Amnesty International helps you tell the Obama Administration to end its death-by-drones program. Drones have a reputation as "precise" and "advanced" killing machines that save American blood and treasure, but that can't possibly be true, or they wouldn't kill so many civilians, and our government wouldn't have such a fluid definition of "enemy," and our President wouldn't demand (and get) so much power to kill folks whenever he likes, and the CIA wouldn't demand authority to carry out "signature" strikes in which they can kill people without knowing for sure who they are. If drones were so great, in short, our government would be following our laws and international laws, like the rest of us are all expected to do. Did I mention we're using drones in nations with whom we're not even officially at war, like Pakistan and Yemen? And some American cities use drones as routine surveillance devices?
Meanwhile, I hear the New York Times has advocated for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Well, that only took eleven years. I suppose I shouldn't expect so much from the beacon of the Establishment, and I suppose I should also be pleased that the Times has long stopped calling anyone who advocates withdrawal "far-left," which would have meant almost two-thirds of Americans were "far-left." (Bill O'Reilly must be jumping for joy, though: at last, I can imagine him saying, I have proof the Times is "far-left"!) Anyway, Roots Action helps you tell the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates to stop with the endless war in Afghanistan already. You may have noticed that they seem to be the only four Americans who still favor of the Afghanistan war -- Messrs. Obama and Biden because they're "reasonable," Messrs. Romney and Ryan because they're red-meat throwers. But what's the difference if the result's the same?
Finally, the USDA still proposes to speed up chicken inspections and cut back on federal chicken inspectors, such that poultry plant owners, and not federal inspectors, do most of the quality control on their chickens, and all inspectors would have a mere one-third of a second to find all the tumors, pus, poop, and sores on chicken carcasses. They wouldn't even get to look at the front of the chicken, where the chicken breasts are. Why would the USDA do this? Because Mr. Obama's USDA, easily the worst of his alphabet agencies, cares only about corporations, not people. Incredibly, the Clinton USDA tried this already, and it worked so badly that not even the Bush USDA could justify continuing it. So retired poultry inspector Phyllis McKelvey (via change.org) helps you tell the USDA to abandon its plan to make corporations richer and the rest of us sicker from improperly-inspected chicken. Look, we might as well call it what it is.
Comments