Traversing the Universe

You are invited to walk with me as I journey around the globe by in thought, word and deed, as well as reflecting on the human manifestations of what is happening in the skies above. The people, places and subjects will vary. ...

Thursday, January 27

Gitmo Soldier Details Sexual Tactics

The torture saga continues:
Gitmo Soldier Details Sexual Tactics

Tuesday, January 25

Male Breasts, Legal Display; Female Breasts, Sex Offender

Yes, it is in California: The Right to Go Topless

Sunday, January 23

Uncovering More of Bush's Covert Operations

From the Republican administration that brought you incredible future deficits and present-time daily war comes new information about taxpayer funds secretly being spent to give Rumsfeld sole control of covert US operations called the Strategic Support Branch. It includes the recruitment of secret agents that are, according to a Pentagon memo, "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed. Some Pentagon officials refer to it as the "secret army of Northern Virginia."

Saturday, January 22

Saturn in Cancer : The Rape and Torture of Iraqi Civilian Women

Saturn in Cancer continues to transit, and the stories of abuse against, limitations on freedoms of, and male legislation of the control of the bodies of women continue to grow.

Selwa is a young Iraqi woman whose parents were arrested by US soliders in Iraq. First she watched them be taken away, then they came and took her......

Several days later, she was taken in “flexicuffs,” or plastic handcuffs, to a detention facility in Tikrit, 100 miles northwest of Baghdad, where approximately 700 male Iraqi prisoners were living in desert tents. After she arrived, she says, soldiers and guards forced her and other prisoners to crouch on the ground with their arms above their heads in 100-degree weather: “They told us, ‘You are cowards. You are Saddam’s children. You are fighting against the Americans.’ If we complained, they said, ‘Shut up. Put your face against the wall.’”

The next day, a stocky American officer in boots and a T-shirt told Selwa she was responsible for the disposal of waste. As a former detainee told Human Rights First senior associate Ken Hurwitz during an interview last August, this is a ritual that serves purposes both utilitarian and penal: Human waste is dumped in metal containers, mixed with lighter fluid, and set on fire. Detainees are forced to stir the mixture to speed its dissipation. It’s a wretched job, done in shifts by young men and boys, and the stench is overwhelming.

That afternoon, the American officer lit a mixture of human feces and urine in a metal container and gave Selwa a heavy club to stir it. She recalls, “The fire from the pot felt very strong on my face.” She leans forward and sweeps her hands through the air to show how she stirred the excrement. “I became very tired,” she says. “I told the sergeant I couldn’t do it.”

“There was another man close to us. The sergeant came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘If you don’t, I will tell one of the soldiers to fuck you.’”


She stirred until she fainted, then she was handcuffed and taken from Tikrit to Abu Ghraib. Yes, you heard it Abu Ghraib

Tuesday, January 18

This Is How We Do It: Bush Opts For Costly Bash In Wartime

The roof, the roof, the roof is on FIRE!!!!........

While thousands of USA troops are fighting, getting wounded and dying, George W. Bush and his jubilant Republican Party are getting decked out in their finest for three days of costly, partially-tax-payer funded lavish champagne dirnking caviar-eating, booty-shaking partying.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, right?

For the first time in history the Washington DC streets en route to the inauguration have been made off-limits to people who protest his presidency and his policies, so as to give the TV facade of a massive round of support for him by the public.

It is not hard to imagine that many think he should have scaled back the event as did wartime president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. How appropriate is it for the president of the USA to party down while the American people die overseas in a war started by the president; while Americans are unemployed in greater number every year (even if they can't file for unemployment any longer because their benefits ran out, they still exist); while millions of children in the USA are malnourished, undereducated in the public schools he wants neglected and abandoned rather than strengthened and left public (No Child Left Behind); while women and their bodies are being battered everyday by his attempts to control their destinies; while the poor have increase in number and gotten poorer et cetera.......


Multimillionaire Bush could only give $10,000 to the tsunami victims while the Hollywood celebrities he and his supporters 1) deeply disdain 2)claim are unpatriotic and un-American and 3) claim are not representative of the USA.....gave millions of dollars apiece of their personal money without hesitation.

Sunday, January 16

Pentagon Spurned Plan to Initiate Enemy Homosexuality

It is a sign of a depraved society when the government even THINKS about spending taxpayer money on massive homophobia plans: such as this one to, in effect "create homosexuals".

Sunday, January 9

Saturn in Cancer - Media Acknowledge Women Under Fire

Okay, now does this Yahoo news story REALLY surprise anyone?

Feminists Face Tough Times After Election

Friday, January 7

Bush Administration Propaganda - Take 2

Dissemination of misinformation and control of the media by the Bush Administration is again in this story from the UPI:

The top congressional watchdog group has ruled prepackaged news stories by the U.S. drug control agency are propaganda because they are not identified.

GAO: Drug ads amount to propaganda: "

Bush Administration Propaganda, Take 1

Rising to the surface are the secretive tactics the Bush Administration uses to manipulate the public. Misusing the media seems to be the primary way: White House Paid Commentator to Promote Law.

How can it be that there is a "liberal force" controlling the media when this is occurring?

Wednesday, January 5

O' Sanity

Well once again more scandal surrounding the election of George Bush.questionable election of George Bush. The Ohio vote was not a solid one and the need to have clear elections is something that is getting shoved aside in the uSA at the national level.

Over in San Diego, California things are heating up as people are demanding that Donna Frye, the independent candiate who received the most votes, be put into the position of mayor. But the City Council may ignore the demands. Two lawsuits have been filed and Dick Murphy is still saying that voters who vote for Frye made "illegal votes".

...I don't know what to do with my sanity
When the world's at the verge of calamity...
O' sanity, o' sanity
Why don't you let me go
Let go, let go, cut it out!

Yoko Ono

Sunday, January 2

Native American Tribal Leaders: "Morons," "Troglodytes" and "Monkeys." ??!!

I always find it intriguing and disgusting that those who do filthy corrupt things such as genocide, theft and corrupt corporate excess seem to like to audiotape and videotape their deeds. Now, once again, the USA government also includes itself in that bunch, as this article on Sleaze in the Capitol demonstrates.

So how long will Republican De Lay be allowed to sit as House Majority Leader? How many Republicans will defend DeLay, Scanlon et al?



Saturday, January 1

The Tsunami: In death, imperialism lives on

This paragraph speaks volumes. I have chatted with some about the apparent value place on lives there. The Caucasian bodies are being saved to be frozen, shipped to the Nordic Region of Europe and identified so people can have funerals, say goodbye and bury the dead. The brown bodies, the dark-skinned Asians, are being buried in mass graves so they do not pollute the water and cause disease.

"One of the most poignant sights of the past few days was that of westerners overcome with gratitude that they had been helped by the grace and mercy of those who had lost everything, but still regarded them as guests. When these same people appear in the west, they become the interloper, the unwanted migrant, the asylum seeker, who should go back to where they belong. A globalisation that permits the wealthy to pass effortlessly through borders confines the poor to eroded subsistence, overfished waters and an impoverishment that seems to have no end. People rarely say that poor countries are swamped by visitors, even though their money power pre-empts the best produce, the clean water and amenities unknown to the indigenous population."

The rest of the article is here:

And yet this time next year there will be wealthy Scandinavian/Nordic vacationers from the same Northern European countries lounging on the beach again, pay $.10 for what they know is worth $1.00.

Some justify the imperialism/racism, as someone told me, by saying that if the native of these underdeveloped nations were paid decent prices by wealthy vacationers for their services (the prices they would have to pay in any developed nation) the natives wouldn't know how to handle having money.