Disclosure

So many things to for the Crackpot to write about. So many things going on. BP. McChrystal. Obama. WikiLeaks. A Nebraskan town’s passage of an illegal immigration law. Cell phone radiation disclosures in a California city. Information. The abundance of it and the purposeful lack of it, and too many things to touch on that would end in a dissertation.

This inspiration for this writing comes from one my favorite crackpots, Dan Carlin, who does the Common Sense podcast. His latest podcast, released on June 21, is was called “Indecent Disclosure” and makes complete sense.

The U.S. Coast Guard and local law enforcement is keeping the press away from the beaches in Louisiana - strange in a land where we’re granted the right of the freedom of the press.

"Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials," The New York Times reports, as reported in The Christian Science Monitor.

On top of that, it seems that every time we turn around, we learn something more about how much oil is really gushing out of the well under the Gulf of Mexico. So BP has issues with disclosing what’s really pouring out down there. And it seems that BP CEO Tony Hayward got his life back.

What happened to the Constitution? What happened to the people’s right to know, and more importantly, what’s going on down there that they don’t want you to know? What’s going on down there on the beaches and in the gulf that your government would trample on your rights from the federal to the local level? What could be so secret that they would shit on the oath they take to uphold the laws and the constitution they’re bound to protect and enforce? What would the public think?

Briefly mentioned and falling from the national spotlight was when the voters in the town of Fremont, Nebraska voted to pass a law that banned the hiring or the renting of property to illegal immigrants. Why did this hit the news and disappear so quickly? Is it a topic that just isn’t newsworthy anymore? Have we been over-saturated with Arizona? Don’t know. The only place you seem to see this anymore is Fox News, aka Fox Opinion disguised as news.

Love them or hate them, Wikileaks is important. They reveal things to the public. They reveal the ugly truth that is hidden from the general public, and you get to see some harsh realities of this world.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks released footage it obtained of a U.S. helicopter attack on the enemy in Iraq that turned out to be two journalists that killed them, along with children.

Okay, as horrible as it is, that’s the reality of war. You’re in combat zone, shit can and will happen. It’s kill or be killed. Civilian casualties suck, but they're part of war. What’s important is this truth of war was brought to the public’s attention. This is stuff that the government doesn’t want you to see or know about. Why? They want to process their war, and they want to give you the GI Joe cartoon rose colored glasses version. As members of a “free” and “democratic” society have the right to know what their government is doing and how it’s doing it.

Now, according to the BBC, Wikileaks is preparing to release video from an attack in Afghanistan in 2009 where U.S. forces killed several civilians in a village. These are the harsh realities of war, and until the video is released - hopefully without an editing on Wikileaks’ part so we can see the whole picture and judge for ourselves - we won’t know if the attack was warranted or not.

In California, the city of San Francisco is requiring cellular phone retailers to post the radiation output levels of the phones along side of them. This has raised the hackles of the retailers and the cellular providers. San Francisco is the first city to require this, and the cell industry fears that others jurisdictions may also start to require this, or even the state of California itself. The fear continues along the saying, “As California goes, so goes the rest of nation.”

Other countries - France, Germany, Great Britain and Israel require this. Don't know how this has effected cellular sales in those countries.

What’s wrong with the public having this information? The jury is still out as to if cell phones cause cancer. At best, it’ll force cell phone manufacturers to create phones that omit less radiation. At worst, nothing will change. People will buy cell phones. They are a necessity in our way of life.

Why won’t the FDA or EPA require something like this? Dan Carlin makes the point the federal government doesn’t look out for the people it’s supposed to protect. He’s right. Local jurisdictions are looking out for consumer protection in these matters, such as San Francisco. Hopefully others will follow. What’s the big secret? What are they trying to hide? What do they know that the rest of us don’t. What don’t they want us to know? And why is the federal government so complicit? Why doesn't the federal government concerned about safety if its citizens?