Archive for the Featured category
July 12th, 2007
After quite a lot of thought and inner debate, I’ve quietly come to the decision that I need a fresh start somewhere. While I’ve enjoyed writing all of these years here at The Naked Truth, I realize that just like the blog before it, I have grown from my experience here and changed and am ready displace myself.
I still have things to say — hell, I still have quite a few opinions and heck, a whole new election year is coming. 
However, I’m not feeling the anger I’ve felt in the past in regards to
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Tags: My Life
January 1st, 2007
See if you recognize recent events in the U.S. in this passage talking about the history of the Catholic Church…
The Church turned to its own canon law to authenticate an agency which could enforce adherence to Church authority. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition as a separate tribunal, independent of bishops and prelates. Its administrators, the inquisitors, were to be answerable only to the Pope. Its inquisitional law replaced the common law tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”with “guilty until proven innocent.” Despite an ostensible trial, inquisitional procedure left no possibility for the suspected
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Tags: The Dark Side of Christian History, history repeats, George W. Bush, America
December 27th, 2006
When I was a vegetarian in the early to mid-1990’s, it was never about animal rights or some ideal cause. In fact, I had great fun on mailing lists and newsgroups, stirring up the vegan and vegetarians who were all about “not eating anything with a face” or “animals are our friends, we don’t eat our friends!” Basically, I was a vegetarian because I was just plain tired of eating meat — even the smell of it made me feel a bit ill.
This is not to say that I don’t respect people who do actually become vegetarians because
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Tags: vegetarianism, vegetarian, pescetarian, cloned animals, Peter Clement, FDA
December 20th, 2006
- Detained In Iraq by Brendan Skwire @ All Spin Zone; another American abused for doing “the right thing” by a system that has become dangerous for Americans and nonAmericans alike. I bet he thinks twice before he acts so heroically in the future.
Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.
“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”
- Detainee Abuse by Tim F. @ Balloon Juice; more on Donald Vance
American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.
The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.
- Our path to ‘victory’ ends in defeat by Mark Morford @ SFGate.com
It’s not like we were overpowered. We weren’t outmanned or outgunned or outstrategized, hence we weren’t defeated in any “traditional,” kick-ass, take-names, sign-the-peace-accord way.
It wasn’t because our can’t-lose military didn’t have the latest and greatest killing tools of all time, the biggest budget, the most heroic of baffled and misled young soldiers sort of but not really willing to go off and fight and die for a cause no one could adequately explain or justify to them.
We still have the coolest, fastest planes. We still have the meanest billion-dollar technology. We still have the most imposing tanks and the most incredible weaponry and the badass night-vision goggles with the laser sights and the thermal heat-seeking readouts and the ability to track targets from 2 miles away in a dust storm. It doesn’t matter.
What we don’t have is any idea what we’re doing, not anymore, not on the global stage. We lost this “war” and we lost it before we even began because we went in for all the wrong reasons and with all the wrong planning and with all the wrong leadership who had all the wrong motives based on all the wrong greedy self-serving insular faux cowboy BS that your kids and your grandkids will be paying for until about the year 2056.
Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you say, “Wait, wait, wait, it’s not over at all, and we haven’t lost yet. Isn’t the fighting still raging? Can’t we still ‘win’ even though we’re still losing soldiers by the truckload and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being brutally slaughtered every month and isn’t Dubya still standing there, brow scrunched and confounded as a monkey clinging onto a shiny razor blade, refusing to let go and free us from the deadly trap, ignoring the Iraq Study Group and trying to figure out a way to stay the course and never give in and “mission accomplished” even as every single human around him, from the top generals to crusty old James Baker to the new and shockingly honest secretary of defense, says we are royally screwed and Iraq is now a vicious and chaotic civil war and it’s officially one of the worst disasters in American history?” Oh wait, you just answered your own question.
Yes, technically, the war is still on. The fighting is not over. And, yes, you can even say we (brutally, tactlessly) installed ourselves with sufficient ego to give us a modicum of violent, volatile control over the gulf region’s remaining petroleum reserves — which was, of course, much of the point in the first place.
But the nasty us-versus-them, good-versus-evil ideology is over. Ditto the numb sense of Bush’s brutally simpleminded American “justice.” Any lingering hint of anything resembling a truly valid and lucid and deeply patriotic reason for wasting a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and roughly an entire generation’s worth of international respect? Gone.
What’s left is one lingering, looming question: How do we accept defeat? How do we deal with the awkward, identity-mauling, ego-stomping idea that, once again, America didn’t “win” a war it really had no right to launch in the first place? After all, isn’t this the American slogan: “We may not always be right, but we are never wrong”?
It’s still our most favorite idea, the thing our own childlike president loves to talk most about, burned into our national consciousness like a bad tattoo: We always win. We’re the good guys. We’re the chosen ones. We’re the goddamn cavalry, flying the flag of truth, wrapped in strip malls and Ford pickups and McDonald’s franchises. Right?
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Tags: detainees, Donald Vance, Iraq, terrorism, violence, soldiers of fortune, private military, torture
November 17th, 2006
I don’t know why, but I’m always a little shocked at what people will ask for on my Freecycle list. If you don’t know what Freecycle is, it’s an international network of people, “who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people).” Basically there’s mailing lists broken down to regional areas all over the world and
When you want to find a new home for something — whether it’s a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door — you simply send an
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Tags: greed, Freecycle
November 8th, 2006
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n. mallory
Election 2006
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Tags: 2006 election, Republicans, Contract with America, Contress, ethics, scandal, Democrats, negative political ads, election tampering, politics, factcheck.org, DHS, TSA, passports, Hasan Elahi, FBI, mental illness, anxiety, depression
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November 7th, 2006
The Hotline 1-888-DEM-VOTE (1-888-336-8683)
By calling 1-888-DEM-VOTE, voters can learn more about their rights, find their polling location, and report problems and get answers on Election Day.
This is your democracy. Know your rights.
Know Your Voting Rights
- If You have problems, you are still entitled to cast a provisional ballot.
- If you are in line before the poll’s closing time, you are entitled to vote.
- You are entitled to view a sample ballot at the polling place before voting.
Source: The Democratic Party Voting Rights Institute
Update:
Election Protection’s 1-866-OUR-VOTE has live operators who can address some problems over the phone and dispatch lawyers
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Tags: vote, voting irregularities
November 7th, 2006
Back in 2003, USAToday.com had a story about the rising cost of insurance and how this could and would probably lead to employers taking a personal interest in the health and wellness of employees in an effort to find ways to cut costs — not because they genuinely like you, though that might also be the case too. Who knows, right? 
They’re offering wellness assessments that ask about vegetable and alcohol consumption, smoking and exercise. They’re tracking lab tests and prescriptions to predict which workers may fall ill. Some
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Tags: wellness, incentive programs
November 7th, 2006
I exercised my American right to vote. Have you?
If you do nothing else today, make it your priority to stop at your polling place and vote, whether it’s Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green Party. It’s important to voice your opinion by pulling that lever, filling in those dots, checking that box, punching those chads, touching those screens, whatever the voting mechanism…and of course, double checking to make sure that your vote is recorded correctly.
Show off your pride at having shown up and participated in one of the greatest freedoms and powers you’ll ever experience — the right to
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Tags: vote
November 4th, 2006
There are a lot of websites on the web offering all sorts of advice to anyone searching for help and relief with real health concerns from hiccups to cancer. How can you tell which websites are the real deal from the ones that are snake oil salesmen or just random chit-chatters thinking they’re helping by offering their own version of advice?
- Stick with recognized authorities. Sites run by the government, which end in “.gov”, universities, which end in “.edu”, professional medical associations or health insurance companies are good sources.
- Read the “About Us” section. If it says something like
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Tags: Wellness, health websites
October 17th, 2006
- A Proposed Small Step For Womenkind — Buttercup @ Buttercup & Bean writes about the problem of unwanted attention from men and how the real problem is not that women are putting themselves in situations where they could become targets but that men feel that they are entitled to any “piece of female ass that shows up in their vicinity.” Excellent post.
- To iPod or not to iPod (or, See the Person!) — Colleen @ For All the World to See wonders if technology isn’t creating a society of isolation and anti-social individuals.
We pass people in the grocery, on the street, at school, at work, in the car and they’re just people. The plural, the generic, the masses.
But they aren’t. Each person is a person.
And what a difference we would make if we saw each one of those people as a person , not as one of a mass.
As an individual, who maybe had a bad day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, their coffee maker didn’t work this morning, they got in a fight with their kid, they got some unexpected money, they passed a test, they finished a big project, have a headache, found out their mom has cancer, found out their wife was pregnant….
You get the idea.
What if we each did that, maybe not to every person we came in contact with, but made an effort to really see the person we pass on the grocery aisle or who serves us our coffee, or who takes the parking place we had our eye on? What if?
What if we didn’t wear our iPods so as to be lost in our own little world, but instead had the earphones out of our ears, so we heard the little old lady behind us in the grocery ask for help getting something down…or we actually talked to the server who takes our order, instead of talking to them in short, one-word comments while our cell phone is pressed to our face?
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Tags: Women's Rights, iPod, technology, anti-social, outsourcing, India, IT, AIDS, JonBenet Ramsey, Bob Herbert, violence against women
October 16th, 2006
Yesterday morning, I watched Sunday’s Meet the Press with this strange sense of déjà vu. I found myself asking, “Haven’t I seen this already?” Is this a rerun?
It couldn’t be, of course, because the show had started with a discussion about the fact that North Korea had announced it tested a nuclear bomb, which had happened after last week’s show. So they couldn’t be re-airing the previous week’s show.
Still, I felt as if I had heard it all word-for-word before.
Then I realized who it was that Tim Russett was talking to.
Minnesota Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar (D) and Representative Mark
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Tags: Minnesota, politics, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Kennedy, MSNBC, NBC, Meet the Press, Tim Russett
October 6th, 2006
I found the below on demythtifying mental illness at Brony’s blog, Parenting with a Mental Illness . She closed out Mental Health Awareness Week by posting her 100th post on a blog she started “in part to create awareness of what it is like to have a mental illness.” With this 100th post, she wants to meet 100 new people and generate 100 comments. So please head over and comment on her 100th post and add your name to the 100 new people. While you’re there, you might check out her other 99 posts too and
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Tags: mental illness, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Mental Health Awareness Week
September 13th, 2006
- The 9/11 Timeline — To mark the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ThinkProgress has created a comprehensive timeline documenting the key events since September 11, 2001. Their timeline charts five threads:
- The steady increase in international terrorism and the growth of al Qaeda
- The campaign to block and obstruct the work of the 9/11 Commission, and the failure to carry out the commission’s recommendations
- The failure to stablize and rebuild Afghanistan
- The downgrading of the hunt for Osama bin Laden
- The steady decline of America’s image abroad
- ABC’s ‘Path’ Not Taken — Ruth Marcus @ TheWashingtonPost.com writes a scathing review of ABC’s “Path to 9/11″ mini-series that was fraught with inaccuracies and blantant flaws.
The docudrama is an inherently flawed form, one that invites embroidery. The irony of “The Path to 9/11″ is that this dramatic license was so unnecessary, given the richly detailed narrative in a document available to the docudrama’screators. It was called “The 9/11 Commission Report.”
Hat tip: John in DC @ AmericaBlog
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Tags: terrorism, ABC, Keith Olbermann, George W. Bush, 9/11, Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Memorial, World Trade Center, Mark Juergensmeyer, al-Qaeda, 9/11 Commission, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Condi Rice, George Tenet, Saddam Hussein, al-Zarqawi
September 11th, 2006
Remembering the Day
- For Thou Art With Us — Sarah Bunting @ TomatoNation.com was there.
We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. “Ohhh, man,” we both say, and “Jeeeesus Christ,” and “This is not good. This is not good at all. This is fuckin’ bad.” So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there’s nothing else we can say about what we’ve got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. “This isn’t the kind of history I want to be present at,” I say, lamely, to Bob. “Me neither,” he says.
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Tags: 9/11, World Trade Center, terrorism, New York, American flag, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Matt Lauer, Rudy Giuliani, ABC, tragedy, patriotism, Ground Zero, We Will Never Forget, al-Qaeda, CIA, Pakistan, Taliban, Joint Special Operations Command, NSA, National Counterterrorism Center, Tora Bora, al-Zawahiri, Paul Krugman, NATO, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Pentagon, healthcare, Iraq
September 8th, 2006
I haven’t seen it. I can only comment on what I’ve read. There seems to be a lot of posting flurry going on. Plus, it’s been covered by the MSM.
So, I can’t really comment on the actual movie because as I said I haven’t seen it. I wasn’t one of the ones chosen to preview it. I’m apparently not right-leaning enough if what the rumors say is true. I do find it odd that ABC didn’t honor President Clinton’s office’s request for an advanced copy but handed it out to all of those right-wing bloggers. That just smacks of
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Tags: ABC 9/11 Docu-Drama, lie, truth, Bill Clinton, rightwinger
September 4th, 2006
Women’s Rights
- Class warfare at Starbucks — lambert @ CorrenteWire writes about how class warfare starts over breast milk. Companies are far more likely to be accomodating to executive mothers who need breaks during the day to pump breast milk, but the women who work in the stores and “on the line” have to “barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks.” There’s a lot of pressure to breast-feed in this day and age, but it’s easy to get discouraged and give up under less than ideal conditions.
- A Mystery From the Time When Abortion Was Illegal and Dangerous — olvlzl @ ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES remembers a horrible, deadly practice from the pre-Roe era — infanticide.
The woman who owned the trunk was in her 60s in 1983. The papers say she was called a “pillar of the community” when she lived in the area. People who remembered her said that at the time the babies had been killed she often appeared to be pregnant but she never had children. The authorities found her but she wouldn’t say anything about the trunk. I don’ t know of any legal pressure put on her to talk. The fact that there were five corpses of infants wrapped in newspapers from different years certainly suggests serial infanticide, not a misdemeanor in anyone’s book.
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Tags: Starbucks, Women's Rights, breastfeeding, class warfare, abortion, baby snuffer, infancticide, Islamofascism, propaganda, War on Terror, WWII, Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Domino Theory, Hitler, whistleblowers, Russell Tice, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Fox News, David Warren, Debbie Schussel, Kathleen Parker, Mark Steyn, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy
September 3rd, 2006
Last month, while Israel was making war against Hezbollah, I kept wondering whether the death toll of Israelis and Lebonese was worth the lives of the two Israelis who were kidnapped at the beginning of the war. After all, it was their lives that started it all.
Is there a point where the cost of innocent civilians and the lives of patriotic soldiers outweighs the original loss? What I mean is, do the lives of the few outweigh the lives of many? What makes the lives of those two soldiers worth more than those Israel was willing to
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Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iraq, American soldiers, War on Terror, 9/11, George W. Bush
September 2nd, 2006
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The Middle East by
n. mallory
First Some Fun
- Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.
In Memory Of Katrina
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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld
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August 25th, 2006
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n. mallory
- ‘Liquid Bombers’ - The Impossible Bomb — A lot of websites have been linking to this explanation as to why the most recent terror plot from the UK could not have worked and why all of the fearmongering and passenger harrassment by the UK and American governments in the airports is unnecessary. I say, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.
- Homeland insecurity 2.0 — Pam @ Pam’s House Blend wrote one of the best reports of what travelling immediately after the latest terrorist plot scare was like that I’ve read.
Again, the PA came on, this time it was for another flight — on Continental — that was boarding. This announcer, I’m not kidding you, went on for about 2-3 minutes warning people about taking on liquids and gels (”liquid” chapstick is a no-no, solid is OK), no coffee or soda will make it on board. Random checks at the gate would be performed. If they find contraband on you, you will be asked to give it up. If you don’t give it up, you’ll not be able to board, he boomed, and you would have to go on a later flight. “Not later today,” he warned, “maybe not even this week…maybe not for a couple of weeks.” OK, at this point, people are laughing, including the two of us. This is ludicrous.
Our flight is finally called and we board. The plane is about to close up and a couple of late arrivals get on. This time we have a woman taking her sweet time, coming down the aisle with a steaming hot cup of Cinnabon coffee, which she proceeds to balance on an armrest as she casually loads her bag in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle as a couple of people wait behind her.
Clearly, my friends, US Airways has let on the Cinnabomber.
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Tags: liquid bombers, airport security, Continental, U.S. Airways, crime rate, terrorism, morning-after pill, women soldiers, American soldiers, pharmacists, JonBenet Ramsey, Abeer al-Janabi, Jessica Lynch, Jim Bensman, Army Corps of Engineers, FBI, Duarris Perez, Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, Cuba, Homeland Security, Bosnia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hurricane Katrina, pink food coloring, food industry
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