ALERTS AND RECALLS

Got a little start on Twilight of Empire. Got through the intro and the first chapter anyway. Fairly dense prose and a lot of things to chew on. Remember all those color coded security warnings that kept popping up before the 2004 election? Funny how every time Bush was down in the polls Homeland Security upped the security warnings. Anyway, there’s a peace movement named  Code Pink. http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=3As a play on words it’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer. Effective, but so not subtle. But, subtle doesn't get you noticed, so hey go with what works.

 

Has anyone else heard of this group? If you haven’t, it doesn’t surprise me. The elected hired help and their corporate masters have learned a valuable lesson. You don’t have to go out of your way to censor speech on the local level. All you have to do is make sure it doesn’t make the evening news or the front page of the paper.

 

While the current head of Homeland Security keeps surfacing periodically with vague warnings of threats from overseas terrorists think about the actual threats we’ve faced the past year or so.

 

The people who used to live in New Orleans are still waiting for promised help to rebuild their city. Good thing the Caribbean Islands aren't part of the US. They get hit with severe storms far more often than the continental US does. They'd never get rebuilt. Granted they don't have as much to rebuild. But still, after two years.

 

Recalls of contaminated meat products don’t even make the headlines anymore. And e coli is so common in the beef supply that you’re safer treating any and all vegetables as if you were in a third world country. When in doubt wash it. If not in doubt, wash it anyway.

 

The FDA has announced that it’s scrapping the closure of several of its labs because of fears over imported food products, wheat gluten with melamine in it for example.

 

There’s just been a huge recall of commercially canned products processed in the US because of fears of botulism. I’ve never heard of botulism in commercial products (doesn’t mean it never happened, I just never ran across it). Botulism was something that happened with badly processed home canned products.

 

The latest recalls have parents digging through their kids toy boxes looking for long list of Chinese made toys with lead paint and little tiny easy to remove magnets. Among other problems.

 

I don’t dismiss the possibility of another attack in the US by overseas terrorists. But, those airplane hijacking psychos weren’t attacking people, they were attacking symbols. I don’t think they even gave the people on the planes or in the twin towers a second thought. The human casualties were a useful bonus. It upped the terror value of the exercise.

 

 I’m not going to call the people running the businesses responsible for all these recalls psychos, but I don’t think they’re giving the people affected by these problems a second thought either.