I've had a long standing working idea of the word "chicken hawk" but never read a definition of the term until today when I stumbled on Glenn Greenwald's (Unclamed Territory) article ,"What makes someone a chicken hawk"? It's a much used and often misunderstood term but, even if you already, positively know exactly what it means, I think the article is still worth a read. I've included a couple of paragraphs below and found a nice image at to help illustrate the idea.
GEORGE BUSH - CHICKENSHIT LIAR LYING US INTO AN UNWINNABLE WAR photo: FireDogLake
"A "chicken hawk" is one who strikes the pose of a warrior, who imputes the personal courage of a soldier in combat to themselves by virtue of the fact that they are in favor of sending that soldier off to war, or who parades around with the pretense of personal courage and resolve while assuming none of the risks. And a "chicken hawk" will, conversely, attempt to depict those who oppose such wars as being weak, spineless and cowardly even though the war opponents are not seeking to avoid any personal risk to themselves, but instead, are arguing against subjecting their fellow citizens to what they perceive are unnecessary dangers." ~ Glenn Greenwald
I've got the National Geographic grizzly cam open in another window and the headphones on so my head if filled with the roar of a wild Alaskan river and from the corner of my right eye I can see giant bears fishing its rapids. As usual there are plenty of seagulls hanging around on clean-up detail. It kind of surprises me that the bears don't swipe at them, especially when the birds crowd within inches while they strip a freshly killed fish, but I guess it's ancient bear wisdom that seagulls are quick and not worth the effort. A bald eagle is also on the river today and that does seem to bother the bears. No doubt the rap on eagles is that they are pushy bastards you have to keep an eye on. The grizzlies will be at the river all day, just like yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and how many more years and centuries of yesterdays before that, deep in ice water, amid the swirling gulls, eyes trained on the rapids, occasionally lunging into the swill and coming up with a fish.
In the corner of my left eye it's another scene, the Bird Park. Mr. Lee put the off-road trailer out there, the one he got in Idaho a couple of weeks ago and the birds here have claimed its shadow for themselves. They are there for hours nibbling in the grass, taking quick forays into the high desert sun for a drink or a dip in one of the baths. Periodically someone arches their wings to get a little air under their feathers. I'm sure it's hot in those down vests. I scattered bits of goodies in the weeds and the few birds not chilling in the hot shade are hopping through the bramble looking for them. The house special today was a left over fish stick from last night's dinner. Yum!
Oops, a bear just grabbed a huge fish and is casually stripping it as a crow looks on longingly. He hops towards the bear, then jumps away but can't get his eyes off the feast. The bear is huge with a big, sagging belly. The crow is getting bolder and, at the same time defending his territory, running at sea gulls that land nearby but you can see all this yourself, that is if it's between 1 and 5 pm Alaska time during the salmon run.
I graduated to a crutch the other day and started physical therapy for my knee. My god! Until now, I have completely pampered it but the therapist showed no mercy. He gave me one week to straighten it out myself. After that, he promised to straighten it for me. Shit. The first day and I was already yelling in pain. He is a nice guy though in spite of the torture but you can believe I'm doing the exercises he gave me. I don't want my poor knee straightened for me. Plus, I've got to get it straight or I'll walk with a damn limp the rest of my life.
A magpie who was here this morning just showed up again, this time with a friend. I recognize him because of the distinguishing little patch of gray feathers on his shoulders, but faster than I can write it, they're gone. It's slim pickings around here in the afternoon.
YouTube: Bird Park Afternoon - 00:06 seconds
So that's it. A lazy afternoon rambling. Nothing more. It's a quiet day here in Nevada. The quail will be by soon. They prefer visiting in the afternoon but, although I'm sure Bush has done plenty of things since I last checked that I could rage about, I just had a lovely baked potato with soy sour cream and salad and am feeling pretty mellow, like a bear after a good day at the river. At the moment, the webcam is doing a close-up of that same bear with the sagging belly. She has another fish. Before that they did a close-up of a grizzly snoozing on the rive bank. Seems the bears have had a good day too.
I did just finish an excellent book, Crashing the Gates, but I'll save the details for another time. It's worth a post of its own.
At the beginning of this year, the Bush administration used heavy-handed measures to silence NASA scientists reporting on global warming. In spite of their efforts Dr. James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made it clear that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." At that time Charles Stern wrote a short article called Harassing NASA in which he criticizes conservatives for their effort to cover up global warming. He wrote:
NASA'’s mission statement includes the words, "To advance scientific knowledge and understanding of the Earth."” If the top scientific thinkers in the world feel strongly enough about their conclusions toward these ends (global warming) that they are willing to voice their concerns publicly, perhaps President Bush should concentrate less on shutting them up and more on listening to what they have to say.
But, as AeroNews.Net noted yesterday, instead of reviewing the data and heeding the warnings on global warming the Bush administration, always adverse to science, simply wrote NASA's mission statement, dropping the words "to understanding and protection our home planet". Another of their head-in-the-sand dirty moves to keep the Corporatocracy's "business as usual" plan running at open throttle, no matter what the cost. The secret conservative mission statement must read something like: "Screw earth and everybody on it, but us".
In a manner that has come to define conservatives, the change was done secretly, behind closed doors. Not even NASA knew. The news is only now making its way through the agency. It was reported in the New York Times on July 22nd in an article by Andrew C. Revkin titled, "NASA's Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet". In it he writes,
"The change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the "“understand and protect" phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions."
Typical of this sneaky administration that places itself above all review.
As senior NASA climate scientist James Hansen, director of the agency'’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies put it, "The Bush Administration wants to have an open, honest debate on climate change as long as that debate involves people who agree with their position."
In a all out effort to censor his writings and lectures on global warming, the Bush Administration has made a personal target of Dr. Hansen. They desperately want to shut him up because he says things like, "without U.S.-led changes in emissions controls, the world will be left dramatically and irreversibly altered due to global warming." I love this guy. It's encouraging when anyone breaks the silence and dares to stand up to these fucks.
An administration-appointed public affairs official, George Deutsch, regularly screens Dr. Hansen'’s documents and news media interviews in order to "“make the President look good." Hansen has also received several phone calls warning of dire consequences for his critical commentary but hearing of the change in NASA's mission statement he was quick to point out that the change "might reflect White House eagerness to shift the spotlight away from global warming.
For starters, visit Stop Global Warming. We can't afford to wallow in the problem any longer. It's time for solutions.
The third and final feature at the Roxy today is ... coughs. What's that? You didn't catch what I said? Sorry. The last part of today's triple feature is a little ... poetry... I know. I know. If you're like most people, you probably don't like/hate poetry but really .... don't blame Poetry. It's the poets themselves but ... that's a rant for another day.
Anyway, I think the poem queued up here is pretty good, certainly easy listening and quietly provocative to boot. Decide for yourself. It's a poem by Allen Ginsburg called "A Supermarket in California". When you get to the page, click on the player, sit back and enjoy...
And if you want more, check out National Geographic's live cam of wild grizzly bears fishing in a raging river in Alaska.
I have only bad things to say about people who include me in Cc'd group emails. An acquaintance did that recently, beginning her letter with something lame like, "Oops. Sorry for the Cc but I'm really busy". Yeah, well thanks a lot, bonehead. Now I am getting 200 to 300 pieces of spam a day. I'm furious. Before she tossed my email address into the shit river of spam, my inbox was virtually spam free.
So, in hopes this may spare someone else the misery, I'm posting something I found online that lays out, in plain language, why savvy people use the Bcc instead of the Cc. I don't know why people have such a hard time switching to the Bcc. I myself had an irrational fear of it and it took me several attempts before I was willing to try it. Big surprise. It worked just fine but so many people I have sent this to prefer to take me off their email list rather than Bcc me. It's weird.
"This came to me direct from a system administrator of very large corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.
Please read the text below....
Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% do NOT. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are two easy steps:
(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message and forward the message, NOT all the other forwards that came with it! For this reason, we must open multiple messages before we get to the real meat message. Just forward the message that's within the message and that's right, DELETE the email addresses. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.
If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.
(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: columns for adding e-mail address.
Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) column for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way that people you send to only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it. Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry listname and email address on a petition.
So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.
Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first). This is something that SHOULD be forwarded (via Bcc of course).
I found an intersting article today by Jack Fairweather published by a newspaper in Socorro, New Mexico called Mountain Mail. In it, Fairweather quotes Italian dictator Benito Mussolini saying,
"’Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Speaking of his brand of fascism, Mussolini said, “Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.”
“The Fascist concept of the State is all-embracing -- outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist.”
He then adds a definition from the The American Heritage dictionary stating
fascism as a “system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merger of state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalism.”
It's a short, clear article, well worth the 2 minutes it takes to read but, if you don't want to do that, then here's my half minute recap,... fascism is the guiding principle of the modern day American conservative party. The radical right has hypnotized and enamored masses of people via media brainwashing but the sad and frightening reality is that these sleepers at the trough are guzzling poison and are drunk and belligerent on its false, fatal numbing comfort.
Photo: "America Fascist Mind Magazine" by artist Stephen Pitt at light-to-dark.com
