Happy 70th Birthday to Ringo Starr, and thanks for not giving a sh*t about the P.O.P.E.'s message

[photograph of Ringo Starr is from here]

Seventy years ago Richard Starkey was born, had a childhood plagued with illness, and found his way to a drum set. Almost fifty years ago Ringo Starr became a Beatle, replacing Pete Best. (Well, officially in the summer of 1962, although he'd filled in a bit here and there prior to that, and he knew the other lads as they were all in bands prior to being the final line-up of the best pop-rock band ever.)

Not being the generation who watched Beatlemania spread across the Atlantic, I got into their music as a teenager approximately thirty years ago. I fell in love with the Fab Four as soon as I'd heard a few albums and the honeymoon isn't over yet.

For all you have given and continue to give of yourself, I love you, Ringo! Rock on.

What follows is from *here*.

Ringo Starr to celebrate 70th birthday, isn't moved by Vatican praise

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Posted by Corinne Heller at 12:17:59 PM PDT

Ringo Starr to celebrate 70th birthday, isn't moved by Vatican praise Ringo Starr turns 70 on Wednesday but says that he feels like a 24-year-old and that he doesn't care about the Catholic Church's praise of the Beatles' music, an apparent "peace offering" following John Lennon's controversial 1966 remark, in which he said the group was more popular than Jesus.

"It didn’t affect me in any way, but I do believe that the Vatican have better things to deal with than forgiving the Beatles," Starr told The New York Times. "I don’t remember what it actually said — it had some weird piece in it, too," he said. "That they’ve forgiven us for being, what, satanic? Whoever wrote it was thinking about the Stones."

Speaking of the Beatles, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said earlier this year. "It’s true, they took drugs; swept up by their success, they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives. Listening to their songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless. Their beautiful melodies, which changed forever pop music and still give us emotions, live on like precious jewels."

The newspaper had praised the British rock group in 2008 as well and had said then that Lennon had been showing off by making his remarks.

Starr, who is on his 11th All Starr Band tour of the United States, echoed a previous request for fans to put their fingers up and say "peace and love" on his birthday.

If you're on a bus, if you're on a boat, at noon, where ever you are, just go, 'Peace and love, peace and love.' That's your birthday gift to me. How great is that?" Starr said in a video message on his website.

He told The New York Times that "as far as I’m concerned, in my head, I’m 24. That’s just how it is. The number, yeah, it’s high. But I just felt I’ve got to celebrate it. I’m on my feet and I’m doing what I love to do, and I’m in a profession, as a musician, where we can go on for as long as we can go on."

Starr received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in February. He was also recently honored by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is displaying his gold-plated snare drum that he used while still performing with the Beatles until the end of 2010.

After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Starr launched several music and television projects of his own, as did his former band-mates.

In the 1980s, Starr voiced the role of beloved British children's television character "Thomas the Tank Engine". He released his 16th solo album, Y NOT, which features guest vocals from McCartney, 68, and other famous musicians earlier this year.

Former Beatle George Harrison died from cancer at age 58 in 2001. Lennon was shot dead outside his New York home in 1980.

The Dalai Lama (who turned 75 yesterday) on U.S. Wars and Tibet

All that follows is from Democracy Now, *here*.

As Dalai Lama Marks 75th Birthday, A Look at His Views on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Tibet

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama turned 75 years old yesterday. The Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed a crowd of thousands gathered to celebrate the occasion at a temple in the Indian Himalayas where he as lived since fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959. At a recent event in New York, Amy Goodman asked him his thoughts on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the status of Tibet. We also speak with Dr. Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University and president of Tibet House US.

Guess Who's Making Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, a Much Wealthier Man? Yup, the U.S. Government's Defence Department

 All that follows if from The Washington Post *here*.

BP has steady sales at Defense Department despite U.S. scrutiny

Gallery

BP oil spill cleanup and containment

BP, the government and an army of volunteers are fighting to contain and clean the millions of gallons of oil spewing from the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2010 

 

The Defense Department has kept up its immense purchases of aviation fuel and other petroleum products from BP even as the oil company comes under scrutiny for potential violations of federal and state laws related to Gulf of Mexico well explosion, according to U.S. and company officials.

President Obama said last month that the company's "recklessness" in the gulf contributed to the disaster, and he promised that BP will "pay for the damage." Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on June 2 that Justice Department lawyers were looking into possible violations of civil and criminal statutes. "If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," he said.

BP, meanwhile, remains a heavy supplier of military fuel under contracts worth at least $980 million in the current fiscal year, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. In fiscal 2009, BP was the Pentagon's largest single supplier of fuel, providing 11.7 percent of the total purchased, and in 2010, its contracts amount to roughly the same percentage, according to DLA spokeswoman Mimi Schirmacher.

"BP is an active participant in multiple ongoing Defense Logistics Agency acquisition programs," Schirmacher said, without providing details. BP spokesman Robert Wine said he was aware of at least one "big contract" signed by the U.S. military after the oil rig explosion on April 20, involving the supply of multiple fuels for its operations in Europe.

So far, members of Congress have discussed barring BP from any new oil and gas drilling leases, not from fuel sales to the government. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, said last week that he would introduce legislation to shut BP out of such leases for the next seven years, as punishment for what he described as "serial" legal violations. But Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a statement that "the U.S. government needs to look at all possible options when it comes to showing BP, or any corporate bad actor, that a continued culture of cost cutting and increased risk taking will absolutely not be tolerated."

Even before the gulf debacle, the Environmental Protection Agency had begun to explore cutting off BP from all federal contracts -- including those with the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), which buys all fuel for the military services. The EPA plays the lead role in debarment proceedings related to the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, and its probe was sparked by BP's 2006 oil spill in Alaska and a 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas.

The EPA's deliberations, however, are suspended until the gulf spill investigations conclude, according to an EPA spokeswoman. The agency may decide to shut off federal contracts with specific divisions within BP, or with the whole company "if it is in the public interest to do so," it said in May. Any such action would be meant to punish "environmental noncompliance or other misconduct," it said.

Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer who until recently oversaw the review of BP's possible debarment, has said she initially supported taking such action but held off after an official at the Defense Department warned her that the Pentagon depended heavily on BP fuel for its operations in the Middle East. "My contact at DESC, another attorney, told me that BP was supplying approximately 80 percent of the fuel being used to move U.S. forces" in the region, Pascal said. She added that "BP was very fortunate in that there is an exception when the U.S. is involved in a military action or a war."

Pascal then sought a settlement to allow contracting with BP while forcing the company to elevate an internal office dealing with health, safety and environmental issues within its corporate structure. She also demanded that the company keep an ombudsman, retired federal judge Stanley Sporkin, whom BP first hired after the Alaska spill but had sought to let go. BP resisted both demands, and the talks were stalemated when the Deepwater Horizon rig sank, Pascal said.

"At some point, debarment attorneys throughout the government need to look at BP's record," she said. "This is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. . . . Do we want to do business with this foreign corporation, which has a horrendous record of chronically violating U.S. law? You have to look at the overall behavior pattern."

A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Wendy L. Snyder, gave a different account of the internal debarment discussions. She said the Defense Logistics Agency "informed the EPA that there are adequate procedures and processes to protect the U.S. military missions should EPA determine that BP should be debarred." That claim was reinforced by Schirmacher, who said that "none of BP's current energy contracts are in direct support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" and that the department could meet its requirements without BP fuel. But she indicated that the Pentagon had no intention of taking such action in the absence of an EPA decision.

Wine, the BP spokesman, said that although he is not familiar with details of the company's negotiations with EPA, Sporkin's tenure was extended earlier this year until the middle of 2011. He did not challenge Pascal's claim that BP's health, safety and environmental unit had been moved lower on the corporate structure before the gulf spill, reporting to the head of a business unit instead of directly to the top executive. But, Wine said, "what difference does that make?"

"Safety comes through the organization through every root," he said, and remains "paramount in every part of the business."

Several federal agencies have continuing contracts with BP, although none worth as much as the Pentagon's. Since 2008, the Federal Aviation Administration has contracted to spend at least $2.26 million to station weather, communications and aerial surveillance devices on several BP platforms in the gulf, including the Atlantis oil production platform roughly 100 miles from Deepwater Horizon's former location. Critics, including a former BP contractor, have alleged that the Atlantis was built without proper safety controls, which BP denies.

FAA spokeswoman Laura J. Brown said that BP's environmental and legal record was not a consideration in her agency's contracts. The Atlantis platform was selected "based purely on how it would support air traffic," she said.

Who Will STOP the Homo Paliens?

[image above is from here]

[image below, from my dreams, is from here]

While one branch of the U.S. government has sued the state of Arizona for its illegal law against Mexican citizens and Chican@s, another branch continues to lash out genocidally against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, keeping pace with the U.S. project of controlling, exploiting, poisoning, or destroying all people of color. And if you think for one second that is not one of the main functions and promises of the U.R.A., then get your head out of the increasingly oily sand.

The Homo Paliens (aka WHM) are in charge and several groups of people who aren't THEM are going to have to oppose them, their values, their policies, their practices, their ideologies, their institutions, their customs, and their ways of being human. For they are mass murderers and serial rapists first, and whatever else they are is built on and depends on that horror show.

As noted in the A.R.P. Glossary, Homo Paliens, aka Rapus Palien Erectus, is in charge while they bemoan the fact that "everyone is out to get them". I wish that were true. I wish their simultaneous delusions of grandeur and persecution were shattered by a reality that he needs to go. Now, if they have any humanity, they'll take themselves out of commission. They'll go away; they'll go back home to whitelands from whence they came. They'll get off lands they stole. They'll get off of women, rather than getting off in and on women. They'll stop bashing trangender people, lesbians, and gay men. They'll stop destroying the Earth and making millions of non-human species extinct. They'll do this if they've got any humanity left. And if they don't do all of this unilaterally, without being asked politely, we must organise to take them down and chain them together. It's that simple.

We can't sit back and watch the planet and all its life be destroyed by Homo Paliens just because we were taught they were the ones who are most fit to lead. They'll lead us to a mass grave, and while the palest Chisto-fascists among them proclaim their immanent deliverance to Heaven, there's a special place in Hell with a table reserved for several hundred million of 'em. May they feel the pain of every flame, for eternity, or until they understand how perverted and predatory they've been, and give up all rights and rituals supporting their rule of any and all other Life.

Another Independence Day is Needed: July 6, 2010 ECD, for people resisting colonisation and genocide in South America by Homo Paliens

The Adolph Award for July goes to the Brazilian firm Yaguarete Pora S.A. Read on for details. (This isn't the only award they've gotten.)

To be seen or not to be seen. That is the question. If you are seen, you are exploited and probably killed. If you are not seen, vicious companies will deny your existence and try and commit genocide without anyone else knowing. And, to be clear, removing a people's homeland is an unambiguously genocidal practice.

Some of the context for what follows:

DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL: 60-70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon results from cattle ranches while the rest mostly results from small-scale subsistence agriculture. Despite the widespread press attention, large-scale farming (i.e. soybeans) currently contributes relatively little to total deforestation in the Amazon. Most soybean cultivation takes place outside the rainforest in the neighboring cerrado grassland ecosystem and in areas that have already been cleared. Logging results in forest degradation but rarely direct deforestation. However, studies have showed a close correlation between logging and future clearing for settlement and farming. [Português | Español | Français]

Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?

In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. Historically a large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil. 

Some of what follows is from *here* @ survivalinternational.org. I offer some critique and analysis, and protest, in bold and in brackets interspersed in the report.

Spotted: the tribe that hides from man 6 July

[No. They weren't "spotted". The White Man was. Anyone who knows better would destroy him at once, if possible. And, no, he isn't hiding. He's avoiding genocide. BIG difference. Anne Frank, her family, and some neighbors, weren't just "hiding" from anyone they didn't know in an attic, were they? They weren't, as it were, shy people. They were trying to keep out of view of their people's sadistic murderers. Yes, they were. And the member of Ayoreo-Totobiegosobe society was doing that too.]

A man belonging to the only uncontacted tribe in South America [and how would The White Het Man know if there are other societies that have eluded confrontation with The White Het Man, if he hasn't "spotted" them?] outside the Amazon basin has been sighted near a region targeted for deforestation by Brazilian cattle-ranchers. ["Sighted": again like a rarely photographed bird. Nothing against rare birds, of course. The issue is who possesses a kind of subjectivity, a humanity, that is understood as "universal" or just like anyone ol' white man's, and who is identified as "other" and "marginal"? The White Het Man only identify as "marginal" when being racist and antifeminist, believing themselves to be "an endangered species" [while he is also perpetually normalised, centralised, dignified, undegraded, unraped; while he is not exploited by another group of people; while he is not enslaved or destroyed by another group of people; while he is statused in every conceivable way, not stigmatised socially in any way, relatively wealthy in ways defined as such by The White Man. As if. And: If only.]

When spotted, the man hid behind a tree [as opposed to what? An SUV? A Starbucks?], and later fled. [Given what The White Het Man wants to do, "fled' is the politically appropriate term to use. He was saving his people from genocidal murder.] The next day an abandoned camp, a clay dish, and game ready for cooking were found nearby. [And who says that white het men are the smartest men on Earth"? Not me.]

The man is one of an unknown number of uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians living in the dry forests of northern Paraguay. [Not unknown. They know each other. They know how many people they are. They aren't uncontacted. They resist contact with The White Het Man. Big difference.] The Totobiegosode have lost huge swathes of their land in recent years to cattle-ranchers, such as the Brazilian firm Yaguarete Pora S.A.

The man was seen just to the south of the area [ILLEGALLY, CRIMINALLY] owned by Yaguarete. In a letter to the Paraguayan government about the sighting, already-contacted Totobiegosode leaders said, ‘We are very concerned about [our relatives still in the forest]. They’re threatened by the deforestation in that region.’

Yaguarete was recently fined $16,000/£10,500 by the Paraguayan authorities for concealing the existence of the Totobiegosode in the area where it was given a licence to work. [BULLSHIT. THEY WERE CONCEALING THEIR GENOCIDE OF THE TOTOBIEGOSODE PEOPLE; if they had enough time, they'd have succeeded and no one from the dominant culture would have found out, if that savage company had its way.] Earlier this year, the company won Survival’s ‘Greenwashing Award’ 2010 for ‘dressing up the wholesale destruction of a huge area of the Indians’ forest as a noble gesture for conservation.’ [Just to be clear, it's not "a good thing" to get an award like that. One ought not give an acceptance speech thanking all the little people who helped make it happen.]

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This is further proof the Indians exist. It’s going to make things even more difficult for cattle-ranchers like Yaguarete in the future.’ [Let's hope that any Indigenous peoples' existence makes it IMPOSSIBLE for The White Het Man to commit more genocidal mass murder, and ecocidal destruction of the Earth's otherwise sustainable ecosystems.]