Tuesday, May 09, 2023
Friday, February 24, 2023
Toxic Train Disaster in Ohio
A Norfolk Southern train derailed near East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023. East Palestine is a population 4,700 town near the State line of Pennsylvania; an hour from Pittsburgh and a half hour south of Youngstown.
NTSB and Ohio EPA
On board the trains tanker cars were toxic chemicals including Vinyl Chloride which spilled, ignited and was allowed to "burn off" over the next 36 hours billowing a massive black, noxious cloud over the city which drifted south on air currents
The hazardous stew spilled from 10 cars into a trench where it was burned away. Ohio EPA and Local officials recommended the town evacuate immediately after the accident, but have repeatedly assured the residents that the city water is safe to drink, but are recommending bottled water. Some waterways are contaminated but Ohio EPA reports contamination as “contained“.
Municipalities downstream will close water intakes as the “containment plume“ is tracked and the toxins get near. Ohio EPA surface water chief says “low levels“ of remaining contaminants are not getting to the public.
Local residents are of course, uneasy about the state of their water, air and soil. Some 43,000 fish and marine wildlife in the local waterways have died, while pets, livestock and birds are also dying or exhibiting odd behavior.
Vinyl Chloride is a Disaster for the Environment
Primarily used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Vinyl Chloride is a flammable gas that is carcinogenic. Property owners with private water supplies are being urged to get their water tested. Some scientists worry about other persistent chemicals produced during the burn off.
This is a major Eco-disaster which has upended the lives of all who live nearby and down river.
Second only to the Mississippi, the Ohio river flows through or next to 6 states over 900 miles south till it joins the Mississippi river.
While Joe Biden has seen fit to visit Europe and Ukraine in the last two weeks, he hasn’t gone to visit the residents of East Palestine and his transportation secretary finally made an appearance and press conference on site on February 23. Donald Trump however has visited. The 42nd president flew to Ohio and met with the townspeople, handed out cases of water and capitalized on the political points Biden had left him in a place Trump won in 2016 and hopes to count on for support in 2024.
Government Credibility
The credibility, government-wide, has never been as shaky in our history. In two successive democrat presidencies almost all trust has been removed from the American people in their governments ability to function on a basic level much less tackle disasters. The justice department has never been as politicized and, or Weaponized as Obama and then Biden have made it.
-katykarter
February 24, 2023
Wednesday, February 01, 2023
From American Thinker, food for thought on the Ukraine-Russia War
The following was taken in complete form from American Thinker.com. American Thinker is a quality website sharing news and analysis from the Conservative perspective. The information in this article has all been explained before, none of it is new info for me. However, if the general consensus of the American Public is weighed regarding this conflict, it's clear that this history is an inconvenient one and a real historical accounting of the causes for Russian aggression in Ukraine. American Eagles seemingly, are turned to vultures.
-katykarter
The Real Lessons of the Real History of The United States and post-Glasnost Ukraine
I am responding to "Ukraine and the Unlearned Lesson of History," by Jacob Fraden. published in AT 1/31/23.
I’ll start with the author’s contention that Russia’s war against Napoleonic France was one of its wars “of aggression.” On June 24, 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of 650,000, approximately the 12th European county to receive the French tyrant’s military attention. Who was the aggressor here? Tsar Alexander I was a hero at the Congress of Vienna, for crushing that invasion and breaking the French chronic aggressor’s back once and for all.
And most of Christian Europe had the sense to be grateful to Russia for driving the hated Turkish muslim conqueror and oppressor out of the Balkans and other parts of Europe. As to Russia’s wars with the Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles and Germans (13th through early 17th centuries), for much of that time those four, not Russia, were the aggressors. In fact, the Poles and Lithuanians burned Moscow in the early 17th century. And yes, in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries Russia expanded eastward through Siberia and Asia, absorbing territory thinly populated by backward peoples. Who, of all people, are we Americans to fault Russia for THAT? Go to the blackboard, and write MANIFEST DESTINY 100 times.
It’s not merely this writer’s logic about the present that’s flawed - he’s terminally confused about the past.
More pertinently to the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, after the Soviet collapse in 1991, Russia wanted peaceful integration into the European economic, political and security system. No knowledgeable person at the time doubted the sincerity of this wish; and no one in the 1990’s saw prostrate Russia as a threat to anyone. It was we, rather, the US military industrial complex (“MIC”) and neocon hegemonists, who rejected this desire, fervently and repeatedly expressed by both Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
The promises of no eastward expansion of NATO by Secretary of State James Baker (and no doubt other Western leaders) were promptly ignored by Clinton and his gang. NATO expanded successively in two major tranches -1999 and 2004 - and thereafter the well of the West’s relations with Russia was poisoned. But that poisoning, no doubt, was the neocon object of the NATO expansions.
The eastward expansion of NATO was condemned at the time of its first occurrence by no less an authority, and American patriot, than George Kennan, former ambassador to Russia and arguably the author of America’s Cold War policy of containing Soviet expansion.
In the 90’s Russia could do nothing about this massive breach of faith by the West. But object it did, and repeatedly. By Vladimir Putin’s assumption of power in 2000, no significant Russian leader could have been found who saw the West’s expansion of NATO as anything but threatening, or Gorbachev’s failure to prevent that expansion by formal treaty as anything but naive and incompetent.
Without firing a shot, in the period 1989-1991 the Soviet Union gave up an empire, more accurately, a cordon sanitaire, in Eastern Europe; and by 1994 it had withdrawn all of its troops from the region. At the same time, believing the West’s assurances that there would be no NATO eastward expansion and that Russia would be economically and politically integrated into Europe, Russia disbanded the Warsaw pact.
For all of these historically unique concessions Russia got no thanks, no integration into Europe, and successive gratuitous and - from its standpoint, threatening - eastward expansions of NATO.
By 2004 the US neocons had Ukraine in their sights as the next Western military base to be constructed on Russia’s doorstep - Ukraine, the eastern half of whose population was ethnically Russian, Russian speaking or pro Russian (or all three), and which for about 300 out of the last 350 years had been part of either Russia or the Soviet Union.
In 2007, in Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech, the Russian government made it plain that Ukraine was the reddest of red lines. Russia would never tolerate a Ukraine militarily aligned with NATO, stuffed with sophisticated American weaponry, on its front porch. In fact, that reality had been clear since America’s open and obvious support for the 2004 so-called “color revolution.”
This plainly and repeatedly communicated position was nothing more than Russia’s iteration of the same policy that President Kennedy announced in 1962 - that no great power would be permitted to establish a threatening military presence in America’s part of the world. Does America have a better right to a militarily nonthreatening Cuba than Russia has to a similarly benign Ukraine?
But nothing changed the attitude if the US neocons and MIC. In 2008 that deep thinker, George W. Bush, successfully twisted NATO’s arm (over German and French objections) into promising that Ukraine and Georgia would “eventually” be offered NATO membership. Russia was further enraged. And the clueless President of Georgia took the promise as a signal that he could, with impunity, move militarily against Russian ethnics living in the northern part of Georgia. In the event, Russian protective military action put a quick stop to that.
The final straw was US support for the violent, anti-democratic riots in Ukraine in 2014, which resulted in the the deposing of freely elected, pro-Russian Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovic. The pro-West, democratically illegitimate regime that replaced Yanukovic threatened to ban the use of Russian as an official language, and to take other steps perceived as highly adverse to the overwhelmingly pro-Russian Donbas population; in consequence, demands came from the Donbas for some form of guaranteed autonomy within Ukraine. The new Kiev government’s response was to wage a war against its own Donbas population, which, by 2022, had cost the lives of 15-20,000 Donbas residents.
Also shortly after its installation in 2014, the newly, non-democratically installed Kiev regime hinted that Russia’s long term Sevastopol naval lease would not be renewed. Russia responded by reincorporating Crimea - to the relief of the vast majority of Crimea’s population. With the exception of Nikita Khrushchev’s purely internal administrative change, Crimea had been part of Russia since 1793 when Catherine the Great had defeated the Turks.
When the Biden administration took power in 2021 it immediately began treating Ukraine as a defacto member of NATO. NATO troops paraded with Ukrainian in Kiev, the supply of Western weaponry to Ukraine dramatically increased, and, generally, there was every indication of an impending move by Kiev, assisted by US weaponry, to crush the pro Russian Donbas population once and for all.
Throughout 2021 Russia repeatedly requested talks with the Biden administration the object of which would be to assure Ukrainian neutrality and non-NATO membership and some form of protective guarantees for the the Donbas population. These pleas were ignored.
And the war came.
This is a brief, hurriedly written summary of Russia’s “wholly unprovoked” war in Ukraine.
Much more could be written about every topic touched on.
But that this tragic, needless war was in fact provoked by the West’s low-grade war against Russia over the last 30 years is indisputably clear simply by reciting the pertinent history. This does not excuse or justify the Russian invasion. But it shows that it was the West, led by American neocon hegemonists, that created Russia’s accumulating perception of threat, which in turn made the war all but inevitable.
We, successive governments of the United States of America, bear a large share of the responsibility for creating the conditions in which the Ukraine war occurred. If our self image of America as a uniquely humane and benign force in the world has any merit, it is we who have a moral duty to assist in bringing this ruinous, and highly dangerous, conflict to an end.
The flow of ever more destructive Western weaponry to Ukraine should stop. The mindless, anti-historical demonization of Russia should stop. Negotiations to bring about a conclusion to the war should begin.
Map credit: Basque Mapping CC BY-SA 4.0 license
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
Letter to the President, Constitutional Convention, 1787
This letter, written by Benjamin Franklin while at the Constitutional Convention upon our Nations' birth, was to implore the President to reinstate prayer to the official proceedings:
Mr. President,
The small progress we have made after 4 or 5 weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other---our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances.
In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance.
I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth---that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that " except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move---that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and it's blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
Our Country was formed with Gods grace, and with all thanks voiced in unison to Him for his many blessings bestowed on this Nation.
Let our hearts continue to be open to Him and to trust and follow his guiding hand that he will see us through the darkest of times seemingly at hand.
-Ian Carroll
September 6, 2022
Houston, Texas,
United States of America
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Some Wisdom from Denzel Washington
At a recent event, Denzel Washington paused to answer a few questions and had the following exchange with an entertainment reporter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwnNrr9RO2Y
(transcribed by katykarter)
Reporter: there's been a lot of buzz about fake news lately. You were the subject of some fake news recently
Denzel: Oh, yea. What did they say? I'm running for president or something...what did they say?
(reporter speaks off mic) Oh, yea that I'd switched sides or support...yea yea...
Reporter: What do you make of all this fake news, does it affect you?
Denzel: "If you don't read the news, you are uninformed. If you read the news you are misinformed"
Reporter: Hmm so what do you do?
Denzel: That's a great question. What is the long-term effect of too much information? One of the effects is the need to be first. Not even to be true anymore. So what a responsibility you all have (glancing around at the reporters). To be...to tell the truth. Not just to be first but to tell the truth. We live in a society now of it's just first, who cares just get it out there. We don't care who it hurts, we don't care who we destroy, we don't care if it's true. Just say it, sell it. Anything you practice you'll get good at. Including BS.
In another interview, Denzel cuts right to the heart of the matter in our struggling society.
Reporter: For black people in particular, do you think we can truly make change as things are right now?
Denzel: Well, it starts in the home. You know, if the father is not in the home the boy will find a father in the streets. Yeah. I saw it in my generation and every generation before me and every one since. It starts in the home. You know, if the streets raise you then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.
"My wife has a saying, To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did"
-katykarter
Sunday, August 07, 2022
Mark Levin reminds us of what is actually a good thing and what is utter garbage
A recent Twitter post from Mark R. Levin @marklevinshow
(transcribed as published)
"AND here come the corrupt media, celebrating Biden's "legacy-defining wins"; and the rest of the media sing in chorus. Ignore the horrific state of the southern border; ignore the massive increase in violent crime;
Ignore the unimaginable debt, recession, inflation, and energy prices; ignore the war on the Supreme Court, separation of powers, the electoral college, and the equal application of the law; ignore the destruction of women's sports;
Ignore the sexualizing of kindergartners; etc., etc. As for Biden's "legacy-defining wins," his appalling surrender in Afghanistan has resulted in the empowerment and rise of al-Qaeda; his appeasement of Iran has resulted in that murderous regime developing nuclear technology.
His cowardice in the face of Red China's provocations throughout the world has imperiled our ally Taiwan; and his failure to provide the right arms to Ukraine before it was invaded by Russia has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainians their lives; etc. etc.
Subsidizing big-tech oligarchs with billions in taxpayer dollars, further bankrupting the country, raising taxes in a recession, and hiring 87,000 new IRS auditors, among other things, are NOT "wins" for the country.
AP is a propaganda machine for the Left and the Democrats, like most of the corrupt corporatist media."
Known as "The Great One" by his peers at the highest level of Conservative Talk Radio, Mark has the ear of powerful and patriotic citizens and their best interests at heart. One of my favorites, you can continue to hear his show on nationally syndicated networks and is a constant contributor to Fox News and a frequent guest on other Conservative outlets. He is also the champion of the Hillsdale College and other Conservative institutions.
-katykarter
