Murder on Mars?

An Open Letter to the Scientific Community:

NASA's recent "Curiosity" probe to Mars was improperly disinfected. The mission carries the potential to destroy the Martian environment, perhaps irrevocably changing & polluting that nearby world. (Any returning samples could also infect our Earth). Will the idiots be more careful in the future?

 The scientific community must penalize those responsible. Only accountability will promote proper behavior. 

Assorted strict decontamination & quarantine procedures for spacecraft have been agreed & supposedly implemented (link). The NASA Office of Planetary Protection is responsible for adhering to the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (1967), with oversight by the International Council for Science and its Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). Before the recent Mars Science Laboratory / Curiosity launch, NASA engineers admittedly & (reportedly) deliberately broke disinfection & quarantine rules involving a drilling system, and bypassed required consultations with Planetary Protection Officer Catharine Conley.

Past pandemics generated around Earth by crude introduction of pathogens should have been ample warning of danger. European contact with the "New World" at that time resulted in extinction of an unknown number of species, and perhaps a 95% mortality rate amongst indigenous peoples due to newly-introduced disease & illnesses.

Such overreaching efforts by engineers must be stopped. NASA should be fined US$1 billion for their transgression, with penalty monies transferred to provide better funding for planetary protection, cautionary education, and independent oversight. I believe a short prison sentence and individual fines for the involved engineers & supervisors will also help avoid future cross-contamination (NASA supervisor David Lavery has defended this breach of procedure). Any next time easily could cause death to us all.

Links:
NASA Office of Planetary Protection
COSPAR
COSPAR Scientific Assembly website
COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection
The Guardians project (educating schoolkids)
Leonard David space.com article about the incident

10 Heroes for 2012

Here are 10 Heroes for 2012. (unranked list, many names are links) Not yet complete? It'll be full by year end...

--->  Chris Kluwe
Minnesota Vikings punter (American football) who's publicly agitated against discrimination

--->  Bernie Sanders
Vermont Senator fighting for the little guy in Washington (and too often, fighting alone)

--->  Ray McGovern
Former US Government official, now critically analyzing government

--->  Desmond Tutu
Archbishop & Nobel Peace Prizewinner who shunned Tony Blair for lying about Iraq. Tutu also demanded those responsible for illegally invading Iraq be tried at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

--->  Bradley Manning
Accused whistleblower to Wikileaks (and through them The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc.), Manning is in military prison for Embarrassing the Empire. The human interest sideshow now hounding Manning, Adrian Lamo (the FBI informer who fingered him) and Julian Assange (Wikileaks) are as nothing to the widespread death & destruction generated through illegal US overseas covert & military operations.

--->  Donna Smith
Activist for a more reasoned US healthcare system.

--->   Robert Fisk
The Independent newspaper's Middle East correspondent. A true independent, not a mouthpiece for corporate & special interest, who consistently rocks the boat.

--->  James Anaya
Giving enslaved & colonized people new hope as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples

Republican Heartbreak

When we elect Republican presidents, most Americans suffer...

Don't Get Fooled Again!

Showtrials USA?

The US military decided accused murderer Nidal Hasan will be forcibly shaved prior to his trial. Six times already, his growing beard has led the government to declare him in contempt of court.

Forcing people into a pretrial government-mandated makeover is disturbing.

What is next? That accused individuals submit to government makeup artists to look suitable as defendants?

We can envision depravity: dark rings under the eyes, hollow cheeks, perhaps even flecks of fake blood on the lips & chin. Hollywood-styled justice.

The US government already has devalued law & justice with indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo & elsewhere. People held without charge or trial are intubated & forcefed. One day, these horrific government practices will be recognized along with torture as ridiculous & bad, preempting a proper course of justice. That certainty is scant comfort for unfortunates caught-up in the showtrials, unjust imprisonment, and executions.

 

 

Reverend Moon, R.I.P.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, died yesterday in Korea. He was 92 years old.

The world has lost a remarkable personality.

I'm not and have never been a member of his Church, which rocked the boat of families & societies around the world. Rev. Moon was often vilified and ridiculed and persecuted. Even today's BBC headline has a negative barb: 'Moonies' founder Sun Myung Moon dies at 92

Many in orthodox Christianity felt threatened by Rev. Moon's religious movement, The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. Reverend Moon's efforts and energies stretched to politics and media, as well as religion, so perhaps it's understandable that repressive, self-serving, and conservative elements often attacked his teachings and his Church. At least some of what he taught can be termed inconvenient truth. We attack the messenger.

The global Church is now headed by his youngest son, Dr. Hyung Jin Moon. Best wishes to all the family in this time of loss.

America High Low

The death yesterday of Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, elicits bittersweet memories of great success. Many look back at NASA achievements and feel awe, recognizing amazing engineering accomplishments in the face of extreme risk. Space remains a daring frontier. Neil Armstrong and his compatriots are heroic pioneers who pushed humanity ahead and achieved an amazing milestone.

The same day, death was announced of the 2000th US military serviceperson in Afghanistan. This is the USA at its worst, a greedy interfering militaristic behemoth, occupying distant lands for decades, bringing ruthless tragedy to rural peoples, installing puppet dictators to fuel America's corporate coffers, keeping an obnoxious toadying wealthy minority in death-dealing secretive power over an underemployed, deliberately misled majority.

American yuppie, opening Cristal champagne in a Manhattan nightclub, or enjoying your boat off the Hamptons: please spare a thought for your American cousin, dead in the Afghan dust. Remember also to thank people who've worked together, as each struggles in our own small way for a better world.

Apple Courts Bible Change?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), the Cuperti, California-based mobile media device manufacturer, has won a hard-fought court battle against Samsung Electronics of Seoul, Korea, over intellectual property rights.

The next step for Apple® is to assert their expanded rights over relatively unregulated global markets for fruit.  Apple Inc. is poised to demand a portion of ongoing business receipts, lump sum payment for past transgressions, and cease-and-desist rulings over fruitsellers & greengrocers who sell Apple® fruit, or that produce must henceforth be relabeled as red, yellow or green "roundies."

The market for roundies juice has evaporated, and the Motts Corp. is in turmoil. A spokesperson for Apple®, who declined to be named, explained "We won. We first. We kicked butt." He went on to loudly claim "America Numba Wan" multiple times, and that corporate strategy enlisting the courts to stifle their rival is "as American as roundies pie."

Eve took the forbidden fruit of the roundies tree, and gave some to Adam.
So angry God sent them out from the garden...

Mitt Don't Fit

Mitt Romney claims he knows business.

Mitt made $20 million last year, but didn't work. In fact he's never worked, or never much or very well. Money laundering  manipulation is not a real job, though making Mitt mucho moolah. He operated as a front man for the scandal-ridden Salt Lake City Olympics. He got elected Governor of Massachusetts, but his poor performance precluded any chance of reelection (when the 50 US states rated their governors (link), his term end rating was 48th of 50).

Mitt can be a smooth operator, but he's not a good person to recruit or to depend upon. If he knows business, then he knows some applicants just don't get the job.

Don't hire Romney in November.

Smash Dick in Door

Let's elect more women leaders. We need fewer former generals and more mothers in charge of nations.

The militaristic machine sacrifices someone's flesh-and-blood children for national strategy. Maybe they obey a dictator up the chain of command. Perhaps a strong foreign power surreptitiously offers wealth & issues orders. Cloak & dagger subverts open government.

At least ten cascading incidents of pity & pain overlap in the Julian Assange saga. It's tempting to believe the true saga is not Julian, but a struggle to defuse (or reimpose) the neo-colonial coercion of diplomats, secret agents & military.

Anyhow,
Ten dimensions of how this incident hurts:

1) It all didn't start with Julian, but consensual sex or not, his dick's been squashed (ouch)
2) The women who had sex with Assange still suffer
3) Swedes bungled the complaints process (link), subverted the separation of justice & elected politicians, and damaged Sweden's global reputation
4) The UK claims a compelling need to extradite, but couldn't extradite dictator General Augusto Pinochet
5) UK Foreign Office threats to breach the Ecuadorean Embassy in London threatens their own global network and the diplomatic webs of other nations. The Great Game goes on.
6) Wikileaks & mainstream media partners now twaddle their thumbs, seemingly outmaneuvered.
7) Opinion leaders who condemn government & corporate misconduct are silent; Sweden has still not filed charges (Assange is "wanted for questioning"), but the ugly label of rapist sabotages Assange support
8) Bradley Manning rots in the brig.
9) The public fantasizes over Julian instead of rooting out the global crimes and the Eichmann-like bureaucrats who've waged war on the world
10) The USA officially feigns disinterest in the Assange wrangle.

After Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster killed & poisoned thousands (some 4000 dead, 100,000+ permanent injuries), the USA shielded Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson when he jumped bail and fled from India. Thousands of wholly innocent people died, yet for nearly 30 years Anderson has been allowed to evade answering charges in court.
No Justice.