At least for a few years until we forgot...

The EPA went on to pass several environmental laws & regulations over the next few years, and by the late seventies many of us were beginning to believe that we had won back control of our planet from the Corporations who mindlessly created these calamities. But then, we got foolish and elected a failed Hollywood Cowboy actor to the White House. The same man, who as president, pushed us solidly in the economic direction that is giving us fits now. President Reagan began by dismantling the Solar Energy collectors on the roof of the White House that President Jimmy Carter had installed. Then he went about relaxing corporate regulation on just about anything he could get his misguided hands on. Not only on the environment in general, but on the auto industry as well. So that by 1988, on average, automobiles in America were actually now getting less MPG than they were 10 years earlier after the EPA began regulating automobile mileage standards through it's pollution control regulatory mechanisms. Consequently, mileage did not substantially improve for another 10 years. Only now, when it seems so Deja-Vu-like, we are once again opening our eyes to the even greater damage the insatiable corporate lust for profit has brought to our Earth. And also like a nightmare returned, we are now at or very close to global peak-oil production. At least half of the world's population is too young to remember the gas lines of the early-mid seventies, and the fear that gripped us from feeling impotent against the huge forces of nature that appeared to be going out of control.

Of course the ultimate blame goes squarely on us, the citizenry, for not only believing the rhetoric that our corporate-lobbied politicians tell us, but for becoming so incensed with measuring our freedom by the yardsticks of consumerism and materialism. Ripping our planet and it's peoples apart through selfish imperial military domination over the world's dwindling resources, displacing whole populations and causing a chain reaction of ecological consequences we cannot even accurately predict or imagine. Well, we better wake up!

Last night on Frontline, they aired what could very well be the most important and thought-provoking program they have aired on the state of our environment since they aired the segment "HEAT" last year. It's entitled: "Poisoned Waters". It looks at the state of our global water supply from the perspective of the current condition of the Chesapeake Bay, over 25 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act.

You can view it by clicking here:

This is a must-see for anyone who is concerned about the future of our freshwater supplies and the health of our planet. A state of health that will determine our own future survival...

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Analysis: Somalia Piracy Began in Response to Illegal Fishing and Toxic Dumping by Western Ships off Somali Coast - DemocracyNOW

Excerpt:

While the pirates story has dominated the corporate media, there has been little to no discussion of the root causes driving piracy. We speak with consultant and analyst Mohamed Abshir Waldo. In January, he wrote a paper titled “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?”

Watch the interview here:

In another story on the show, Amy Goodman interviews Father Louis Vitale who has been in Nevada protesting the use of the Predator and other unmanned aerial attack vehicles recently in Afganistan and Pakistan. The military operators who fly these robotic war machines never leave the US, and many are now coming to realize that this is no arcade game. The innocent lives lost are real. Watch it Here.

Along with Father Vitale on the show is Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist. He talks about his organization and why they are refusing to fight America's Imperial Wars anymore.

Last week Amnesty International revealed that on March 22 the United States delivered more than 300 containers of munitions to Israel.

This weapons delivery occurred despite the fact that Amnesty International reports that the United States is reviewing Israel's misuse of U.S. weapons during "Operation Cast Lead" in violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

Excerpt: 2 April 2009

Some of the white phosphorus artillery shells that Israeli forces fired into densely populated residential areas in Gaza last January, killing and injuring scores of Palestinian civilians, were from US-made stockpiles – as clearly indicated by the marking (M825 A1). Other white phosphorus artillery shells were also US-made, as were the overwhelming majority of the other munitions used by Israeli forces to commit grave violations of international law in the recent three-week conflict in Gaza.

To read the full story Click Here

The US Campaign To End The Occupation has written a fact-sheet about Israel's misuse of U.S. weapons in Gaza. To view and/or download the PDF Click Here