Found this cartoon on Facebook, but cannot determine how to link directly to it, even at the site mentioned in the cartoon. I'm reprinting it because it is one of the best statements I've seen regarding of America's massive denial regarding the significance of the actions of Bradley Manning:
Glenn Greenwald , Greg Mitchell, Truthdig.com and Amy Goodman have been among the relatively few media sources giving serious coverage to Bradley Manning (and to Wikileaks).
What kinds of scandals has Bradley Manning revealed? Here are more than a few.
I know many thinking Catholics, and 98% of these people what I would term "conflicted Catholics." When I'm together with more than one of them, they often spontaneously express their frustration, embarrassment and even rage regarding the Church. What drives this frustration? Many things, including more than a few of these questions raises by Adam Lee at Alternet in "50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church."
Despite these immense intractable problems with the Roman Catholic Church, most Catholics I know continue to associate themselves with the church. They are not willing to give up their religious community, in spite of these hurdles. This willingness to stick with the church is hard to understand for an outsider like me. I would think that 1/10 of this misconduct would have me running from any organization.
Here is a stunning graphic from a television show called "Viewpoint," featuring Eliot Spitzer:
So if you want to avoid abortions, make birth control freely available. That's one of the message of this short Guttmacher video:
Here is another Guttmacher video on the occurrence rates of abortion--it occurs more often in countries where it is illegal (which is often where contraception is not widely available).
The rational way to cut abortion rates is to make birth control freely available; the irrational way to cut abortion is to outlaw abortion. For those who adamantly oppose abortion, Adam Lee asks some pointed questions, including the following:
Biological evidence suggests that a large number, if not a majority, of fertilized eggs are spontaneously aborted at a very early stage of pregnancy (by some estimates, as many as 50%). Do you consider this an ongoing humanitarian crisis that urgently needs medical research?
If you could write the law however you saw fit, how would you enforce a ban on abortion? For example, in El Salvador, when women come to hospitals seeking treatment for a miscarriage, they can be detained until a forensic vagina investigator can arrive and perform an exam to see if they had an illegal abortion. Would you have something like this? If not, what enforcement mechanism would you have?
Why do you think it is that so many proposed abortion bans have no exception for the woman's life or health? (For example, anti-abortion laws with no health exceptions exist in Chile, Honduras, Suriname and El Salvador. Even in the U.S., similar bans have been passed by Republican legislatures in Indiana and South Dakota.) Do you think there should be such an exception?
Would you permit exceptions to an abortion ban in the case of rape? If so, how would this work? For a pregnant woman to get an abortion, would she have to accuse a specific person of the crime, and would he have to be tracked down, arrested, charged, put on trial and convicted, all before the point of fetal viability?
What do you think the penalty should be for doctors who perform abortion?
What do you think the penalty should be for women who seek out an abortion?
I would ask many of the same questions Adam Lee asks. I have set forth my views on abortion here. I believe that the choice of abortion should be solely between a woman and her doctor for at least the first three months after pregnancy.
For those alleged literalists who oppose abortion based on the bible, where in the bible does it state that the union of an egg and sperm immediately becomes the equivalent of a born human being? In fact, consider these passages indicating that breathing air is the key point in time:
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Genesis 2:7
"Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD." Ezekiel 37: 4-7.
At the recent Doha climate talks, Philippine climate change commissioner, Naderev M. Sano, appealed to his fellow negotiators at a session deciding the contours of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The context is as follows:
“Please let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around,” he said as he choked back tears.
Just days before, Typhoon Bopha had hit the Philippines, killing hundreds of people. The typhoon, having been both unusually forceful and out of season, was deemed — like Hurricane Sandy — to be an extreme weather event, exacerbated by climate change.
This is an extremely powerful moment. It plays into my frustration with those around me, and my frustration with myself. With a few extraordinary exceptions, Americans rolling along, not treating the use of fossil fuels as a weapon. We are all going to need to take this problem seriously, and I'm afraid deep down, that we won't, and millions of people by the sea (and many of those far from the sea) are going to suffer horribly, and we will all take the result as "natural disasters." I don't mean to sound preachy. I'm about to get on a plane with my family and burn lots of fossil fuel to travel to see relatives during the Christmas holiday. If I were serious, I would not get on that plane, right? I'd make a statement by not traveling. All of that bicycle riding I do for commuting is for naught with one pleasure trip during the holidays. Further, I don't know how most of us will face down the temptation to exploit the earth unsustainably when this exhaustion of resources described in detail by Geoffrey Miller is intimately tied to our sense of self-worth and our craving to display our worthiness to those around us.
My mood was captured by James Taylor in a haunting song from his 1997 Hourglass album, a song titled "Gaia":
The sky was light and the land all dark
The sun rose up over Central Park
I was walking home from work
GAIA
The petal sky and the rosy dawn
The world turning on the burning sun
Sacred wet green one we live on
GAIA
Run run run run said the automobile and we ran
Run for your life take to your heels
Foolish school of fish on wheels
GAIA
Turn away from your animal kind
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind
Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind
GAIA
As if you were your own creation
As if you were the chosen nation
And the world around you just a rude and
Dangerous invasion
GAIA
Someone`s got to stop us now
Save us from us Gaia
No one`s gonna stop us now
We thought we ought to walk awhile
So we left that town in a single file
Up and up and up mile after mile after mile
We reached the tree line and I dropped my pack
Sat down on my haunches and I looked back down
Over the mountain
Helpless and speechless and breathless
GAIA
Pray for the forest pray to the tree
Pray for the fish in the deep blue sea
Pray for yourself and for God`s sake
Say one for me
Poor wretched unbeliever
Someone`s got to stop us now
Save us from us Gaia
No one`s gonna stop us now
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Glenn Greenwald , Greg Mitchell, Truthdig.com and Amy Goodman have been among the relatively few media sources giving serious coverage to Bradley Manning (and to Wikileaks).
What kinds of scandals has Bradley Manning revealed? Here are more than a few. 
