Activists's topics - tribe.net

Can we go to jail for not paying healthcare insurance under the HR 3200 Act

windwaterclear — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:59:58 GMT

We have been concerned for a while about the provisions of this bill. A friend pointed us to a letter released by Nancy Pelosi that lays out the penalties for not paying health insurance.

She is concerned that if we choose not to pay, but instead seek our own healthcare [either alternative wellnes or paying a doctor as and when we really need one] , we might be liable for both civil and criminal penalties.

I know there are some legal wizards on here who are interested in civil rights, so I joined to post this, because I am becoming more and more concerned that ordinary people don't understand the law or their rights or the fine print or the loopholes. I am also concerned that there is a lot of mis-information around.

Laws are written in such a way that the average Joe or Josephine can't really understand them.

Most laws, when you get down to the nitty gritty, have terms that are vague enough to be differently interpreted by those enforcing the law, either as police or judges.

There is a lot of inflammatory material around that isn't really fact based but merely takes a situation and arouses passions around it. We also understand that sometimes this may be a necessary recourse to wake people up...

A recent example was the furore around the Food Safety Act, which was changed from HR 875 to HR 2479. Many inflammatory mails were sent out about 'outlawing organic farming'. I felt it was my responsibility to go read the bill and try and interpret it. I also wanted to be able to quote specific parts of the bill as evidence in my writings. For example I was particularly interested in 'vague' statements that are open to individual interpretation by the enforcing officials.

When we have the real facts, even if they are facts that something is interpretable and could be used for or against us, we are much more powerful in our activ*sm.

So if anyone would care to take the time to read this letter and respond with some fact-based, legal knowledge likelihood interpretations that would be great.

Here's the link
http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/JCTletter110509.pdf

My specific questions are...
Will everyone have to pay this medical insurance tax? Who gets out of it? If they're eligible to pay and don't want to be part of it can they get out? Are there religious and other loopholes? What interpretations can be made of things like you are exempt from the non payment tax if it might 'cause hardship'. How do we define hardship?

I think this is a public service that needs to be fulfilled.. good honest potential interpretations of the act without inflammatory meaningless words and advice to people on how to get round things that are obviously infringing our civil rights, but couched in government speak that virtually allows any twist of the constitution to create new laws for the so-called 'safety and protection' of home land, people etc... and the people are dumbed down sheep who've been tranquillized by food, pharmaceuticals,pap entertainment and materialism as a point of satisfaction...

with love and blessings
sunny and pierre soleil

PS We have no legal expertise, but are willing to set up and spread the word and be a willing perpetrator of knowledge to the masses who need a light shone on how they can slip out of these legal manacles

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

AU: URGENT Action Alert

Rocky — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:15:24 GMT

AU: URGENT Action Alert

"URGENT: The Senate will vote on the Nelson-Hatch amendment TOMORROW! Please take action NOW!

A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the destructive Stupak-Pitts amendment thanks to the powerful influence of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishops demanded a new ban on abortion coverage in any insurance plan participating in the new insurance "exchange," and the Church hierarchy even threatened to use its clout in Congress to derail the entire healthcare reform package unless its particular religious view was enshrined in the legislation.

Now, the Senate is poised to vote on an identical amendment proposed by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and a number of co-sponsors. Please remind your Senators that this restrictive language is unacceptable. For those of us who believe deeply that religion and government must function separately, this is hese events are highly disturbing. As supporters of Americans United, you are well aware that the Constitution mandates a separation between church and state. Yet recently, the Catholic bishops have used their immense power to undermine constitutionally guaranteed rights.

This is unacceptable, and your Senators need to hear from you. We simply cannot allow the interests of a politically powerful religious denomination to undermine the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to Americans of all faiths and none. Your Senators will vote tomorrow -- so please share your views NOW!

Tell Your Senators to OPPOSE the Nelson-Hatch Amendment

--------------------

Keep Religious Doctrine Out of the Law

"A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the destructive Stupak-Pitts amendment thanks to the powerful influence of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishops demanded a new ban on abortion coverage in any insurance plan participating in the new insurance "exchange," and the Church hierarchy even threatened to use its clout in Congress to derail the entire healthcare reform package unless its particular religious view was enshrined in the legislation.

Now, the Senate is poised to vote on an identical amendment proposed by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and a number of co-sponsors. Please remind your Senators that this restrictive language is unacceptable. For those of us who believe deeply that religion and government must function separately, this is hese events are highly disturbing. As supporters of Americans United, you are well aware that the Constitution mandates a separation between church and state. Yet recently, the Catholic bishops have used their immense power to undermine constitutionally guaranteed rights.

This is unacceptable, and your Senators need to hear from you. We simply cannot allow the interests of a politically powerful religious denomination to undermine the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to Americans of all faiths and none. Your Senators will vote very soon -- so please share your views NOW! "

http://www.capwiz.com/au/issues/alert/?alertid=14439586

* Join the Separation of church and state tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Dear Moderator: Please boot "Bob" from this tribe!

marvindublin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:51:49 GMT

http://allactivists.tribe.net/thread/c6be6c02-3620-49cd-a72b-b15cefac674a

He has been posting all kinds of bullshit all over tribe. THIS tribe is NOT the place for it imo!!!

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

WNBR, beaches, and street fairs need YOU

Bob — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:41:16 GMT

At a riot, with no lawyers but those Tim Daly inhales up his corporate butt, events are predictable.

Got Clint? His movies are hot prophecy, layered, artistically.

Got Stanford? Seen Josey Wales? FLYBOYS? Dogs named 'Bo?' Hounds named 'Mac?' Safety, FIRST?

No, you do NOT have SAFETY, FIRST, but hey, pull Rudy back from the ondeck circle, ONE TIME, or suck a Zep into the deck, ruthlessly demolishing the new house, of the Bronx bombed-out bombers, to be.

Yanked down, Stanford football is on the way, back upward, after Walsh's demise. Clint spans DeShaun Jackson, for 'DJvu,' in Dirty Harry, see also THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, where young Jeff Bridges spans all the engineer-student blonde buddies I had, at CAL, dressed in an old-style version of today's Key West Dude Shirt, which was an invitation, for a bullet strike.

Got WAR? The bad, old railroad is hauling cattle, meat, and ashes, all night and day.

Sure you do, WWII and a half. Got each other? Sure we have!

Check me out. I am an anti-punk media person, for reform of fascism, or deconstruction, of illegal persons and media, LIKE ISRAEL.

The NSA and CIA prevented the FBI from noting how the 911 terrorists were IN THE USA, ready to do dirt, known.

GET DEJA VU, or lose all.

I know THIS: The Ming Empire decommissioned its White Fleet, April 6, 1437.

They left an armorer with the UK, to share triangular arrowheads, in use since the 1st Emperor, with Elizabeth I.

Liz didn't pay very well, so off to France went the crossbow, also in service since Emperor I. But this caused a real stir, as in European War.

Isabella of Spain sent Columbus, who reported Chinese and a way to Cathay, pronto. But this explained why all the gunpowder, plus.

The European thieves took gold, land, and all the natives they could kill, and wonder why the Mayan Calendar is so like the I-Ching. Duh.

When that calendar is up, in 2012, look to get sued by PRC, since you rioters kept calling the natives, 'INDIANS,' while abusing them.

PRC suffers standing US invasion, since the CIA ran B-24 Liberators, from Tibet and Taiwan, inciting the Korean War and taking of Tibet.

Since Panmunjon talks stalled, PRC acquires US debt in bad faith, since Inchon and the retreat by the UN, to Parallel 38.

Natives in America and Chinese in Taiwan and PRC need to get to ME, to sue, if you need standing or an explanation, about class actions.

I support S142192 CSC, den.12/13/2006, with C07 01399 SBA, USDC Oakland, which must issue, on hearing, against bills of attainder and all illegal construction, anywhere!

So where are YOU? Do you shake-up, and SUE? Push it up, game on, shing-a-lingers.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Legalize S-H-I-T, since we are paying for it, and then it is costing us a lot, unaccountably passing costs for turning your ladies, into WHORES!

Bob — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:44:12 GMT

When ALL the tribes consisting of Jews are from ETHIOPIA, simply and neatly by Isaiah, 20:5, you have no issues, when Palis bomb you, or when they finally get CRUISE MISSILES, and then you shut up and burn.

Enrika, Texas military base shooting leaves 7 dead: "You're off your meds again, Bob."

fuzzypeaches702, President Obama Speaks on Fort Hood back to bush-league: "U are by far 1 goofy son of a bitch! Eat shit asshole!!!"

When the BRATS had their TITS twisted by Saladin, and so they were sent back to BRITAIN, they left their offal, in Jerusalem, called a hot, new word, since from their Pope's SHIT FOR BRAINS, they could get God to tell them, they had a couple of things to do, before they could stay, in Jerusalem, next in the Victorian Crusade, 1882: invade Beijing, through Shiites in Iran. Fart hard for bon Jovi, on Texas-TV!

Mr.O'Bungle tried to block Burris; Catholic cops shot young blacks, including Oscar Grant in California. Pigs incited riot, Bam notified no courts, and in Cali after swearing in, Bam incited shooting of 5 OPD on 3/22/09, had downlow beer'S', winked at the Honduran coups, and with McCain's bush-pilots, Bam farts hard in Texas! Chase no bin Laden for Palin, bon Jovi, Jenna Bush, Giuliani, Daves, Cones, or with uranium-ammo sprayers. Pigs jacked Bonds, for his #756 remark, ISAIAH, to damn Israel.

What health care gets passed, when Senator Hailey Joel sees dead people of the near future, pretending AF1 and 2 will fly, high, free, bird?

Your cunt stinks, Enrika. When you wash it, your septicemia won't be able to vote for Barack, anymore. Don't fart too hard with Barack jammed in there!

Oo, ooh, that SMELL! The smell of YOUR PRESIDENT'S CLEAN COAL DEATH surrounds you!

So crash, WHORES! You wouldn't legalize pot for 25,000 CO2-neutral or negative uses!

Pay a Mexican for junk, and get burned to pay for his whores, which probably now includes YOU and YOUR females, whoever they are.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Gorillas face EXTINCTION in next 5-10 yrs!

Renee — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:14:27 GMT

i copied this from Greenpeace's web site...
we can take action to help the Gorillas...
read on...

>>>>>>>>>>

The African Forest of the Great Apes, a spectacular lowland rainforest of Central Africa, stretches across regions of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It is second in size only to the Amazon rainforest and is the most species-rich place in Africa.

Africa has already lost two-thirds of its ancient forests in the last thirty years, industrial logging threatens most of what remains. In as little as five to ten years Africa's apes, the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, will disappear with the last undisturbed forest areas.

European-owned timber companies are complicit in that destruction, as revealed in a new Greenpeace Report. And France, by accepting timber from illegal and destructive sources, is also jeopardizing the development of legitimate trade in legal and environmentally and socially responsible timber.

In 2004 France was the largest market in the EU for imports of African tropical hardwood primary products -- a market valued at E256 million. France imports timber and timber products from countries, such as Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corruption is rampant and illegal logging is a serious problem.

One example of how this trade operates in Cameroon is the use of suspect and illegal "salvage" logging permits. Salvage permits were designed for well-defined cases in which specific development projects required the clearing of trees -- for road building or industrial development, such as plantations. There were several strict conditions imposed before a salvage permit could be allocated. A 1995 decree required that an environmental impact assessment be undertaken. In 1998 the maximum area for salvage operations was fixed at 1,000 hectares, and the allocation had to be through public auction.

But in July 1999, the Cameroon Forestry Minister, by decree, indefinitely suspended the allocation of all new salvage permits, due to the "abuses observed in their award" -- bribery, kickbacks, waiving of environmental impact reports, and a range of other corrupt practices. Despite the suspension and the fact that it has never been rescinded, the allocation of salvage permits has continued, giving a sheen of legality to a thoroughly illegal practice.

The companies involved supply timber to traders such as Danish-based DLH, French traders such as Rougier, Bois des Trois Ports and the Reseau Pro distribution chain, part of the UK based Wolseley Group.

Our Forest Campaigner, Sue Connor says: "Stolen rainforest timber is flooding into ports in France and Europe almost daily. It ends up on construction sites and is being sold in stores across Europe. If this criminal activity is not stopped, the world's rainforests look set to disappear in our lifetime, destroying the homes of millions of forest dependent peoples, plant and animal species, including threatened lowland gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants."

The French Government has made repeated statements that it will take action against illegal and destructive forest exploitation. To date their action has run counter to those declarations. France continues to open the borders to illegal timber and to support forest industry involved in illegal logging activities. This timber is freely available on the French and European market.

Despite years of talk by EU Governments there is still no mechanism to stop the flood of illegal and unsustainable timber into ports and stores across Europe. There are stronger protections against pirated music than there are against illegal timber: European law looks after heavy-metal band Mettallica's profits better than the irreplaceable habitat of the last forest gorillas in the wild.

We are calling on European governments to outlaw all imports of illegal timber and to promote environmentally and socially responsible forest management worldwide.

<<<<<<<<<<

please visit www.greenpeace.org to find more info, and dream of what we can do now... and then share it with us all...

with love for all beings,
Renee

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

US GLOBAL EXPLOITATION & HOW WARS ARE FINANCED

cowboyangel — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 06:51:56 GMT

http://gunsandbutter.net/archives.php see Michael Hudson

April 23, 2003
Duck, Duck, Goose:
Financing the War, Financing the World

By STANDARD SHAEFER

(Interview with Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism, Pluto Press, 2003)

Now that even the LA Times has begun to show a modicum of willingness to discuss US foreign policy in terms of a potential imperialism, it has become clear that those on the right have avoided this debate so far only by sticking to the strictest, most out-dated notion of empire. The left, however, for too long has been satisfied with talking about cultural imperialism and corporate exploitation, both of which are serious problems. Recently, however, the left has often clumsily explained the economic motives for the war in terms of big oil, sheer greed and more ephemerally as a desire to weaken the euro. This is all likely, but it also reveals the degree to which the left's understanding of finance is outdated. This is not their fault, however. Not only do university economics departments remain dominated by the ersatz laissez faire notions of the Chicago School, but so are US Government, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the European central banks. The result has been the censorship of those few economists willing to point out that the US is very much the center of imperialism, unwilling to engage in the "free trade" or laissez faire that it promotes abroad.

Only recently, when World Bank head and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz resigned in order to speak out against the sister institution of the IMF did this get serious attention. But Stiglitz remains defensive of the World Bank itself and continues to believe its goals despite no evidence that anything good has come from it, overlooking its complicity in promoting structural adjustments that have proved ecologically destructive and entirely in the American financial interests. The real expose was published over thirty years earlier despite an active campaign to keep the story out of the press, out of the university and out of the government.

Shortly after the US was forced off the gold standard, a young economist by the name of Michael Hudson received a grant to study the effect of the demonetarization of gold. His report was made not only to the US government, but also to Wall Street firms such as his former employers, the Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Andersen. The problem was that despite his phrasing the situation in the most critical terms, his report revealed that the US was on inadvertently on the verge of the greatest boondoggle of all times.

Hudson himself describes resistance to his message in a new preface to the recently reprinted ground-breaking book Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance. Hudson's is an infuriating story, only partially available in this volume, involving at least two incidents where university board members and economic professors threatened to resign if his books on trade policy were published. The US Treasury Department even went so far as to alter the way it reports statistic on the balance of payments impact of the u.s. government to prevent further study into how the US government actually made money on its "aid" programs. More important, prof. Hudson explains how the US managed to use its debtor status to exploit the world.

By going off the gold standard at precise moment that it did, the United States obliged the world's central banks to finance the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit by using their surplus dollars to buy U.S. Treasury bonds, whose volume quickly exceeded America's ability or intention to pay. All the dollars that end up in European, Asian, and Eastern central banks as result of American's excessive import-imbalance, have no place to go but the U.S. Treasury. Because of the restrictions placed on the central banks_ there is no place else for this money to go_these countries were forced to buy US treasuries or else accept the worthlessness of the dollars received through trade.

Like most people, I understood economic imperialism as an open game. Any corporation could invest in another country and extract profits, but apparently this is only one level. 'Super' imperialism occurs and can only occur between the U. S. government and the foreign central banks. To understand this further, I decided to speak to Michael Hudson directly.

Standard Schaefer: How aware was the Nixon administration of the balance of payments issue? Did they realize that it would actually increase US economic dominance?

Michael Hudson: The Nixon people didn't realize. I got an $80,000 grant from the Hudson Institute to explain it to them. The Nixon people said, "Oh gee. That's great". Then they turned my analysis of imperialism into a "How To" book. I had written it as a "How Not To" book, but the nation doing the exploitation was more interested in learning how the system worked than were the countries being exploited. I started to consult for Canada, Mexico and other countries. Canada had been accommodating toward the World Bank and IMF, but when they realized the extent to which these organizations were rigged to further the balance of payments problem, they felt exploited.

SS: Do you believe the neo-conservatives advising Bush at the moment are more aware of "benefits" of this balance of payments issue, what you call the US treasury standard?

MH: They know it's a rip off, yes. And they absolutely want it to continue. Being Chicago School monetarists, they think that America's financial free ride should be built into the world economy as if it were perfectly natural for the rest of the world to adjust its economies to help the U.S. economy. But among sovereign regional blocs this kind of subservience can only be transitory.

SS: What is the role of militarism at this stage? Can perpetual war be seen as a sort of imperial Works Progress Administration that jumpstarts the domestic economy? At what point does the cycle collapse and can it do so internally_or as you've suggested, does it only stop when Asia, Europe, and the East finally refuse to buy US treasuries?

MH: The US Treasury-bill standard finances the military, but doesn't need imperial war to succeed. So far it's being accepted voluntarily, as other countries have not yet figured out how to extricate themselves from a system that is bleeding them more and more.

To date they haven't tried very hard to create an alternative, but now the system could backfire, as Bush's aggressive diplomacy is prompting Europe, Russia and China to stand up for their own self-interest. And that's what they need to do. They didn't stand up for their self-interest when the World Bank and IMF were formed, but now they have to do so.

People are now beginning to raise the question of whether countries really need their central banks, which are essentially lobbyists for the Washington Consensus, as are the World Bank and the IMF. They follow the Chicago School in lobbying for high rates and a large cushion of unemployed so as to maximize financial power relative to labor and the products it produces. Financial exploitation now exceeds the old-fashioned exploitation of labor by actually employing it, albeit for low wages.

Central banks are staffed by Chicago School monetarists, and are allowed to take only a 3% deficit whereas in the US it is limitless. Europe and Asia should abandon the false start with their central banks and should rely on their Treasuries, which are Keynesian or could be Keynesian. The national Treasuries should set up a credit system with bonds and IOUs based on euros and other currencies.

SS: Okay, but isn't it most likely that the whole thing ends in a crisis, one more devastating to the US than the "Asian Flu"? What would this crisis look like?

MH: There will be a crisis when Europe, Asia and Latin America finally break away. The U.S. has said it can't pay back its dollar debts and doesn't intend to. As an alternative, it has proposed "funding the US dollar overhang" into the world monetary system. Other countries would get IMF credit equal to their dollar holdings, but these holdings no longer would be US Treasury obligations. The US would wipe its debt to foreign central banks off the hook. This would mean that it would have got all the balance-of-payments deficits for the past 32 years for free, with no quid pro quo.

The US has been proposing this for 30 years whenever Europe raises the issue of payment for its dollar holdings. American diplomats have said that they won't allow central banks to use their dollars to buy US corporations, for instance. When OPEC countries proposed this after 1973, the US Treasury reportedly informed them that this would be considered an act of war. As for Europe, it never has pushed its own self-interest in the World Bank or the IMF.

SS: How does is this related to the economic bubble?

MH: Since Europe and Asia have financed most of the US Treasury's budget deficits in recent decades, Americans haven't had to do this. As a result, their bond market has been freed from government bond issues, so US investors have been able to put their money into the stock market and real estate, for better or worse. As these markets rose during the 1980s and '90s, they attracted foreign private-sector dollars into the US market. This helped finance the bubble.

Meanwhile, America's federal budget deficits can go on without limit, precisely because of the balance of payment deficit. The larger the payments deficit, the more dollars end up in the hands of foreign central banks, to be recycled into the purchase of US Treasury securities. This means that the US government's deficit - including the military spending in Iraq, by the way - is financed by foreign governments. This will continue despite the fact the debt already has grown greater than the ability to pay, until these countries finally break away from the system.

As for the bubble economy, pensions and Social Security will go first. The US can't afford to bail them out and still plan the giveaways to the wealthiest 10 percent of the population who are the net creditors to the bottom 90 percent. Pension obligations were expected to absorb only 5 or 10 percent of production costs, but now they are absorbing nearly all the reported profits, and threaten to eat into the money available to repay the banks and bondholders. The big investors want to be paid, and this means taking money that was earmarked for employees.

The only question is whether the US government will bail out the individual wealthy investors. The working motto in such cases is that big fish always eat little fish. Breughel had a great etching on this topic.

The states and the municipalities will go next. They are among the little fish. Bush's tax cuts have slashed their tax receipts. Cutting taxes for New York City and most other localities is causing layoffs and widening unemployment, just the opposite from what Bush's economists claim to be the case. Today's mode of supply side economics will lead to shrinking markets, shrinking employment and intensify the financial squeeze on California and other states, as well as cities throughout the country.

SS: Are there people in Washington who recognize this inter-relation?

MH: There are people in Washington that see this. But they tend not to speak up, because most economists or others who see what's happening - and write about it or otherwise draw attention to it - are fired or blacklisted for not being team players. There's a kind of censorship that happens if you're not a Chicago monetarist. When the University of Toronto accepted one my books for publication and the economics department there heard about it, there were threats that faculty members would resign if they published my book and that the editor of the University of Toronto press would be fired if he went ahead with it.

SS: You're kidding.

MH: No. The Chicago School's monetarists are intolerant and censorial. About the only alternative is the University of Missouri at Kansas City which has a heterodox economics department that teaches an alternative to monetarism. That's where I have my current professorship.

SS: They're not Marxists?

MH: Marxists are not so much concerned with finance these days. You have to work for some of the large financial institutions to get a working knowledge of the balance of payments deficit and the flow of funds. Their principles are counter-intuitive. Even when one reads and understands the words that describe them, it's necessary to wire up the brain to think in terms of how international financial markets actually operate.

The recent investigations and prosecutions of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have shown that the largest financial institutions have operated much like criminal enterprises, from Citibank/Travellers and Merrill-Lynch on down. They've come under indictment, but when the problem is so widespread they've decided that the only reasonable response is to begin enforcing a new set of rules, and let bygones be bygones. The bygones in this case have netted them billions of dollars, which they will be allowed to keep. The small investors who've been cheated will not get much after attorney's fees are paid.

All this seems to be the result of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act. It was forecast to occur just in the way it has, but the political campaign contributions by the large financial institutions won the day, backed up by the Junk Economics being turned out by the Chicago Boys.

The reason why Harvey Pitt was forced out as the head of the <S.E.C>. was that his inaction led to the state prosecutors as the only people willing to take the lead in dealing with insider dealing, fixed markets, crony capitalism and similar corruption. The best writer to expose this type of operation is Tom Naylor, who wrote Wages of Crime and Hot Money.

But reformers are up against Chicago School economists who have been endorsed because their anti-government theories are so self-serving to economic groups that don't want to be regulated at all. The important thing is that "free enterprise" has only been able to be imposed at gunpoint. In fact, as Milton Friedman himself observed, only a socialist government can impose his kind of economics, without sunk costs, with "pure" markets. To work properly, everyone who doesn't believe in free enterprise has to be isolated, which means in practice that free enterprise only works in a police state.

Take the case of Arnold Harberger, the University of Chicago professor who was brought down to Chile right after the military junta overthrew its elected president. The first thing that the Chicago Boys did upon overthrowing the government was to close every economics department in the country, except for the Catholic University where the Chicago Boys had a stranglehold of true believers. In the late 1980s, a decade later when Harvard brought Harberger over with the thought of installing him as head of the HIID (Harvard Institute for International Development), the students rioted, accusing Harberger (who is married to a Chilean) of sitting in his hotel room with a list of academic economists opposing the Chicago Boys and their free enterprise evangelism fingering the ones who should be murdered. Harberger denied that he ever fingered anyone to get killed, but what is known is that there followed a wave of arrests, killings and disappearances. The Chicago Boys held up Pinochet's Chile as a model - one to be emulated, not shunned. Yet their first wave of privatizations collapsed in a wave of corruption, and their privatization of social security became a new way of exploiting labor, via forced savings that were channeled into the stock market. Insiders gained and the middle class, which had been stronger in Chile than in any other Latin American country, lost out.

The moral is that free enterprise economics only works when you have authoritarian control to suppress opposition seeking to place economic relations in a broader social context.

The point I want to make is that the economists who call themselves free enterprise actually are defenders of the financial industry and the sacrifice of economies to pay their debts, regardless of how wastefully these have been entered into. Their idea of the market means that the "market" should adjust itself to debt claims growing exponentially, in excess of the economy's ability to pay. The consequence is a transfer of property. This is how privatization should be seen. To the Chicago Boys, it is all part of the adjustment process.

SS: Am I correct in thinking that the US Treasury-bill standard you describe in Super Imperialism and the sequel Global Fracture victimizes the taxpayers IN the EU, Japan, etc., more than older forms of imperialism? Is what makes this imperialism "super" the fact that it exploits not just workers in poor countries, but all workers everywhere?

MH: That's true, but my point is somewhat different. The older theories of imperialism saw private corporations running the system to profit, so that profits by global companies were the measure of how much imperialism was occurring. My point is that the largest form of exploitation, quantitatively speaking, now occurs among governments. Another word for Super Imperialism would be Inter-Governmental imperialism. The United States exploits the rest of the world above all via foreign central banks accumulating dollars.

As for your other points, imperialism always has exploited mainly the rich countries, for the same reason that Willy Sutton is said to have robbed banks: That's where the money is. The richest nations are the ones with the most economic surplus to appropriate. That is done not via the repatriation of profits, but by the Treasury-bill standard and the free ride that it gives the United States.

Michael Hudson is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City) and has published widely on U.S. financial dominance. He also consults with various foreign governments regarding the need to set up an alternative center of finance to the U.S. Treasury. He first attracted my attention during the recent war with Iraq when he was on KPFK in Los Angeles explaining how this system has forced other governments, in effect, to pay for our wars since Vietnam.

Whether or not there are more U.S. military adventures in the Middle East, it seems crucial to expose to the world not only the lives lost, not only the private profits being made, but also how the U.S. Government has managed to fund these wars at everyone else's expense. At the moment, it seems these wars only send more dollars abroad_both in IMF, World Bank loans, but also in U.S. humanitarian "aid" and military personnel expenditures. Thus, the dollar surplus abroad only creates more demand for U.S. Treasuries and more foreign dependence on the continuing existence of the U.S. Empire.

Standard Schaefer is an independent journalist, free-lance financial writer, poet, and cultural historian based in Pasadena, California. He can be reached at ssschaefer@earthlink.net

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

The pharmaceutical industry is shockingly corrupt! Prescription drugs are now one of the nation's leading killers! The cover up depends on people looking the other way.

Leslee — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 02:25:51 GMT

Drug makers DO NOT want you to know about this site!

http://theeffexoractivist.org/

or any of the links you will find there!

If you or someone you know has been put thru hell by antidepressants, then you are aware of how these drugs can cause negative effects. You may not be aware of how dangerous these drugs can be, or of how corrupt the FDA and the entire drug industry have become. You may not be aware of the astonishing profits these companies are hauling in, or of how the industry controls the media by buying more advertising then any other industry. (The media tends to resist biting the hand that feeds.)

The FDA receives and is now dependent on major funding (User Fees) from drug manufacturers. More then half of FDA members have deep pocket connections to the pharmaceutical companies. Those members who are honest are forced to be whistle blowers in order to get information out about dangerous drugs! It is only after information becomes public that the FDA acts to protect the public.

Prescription drugs are now one of the nation's leading killers!
source: Consumer Reports. The number of people needlessly hurt or killed by prescription drugs has become staggering. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that in one year, over two million patients suffered serious drug reactions, resulting in 106,000 deaths. Another article in JAMA estimated that only 1 in 20 reactions are reported. These numbers vastly eclipse the number of people killed or seriously injured in car accidents each year.

In 1999 a study conducted by Adrian Preda, M.D.; Rebecca W. MacLean, M.D.; Carolyn M. Mazure, Ph.D.; and Malcolm B. Bowers, Jr., M.D. found that 8.1% of Psychiatric Admissions to hospitals were due to Antidepressant-Associated Mania and Psychosis (J Clin Psychiatry 2001;62:30-33). The number is higher now because the numbers of people taking antidepressants has risen significantly.

The Royal College of General Practitioners reports that the pharmaceutical industry encourages the unnecessary prescribing of costly drugs and overemphasizes the dangers of mild conditions such as: anxiety, mild depression, slightly-elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol and osteoporosis. Doctors are now receiving almost all drug information from the drug makers. Most doctors have no idea how corrupt the industry has become.

Drug makers are allowed to hide many drug studies from the FDA, the doctors and the public, showing only the studies they choose to show. Drug companies have repeatedly been caught hiding data, using false advertising and many other underhanded methods to sell drugs. And yet when they are caught they receive a slap on the wrist, (relative to profits.) On top of all that, drug makers have attempted to harass and discredit any doctor who has publicly stood up to them. Make no mistake we are talking about true evil here. You can learn much more at

http://theeffexoractivist.org/

PLEASE get educated about the dangers posed by antidepressants and other legal drugs, the incredible corruption and cover ups and much more. We can't change what we are not aware of .

posted in *Activists* - 4 replies

Al Qaeda's Nuclear Inventory

B-b — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:05:53 GMT

From Paul L. Williams' book "The Al Qaeda Connection" :

The beginning of the end took place on Sept. 27, 1991, when President George H. W. Bush Announced that the United States would unilaterally withdraw all nuclear weapons from its forces around the world with the proviso that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev would do likewise. Gorbachev readily agreed. The press and the people of both nations were pleased. The agreement represented a grand display of perestroika -- positive proof that the cold war was over and a new day of mutual trust (if not brotherhood) had dawned. The process of the withdrawal of the nukes was greatly facilitated by the enactment of the Nunn-Lugtar Soviet Threat Reduction Act on December 12, 1991. This act provided Russia with millions in funding to transport its nukes to various sites throughout the fourteen newly created republics of what was once the Soviet Union. This, too, seemed like a sensible measure that would make the world a safer place.

Yet the movement of the twenty-two thousand nuclear weapons occurred when everything in Russia was falling apart. With the closing of the communal plants and industries, more than 30 percent of the workforce became unemployed. Inflation soared over 2,000 percent, fueling crime and corruption. An average of eighty-four murders took place a day, many of which were contract killings. A hit could now be arranged with members of eight Mafia families within Moscow for less than $200. Millions of Russians now stood in lines for hours in order to redeem governement-issued coupons. There was one line for red beets and cabbages; another for eggs and bread; and yet another for vodka and cigarettes. Butcher shops sold blue chickens that had died of malnutrition and pies made from rancid beef and horse meat. The savvy customers soon learned not to purchase the pies that were surrounded by dead flies. In the wink of an eye, the second most powerful nation on earth had become transformed into a third world country.

Undfer the new capitalism, male life expectancy fell to fifty-eight years --- fifteen to seventeen years less than that of males in eastern Europe and the United States. By 1996 the suicide rate had doubled. Along with poverty, inflation, unemployment, and depression, Russians experienced a sharp drop in the birth rate. From 1991 to 2001, the population declined at a rate of 1.2 million a year.

Nowhere was the misery more apparent than within the military, which by 1996 had shrunk to a feeble force of 1.7 million soldiers. Because of chronic food shortages, many soldiers resorted to begging. More than ten Russian soldiers died each day from noncombat causes, including suicide and malnutrition. An estimated 110,000 loacked proper housing and became sheltered in hovels. No one in the military, not even a high-ranking general, was receiving a regular pay check. Russian army and navy officers began to sell almost every item at their disposal. In 1993 there were 6,430 reports of stolen weapons from army arsenals, ranging from assault rifles to tanks.

It is incredible to assume that the twenty-two thousand nuclear weapons were moved from strategic sites to arsenals throughout Russia without a single loss. When President George H. W. Bush announced his plans for a nuclear withdrawal, the then secretary of defense Dick Cheney said that the recovery of 90 percent of the nukes in Russia would represent "excellent performance." Such an "excellent performance" would mean that 220 weapons would have been lost, stolen, or otherwise unaccounted for. But what person in his right mind could expect such an outcome from the poorly housed, malnourished, disillusioned, and unpaid Russian troups of 1991? The temptation for gain would have been too great for an Orthodox saint to suppress when a kilo of chrominum-50 would sell for $25,000, cesium-137 for $1 million, and lithium for $10 million. Prospective buyers included agents from North Korea, Pakistan, Libya, and a well-financed group of Muslim terrorists called al Qaeda.

In the first three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the black market in nuclear weapons and materials began to boom. Germany reported more than seven hundred attempted nuclear sales. These illegal sales were luckily stopped by the police, but that was not true of every case of smuggling. Other incidents have been more alarming. In January 1992 an Egyptian newspaper reported that Iran bought three Soviet nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan for $150 million. This report was later confirmed by Russian intelligence. In November 1993 two nuclear warheads, sufficient to kill millions in New York and Los Angeles, were stolen by two employees from the Zlatoust-36 Instrument Building Plant, a weapons assembly facility, in Chelyabinsk. Fortunately, the weapons were later recovered in a nearby residential garage, and the two employees were placed under arrest. Later that same month, Russian navy Captian Alexei Tikhomirov broke into a nuclear storage facility at the Sevmorput shipyard near Murmansk and robbed three pieces of a reactor core containing 3.4 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. At the time of Tikhomirov's arrest, the chief Russian prosecutor noted that "potatoes were guarded better" that the nuclear materials at Murmansk.

The Chechen Mafia, the most powerful criminal organization in Russia, now became the most dominant force in the trafficking of nuclear supplies and materials from Russia to rogue nation and terrorist groups. In March 1993 the Chechens seciured an unknown quantity of highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan. More than six kilograms were transported from Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, to Istanbul, Turkey. Six months later, Interpol officials collared four Turkish businessmen and four agents of Iran's secret service and confiscated 2.5 kilos of the uranium. The remaining kilos had slipped through the proverbial cracks. In September 1993 the Chechen rebels stunned the world by the display of SS-20 missiles during a military parade in Grozny. The missiles, stolen from some Soviet arsenal, possessed a range of 9,500 kilometers and the capability to launch a nuclear warhead.

At the same time, the Chechen rebels began using radioactive isotopes, which had become available at rock-bottom prices, to commit acts of murder. The first victim was Vladimir Kaplun, the owner of a meat packing plant in Moscow. The Chechens planted gamma ray-emitting pellets in Kaplun's office. The businessman was dead within a matter of weeks. At least half a dozen similar cases were reported in the next three weeks.

In November 1994 Dzokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen rebels, petitioned the Uniter Nations to dispatch troops to protect the weapons of mass destruction within the Chechen arsenal. Dudayev's request was taken as an attempt at grandstanding. The UN officials, along with the international press, scoffed at the notion that a group of Muslim dissidents from the backwater Russian province of Chechnya could possess, let alone maintain, nuclear weapons. This forced the Chechens to make a vivid display that would prove to the world that they possessed nuclear capability. On November 23, 1995, Chechen commander Shamil Basayev directed a television crew to a radiological bomb that had been planted in Izmailovsky Park near Moscow. The bomb was made of cesium-137 and, if detonated, would have killed hundreds in a matter of minutes and contaminated thousands more. The incident represented the first case of a dirty nuke to be shown as a weapon of terror.

Shortly after this incident, Dudayev notified the US State Department that he possessed tactical nuclear suitcase bombs. The Chechen leader said that he was willing to sell these weapons to rogue states of terrorist agencies, such as al Qaeda, if the United States failed to recognize Chechnya's independence from Russia. Dudayev's claim was supported by officials from the National Intelligence Council, an unbrella organization for the US analytical community. The officials informed a congressional committee that weapon-grade and weapons-usable nuclear material, including SADMs (small atomic demolition munitions), had been stolen from Soviet stockpiles. "Of these thefts," the officials said, "we assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or the magnitude.

In January 1996 the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of Internation Studies received information from a "senior advisor to Boris Yeltsin" that an unspecified number of small nuclear bombs had been manufactured for the KGB and had never appeared on a list of the Soviet nuclear inventory.

In May 1997, during a closed door session with a US congressional delegation, former Russian Security Council secretary Alexander Lebed said that more than eighty-four SADMs had disappeared from Russian arsenals and could be in the hands of Muslim extremists. General Lebed said that he was able to confirm the production of 132 small nukes but could only account for 48. When asked the whereabouts of the missing nukes, Lebed replied: "I have no idea." He went on to say that he had no idea how many small nukes had been produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Lebed also said that some of these small nukes, with explosive yield of one kiloton of TNT, had been refined so that they could be carried by one person in a case measuring sity by forty by twenty centimeters (twenty-four by sixteen by eight inches) and represented "ideal weapons for nuclear terror."

General Lebed repeated these charges in an interview with the CBS newsmagazine 60 minutes that was aired on September 7, 1997. In the interview, he added that the SADMs were designed to be used in sabotage operations behind enemy lines and lacked the electronic combination locks that had been built into other Soviet nuclear weapons. The following is a sample of the exchange between CBS correspondent Steve Kroft and General Lebed over the matter of the missing nukes:

Kroft: Are you confidant that all of the weapons aqre secure and acoounted for?

Lebed: Not at all. Not at all.

Kroft: How easy would it be to steal one?

Lebed: It's suitcase-sized.

Kroft: You could put it in a suitcase and carry it off?

Lebed: It is made in the size of a suitcase. It is a suitcase, actually. You could carry it. You could put it in another suitcase if you want to.

Kroft: But it's already a suitcase.

Lebed: Yes.

Kroft: I could walk down the streets of Moscow or Washington or New York, and people would think I'm carrying a suitaces?

Lebed: Yes, indeed.

Kroft: How easy would it be to detonate?

Lebed: It would take twnety, thirty minutes to prepare.

Kroft: But you don't need secret codes from the Kremlin or anything like that?

Lebed: No.

Kroft: You are saying there are a significant number that are missing and unaccounted for?

Lebed: Yes, there is. More than one hundred.

Kroft: Where are they?

Lebed: Somewhere in Georgia, somewhere in Ukraine, somewhere in the Baltic countries. Perhaps some are even outside those countries. One person is capable of triggering this nuclear weapon -- one person.

Kroft: So you are saying these weapons are no longer under the control of the Russian military?

Lebed: I'm saying that more than one hundred weapons are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia. I don't know their location. I don't know whether they have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they've been sold or stolen. I don't know.

More to come, if you like. It's a great story that is forming up.

posted in *Activists* - 5 replies

Sri Lankan death squads kill editor and ransack TV station

Steven — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:55:03 GMT

Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan death squads kill editor and ransack TV station
By K. Ratnayake
13 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/sril-j13.shtml

Two brazen attacks on the media in Sri Lanka last week constitute a sharp warning that the government and the military will not tolerate any, even limited, criticism of its communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Last Thursday, Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader, was shot dead in broad daylight as he drove to work on a busy suburban road. According to eyewitnesses, four masked gunmen rode up to his car on motorbikes. One blocked the path of the vehicle while another smashed a hole in the windscreen and shot Wickrematunge with a pistol. The two others stood guard. All four escaped, even though the spot was 100 metres from an air force checkpoint and next to a high security zone.

Two days earlier, an armed gang broke into the MTV/Sirasa broadcasting network in the early hours of the morning, overpowered the guards and ransacked the building. Some 20 masked gunmen armed with automatic rifles, pistols, hand grenades and a mine destroyed the control room and shot up the offices and studios. Despite being called, the police did not arrive until the 30-minute rampage was over. Speaking to the WSWS, news director Asoka Dias denounced the raid as "an attack on media freedom".

Both incidents have the hallmarks of assaults by military-sponsored gangs of thugs, which have been responsible over the past three years for hundreds of abductions, murders and violent attacks directed against the country's Tamil minority and anyone critical of the government and the war. Last week's attacks took place as President Mahinda Rajapakse was whipping up a wave of reactionary triumphalism following the army's capture of the LTTE's headquarters in Kilinochchi the previous week.

Wickrematunge’s funeral procession in ColomboThe ability of Wickrematunge's killers to flee, and of 20 heavily armed gunmen to travel unimpeded at night, both point to the complicity of the security forces. The police and military maintain a huge network of checkpoints and roadblocks throughout Colombo and the surrounding suburbs. Vehicles, passengers, even pedestrians are routinely stopped and checked. Moreover, the MTV/Sirasa attackers arrived in a white van without a number plate—the trademark of military death squads in Sri Lanka for decades.

Thousands took part in the funeral of Wickrematunge in Colombo yesterday, shouting slogans accusing the government of his death. The Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) blamed the government for inciting hatred against the editor, noting that the president had branded him a "terrorist journalist" last October. In its statement condemning the killing, Amnesty International pointed out that during Rajapakse's tenure 14 media workers, including journalists, had been killed and 20 had fled the country due to threats.

Wickrematunge sympathised with the conservative opposition party—the United National Party (UNP)—and like the rest of the Colombo establishment backed the war against the LTTE. At the same time, however, Wickrematunge had been critical of the government and defence hierarchy about the way the war was carried out. The Sunday Leader had exposed instances of high-level corruption involving top generals and ministers.

Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a brother of the president, had filed a defamation case against Wickrematunge that was being heard in the district courts. The case, in which Gotabhaya Rajapakse was claiming a billion rupees in damages, involved a Sunday Leader article exposing corruption in a defence deal.

At the same time, Wickrematunge's criticisms reflected concerns in sections of the Colombo elite at Rajajakse's increasingly autocratic methods of rule, including his sidelining of parliament and dependence on the military. Well aware that he was a target, Wickrematunge wrote his own death notice published as the editorial in last weekend's Sunday Leader in which he likened Sri Lanka to Nazi Germany.

Wickrematunge directly addressed the president, noting the two had previously been long-time friends. "In the wake of my death I know you [Rajapakse] will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death...

"Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you... [No one else has] caused so much blood to be spilled on this land as you have, or trampled on the rights of citizens as you do."

Taken in the context of Sri Lanka where governments have trampled on democratic rights and shed blood for decades, the editorial written by a former friend is an extraordinary indictment of the Rajapakse regime. Under Rajapakse, power has been concentrated to an unprecedented extent in the hands of a political-military cabal that broke the 2002 ceasefire, re-launched communal war and used it to justify the gross abuse of democratic rights. Wickrematunge spoke for sections of the political establishment who fear that such methods will ultimately provoke a massive backlash by working people.

In the case of MTV/Sirasa, the government has gone one step further, attempting to blame the opposition UNP. Police, purportedly acting on an anonymous tip off, have arrested a UNP municipal councillor, alleging that he helped transfer the weapons involved in the attack. Neither the government nor the police has offered any explanation as to why the councillor or the UNP would be involved in ransacking a television station critical of Rajapakse.

The attack came in the wake of denunciations of MTV/Sirasa in the state-run media for its "unpatriotic" attitude. The station's coverage, the government mouthpieces declared, did not give sufficient coverage of the army's victory at Kilinochchi and gave too much prominence to an LTTE suicide bombing in Colombo on the same day. Like the Sunday Leader, MTV/Sirasa fully backs the war but has been critical of government corruption and abuses.

For all the government's fanfare about the army's victories over the LTTE, the attack on MTV/Sirasa and Wickrematunge's murder demonstrate just how weak the Rajapakse regime is. Last Friday, announcing the army's capture of the strategic Elephant Pass on national television, the president was preoccupied with conspirators who were trying to "belittle these victories, to turn the attention of the people to other directions".

"The aim of these conspirators is to level unfounded charges against the army commander who works with the greatest dedication to achieve these victories," Rajapakse declared. They were seeking to "destroy the morale of troops, destabilise the country" in order to "make room for various international forces to interfere to grab our gains away from us".

Not surprisingly, Rajapakse failed to name the conspirators or provide any concrete detail about this conspiracy. His paranoia reflects above all a fear of the broad masses of working people who have been forced to bear the costs of the war and now confront rapidly worsening living standards as a result of the global economic downturn.

The army's victories have not been accompanied by widespread popular euphoria. On the orders of the government, state institutions including schools were compelled to "celebrate" the Kilinochchi victory. Various Sinhala chauvinist organisations held relatively small rallies. But among working people, despite considerable confusion, there was just the hope that the 25-year war would soon be over and life might improve.

It is precisely these expectations that the government is incapable of fulfilling. Coming in the wake of Wickrematunge's assassination, Rajapakse's obsession with "conspirators" is the sharpest possible warning of the measures that will be used to suppress any opposition. If the army does capture the LTTE's remaining strongholds, this "victory" will not bring "peace, freedom and democracy", as Rajapakse claimed after the fall of Kilinochchi, but police-state measures aimed against the working class.

posted in *Activists* - 3 replies

Legalize Hemp and Cannabis in California

Fully — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:04:48 GMT

Hi Family,

I am asking activists to work a few minutes a day advancing this cause.

Right now there are two competing signature drives to put Cannabis legalization initiatives on the ballot in California in

November 2010.

One is found at www.taxcannabis2010.org

The other is found at www.CaliforniaCannabisInitiative.org

Please look carefully at the text of both laws (the text of each is finalized) and make up your own mind which one you support.

I am supporting www.CaliforniaCannabisInitiative.org because our law will protect Cannabis users from discrimination in

healthcare, employment, and housing. It is a full legalization measure for industrial hemp and recreational cannabis which will restore full human rights to Hemp farmers and Cannabis users all across California. Of course supplying Cannabis to children will remain illegal just as it is today. Driving vehicles under the influence will remain illegal just as it is today. Cannabis users will still be fired from their jobs if they show up to work impaired.

There are two parts to our plan. The first part is to publicly post and personally distribute our "Freedom Lover's Call to Arms" in order to recruit volunteers. This document is available here-

www.imgur.com/dbU83

The second part of our plan is to ask everyone who volunteers to make a pledge for how many signatures they can collect in

the next 30 days or so. 15-30 signatures is a good number. If enough volunteers show this level of commitment we can succeed. You can probably get that number from your family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors without having to solicit in public too much. This is an "out of the closet" movement. We will have to proudly advocate human rights for responsible, honest, hard-working Cannabis smokers in order to convince legitimate people to support us. I can supply stickers equivalent to each persons pledge number. These stickers can be used to generate interest and be given to voters who sign the petition. Here is the sticker design-

www.imgur.com/2cjvb

Feel free to distribute and use these images. Just don't copyright them.

We have 145 days in order to get the number of signatures that we need. Our petition is hot off the press on 9/11 and we

have started collecting the first signatures yesterday 9/12.

We are polling 56% public support for Cannabis legalization in California which menas that this is an initiative which is not doomed. Its time has finally arrived; we are at the tipping point right now. Now is the time to do this and to do it right. We may only get one chance. If a law which is not exactly what we want is implemented then we may lose our critical mass and our ability to set it right.

I believe that less adults will smoke cannabis after it is legal. This is the case in the Netherlands where it has been

available over-the-counter for 30 years yet only half as many citizens (percentage-wise) smoke as do citizens here. My economics professor has taught for years that prohibition has not succeeded in decreasing usage by increasing penalties. Instead it has destroyed lives and families without substantial benefit to society. After legalization hard-drug usage will decrease due to a "separation of the markets," a decline in the price of Cannabis relative to hard-drugs, and the restoration of honesty and common sense in drug education. Violence, thievery, and the incarceration of honest people will decrease as well. I also believe that a well regulated market will decrease the availability and appeal of cannabis to children. In fact teenage Cannabis use in California has fallen steadily since the passage of Proposition 215. Furthermore the adults who smoke Cannabis after legalization will be better able appreciate the majesty of nature in peace and unity without learning to fear and disrespect authority figures. This will be better for their spirits and better for society. Finally the human rights of legitimate medical Cannabis patients will be better protected than they are today. Legalizing Cannabis will create a safer, healthier, and more humane California for us all to live in.

If you want to help us in any way please contact the CCI campaign at www.CaliforniaCannabisInitiative.org or write me at

deep_space_underground@yahoo.com I give you my encouragement to modify this message if necessary and distribute it to anyone who might help on any forum or by any mechanism.

Love,
-Fully Committed

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Conspiracy Collage

marvindublin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:26:47 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmaOXPWesFo - 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2MoxDY6OpU&feature=fvw - 2

Two vidz I made a couple of days ago.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Help Outlaw Corporate Political Pacs OCPP

Leslee — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:53:36 GMT

Help Outlaw Corporate Political Pacs OCPP

http://tribes.tribe.net/outlawcorporatepoliticalpac

This tribe has been created in order to bring together people who believe that corporations have corrupted our nation. And who believe, that if we come together this can be changed.

In general I am very much against censorship however this is NOT a tribe for arguing the premiss and anyone who does so will be kicked off. (You may advertise a tribe here, that has been created to disagree with us. But keep it short.)

Useful constructive criticism intended to improve our ability to achieve our ends is welcome.

If you choose to join us, Your mission is to find articles and news that will help to educate us, as well as organizations that support our cause. And to help bring in more people thru email, Tribes and other social networks. If we are successful I will start a website to continue the work.

It is my intention that we will never ask for cash donations and that this will be an all volunteer organization.

Lets start a movement to make our nation a better place with equal political power for all, that our founding fathers intended for us to have.

Outlaw Corporate Political Pacs OCPP

Grass roots movements start with a handful of people. Please join us. We CAN make a difference.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

BAN MIND CONTROL/ DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS TORTURE AND ABUSE

Native Flower — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:09:42 GMT

I know this sounds like science fiction or a conspiracy theory, but it's not. It is a complete reality and a huge danger to humanity. Please check out the following petition and sign it. As crazy as this may sound but mind control energy weapons is a reality. Millions of people are suffering from the mental abuse and torture of these weapons that are not openely talked about or known, or "declassified." The abuse is largely sexist and racist and targets people who are of certain ethnicities... primarily who are not white. The abuse is deliberate, cruel, and is done by directing energy beams, via satellite or other means, onto the body/person/ brain of the individuals targeting certain centers of the brain to elicit responses or actions. The companies, military, governments who are doing this also use sound weapons to direct sounds, subtle or not, vibrations and energy in the mind or environment of the victims to harrass, abuse, and control the actions of these individuals. Whether they are able to do control the person or not, they definitely abuse and severely mentally and psychologically hurt the victims.

BAN MIND CONTROL/DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS TORTURE AND ABUSE

To: the President of the United States, Members of the U.S. Senate and Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, see more...your Governor, Members of your State Senate, Members of your State House, the President of the United States, Members of the U.S. Senate and Members of the U.S. House of Representatives

Started by: Soleilmavis L

WE CONCERN ABOUT THE ABUSE AND TORTURE OF THE FOLLOWINGS :- DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS; NEUROLOGICAL WEAPONS; MIND CONTROL WEAPONS; BODY AND BRAIN MANIPULATION WEAPONS; PSYCHOTRONIC WEAPONS; SPACE WEAPONS; NON-LETHAL WEAPONS; COINTELPRO; ANDany other unacknowledged or as yet undeveloped means inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the biological life, bodily health, mental health, or physical and economic well-being of a person) through the use of land-based, sea-based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations or the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations.Please help to ban abuses and tortures of above-mentioned weapons.
Yours Sincerely,
Soleilmavis
peacepink.ning.com

"Mailtem" members of THE WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN AGAINST the (secret) Abuse and Torture That Uses Mind Control, Directed Energy Weapons and Manipulation Weapons on Every Living Being.
peacepink.ning.com/forum/to...m-members

1.

This petition ends on Dec 31.

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

Hypocrisy and Cannabis Laws in the U.S.

green_is_the_color — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:18:48 GMT

Most sane people would say that the laws that govern Cannabis in the U.S. are not realistic and are unfair making no sense what so ever in the face of things like cigarettes and alcohol being legal. But the hypocrisy goes far deeper than that. The CSA or Controlled Substance Act put into law in 1970 diems that Cannabis should be listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. No big news I am sure we all know this, and we know one of the things that it means is that the government of the United States claims it has no medical use. So here is the catch that many people don’t know... I Quote”Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia...” Abstract from U.S. Patent # 6630507 who owns this patent, the United States of America. We own it along with some banks, a car company and some other recent acquisitions to our collective portfolio. Now I have to ask how do they think they can get away with this kind of crap. People go to jail, lives are ruined, sick people are being stopped from being able to get cheap meds that will help their symptoms, criminal is not even the word for it. I don’t really care if it is some huge conspiracy of big Pharma, or if it is a hold over policy from our not so distant silly past dragging its feet into or current more silly present. The debate about Cannabis is very big, and it is a screaming example of how the government over reaches their power and misuses public trust. I think every one should email members of congress and ask them what is up with our collective investment in Patent # 6630507 and in the end who will be the benefactor of this patent.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

The Obama Meme (New; or from old violent régimes)

XenitH — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:45:21 GMT

This is a brief reflecting on Propaganda
(Obama/Hitlar/Stalin)
Take a moment and open your mind to the following images:
Symbols:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/BrandonisaTool/Symbols.jpg
Posters:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/BrandonisaTool/Posters.jpg
Hope:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/BrandonisaTool/HopePosters.jpg
Detailed Posters:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/BrandonisaTool/DetailPosters.jpg

These are images we are seeing everywhere now a days.
If you know a little about media consolidation this will scare the junk out of you!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/BrandonisaTool/PropagandaEverywhere.jpg

I am not the only one making these connections.
Do a search online and see what others think about Obama’s campaign techniques.

And if you really want to get the shivers look into his recent votes/initiatives.
*Making organic/small farms nearly illegal.
*Stripping us of the right to bare arms.
*Stripping our freedom of speech.
*Privatizing the Internet.
* Supporting the “Patriot Act” and other feel-good named unconstitutional laws.
*HD/DTV and other mass media tools

Sounds like good ideas… If you want to control your populous

Think critically, research, and then have discussions about it with those you know and love.

posted in *Activists* - 7 replies

It's time to meet the new Drug Czar at Time 4 Hemp!

Casper Leitch — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:49:05 GMT

Time 4 Hemp wants to take time to introduce you to Gil Kerlikowske (head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy) and jam out to lots of fantastic music along the way and it's free to download at http://www.Time4Hemp.com

News items in this segment feature (in order of appearance):

Bruce Mirken (fromthe Marijuana Policy Project)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jeffery Miron (Senior Economics Lecturer at Harvard University)
John P Walters (Former United States Drug Czar)

Music featured in this segment (in order of appearance):

IQ - OSO-Krazy - Johnny Citizen - Bigga Haitian
Primary Others - Robin Williams - Obeah Vybes
Bill Berry - Elvy Musikka - Bob Dylan

Please pass this information on to everyone you feel would enjoy this show.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Ed Rosenthal takes Time 4 Hemp PLUS Audio remarks from President Obama!

Casper Leitch — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:00:54 GMT

Featured writer in CANNABIS CULTURE and SKUNK magazines as well as the author of more than a dozen books on growing marijuana - Ed Rosenthal takes 'Time 4 Hemp' and it's free to download at http://www.Time4Hemp.com Also included in this segment are audio recordings of President Obama talking about his use of marijuana and his approach to the War On Drugs.

Musical artists (in order of appearance):

Luke Scarmazzo - Pato Banton
Red Dirt - The Blaxicans

Please pass this information on to everyone you feel would enjoy this show.

Keep Strong!
Casper Leitch
Host/Creator: Time 4 Hemp
http://www.Time4Hemp.com

P.S. - Time 4 Hemp has a MySpace group - if you'd like to join, visit:
http://groups.myspace.com/ATime4Hemp

If you have time to surf the net, take a minute to say 'high' to all our friends at the Marijuana Music Awards:
http://www.marijuanamusicawards.com and
http://www.myspace.com/marijuanamusicawards

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

O'Bambam needs to lighten up on Fred Flintstone, or our rubble-strewn yard will get a brown wave, of bang-bang-BANLADESH, one morning

Bob — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:35:00 GMT

See how Obama caused cops to start shooting young black men, when he stalled the appointment of Senator Roland Burris?

We had five OPD go down, four permanently, when Obama came to California, already at riot, unnoticed, then cross-incited and aggravated, during seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to interagency fraud, and conspiracy to defraud citizens of civil rights.

Waterboard that hot poker face, tubers. You are failing to understand MONTY PYTHON, such as Carol Cleveland goofing as Mrs.John the Baptist, in a trench.

See how the Atlantic and Pacific trenches can be configured and blasted, selectively, to keep washing our coasts, with terrible tsunamis? WE ARE UNDER THAT GUN, since the Kriegsmarine figured this out, before Monty Python sketched destiny, comically.

I went to CAL with Laurie Stern, whose Granny donated Stern Grove, etc., with former Berkeley Mayor Nancy Skinner, a Mae West-talking Nannerd Skinner, who crashed out somewhere, and add BIG BOOBS and a makeover and you have GaGa. Poker Face is actually a dire prediction of what will happen from La Palma, when it pops and drops, splashing London, New York, and Miami.

Chest-a-peak Bay will get a brown tidal wave, but Zionists are neither kosher nor cleansed, by purim, from stoning Moses, even if his name did get shortened from Ra-Moses, since Thera erupted c.1400 B.C. and blotted his Sun, get it?

Well, check my position, at this weird table, and my cards. Would you believe art is important, to serve notice, of impending or likely disasters, via blonde tint, which may make old, L.A. area, CAL-educated gals notice Linda Fields, forever, as part of Lady GaGa's actually cunning corporate media personna.

At BARRINGTON HALL STUDENTS' CO-OP, in the 1970s and since, at CAL, Berkeley, we had ME on the tuna-red Gibson Melody Maker, getting overproduced and ripped.

The L.A. kids and the San Francisco kids at CAL had their own ways of notifying me, they knew I was the guitarist, getting ripped, 1971-1980, at Barrington Hall and around town.

The L.A. kids included people who went to high school with rock stars, which duped my playing, in the downstairs area of Barrington, and eventually, students told me they had met persons like the PORCARO BROTHERS, JOAN JETT, and KENNY LOGGINS, who in extreme bad faith are still making money, off illegal claims, to composing hits, we all knew came off my fretboard, as one, neat song, lead and rhythym, already together on one guitar.

The S.F. kids included Lowell H.S. students, which knew Time-Warner and Bill Graham Presents were profiteering, off illegal W.E.S., aimed at all of us, at Barrington Hall, 1971-1980, and thereafter.

My 108 roomie frosh in 1973-4 included Sam, with Lowell High's largest penis, ever. See the George Lucas character, a dark sider, who has a double light saber, and he whacks Liam Neeson, to be then poked by Obi, who then gets it on with Aniken?

Get a clue, about ANAK KRAKATAO. Daddy got his name, over there, something about his attitude and temper.

The other S.F. kids started getting in the corporate music productions, and instead of getting with me in a rock group, or getting with me to complain to the USCA or to CAL and the administration, the Barrington students let me get bled, and they started and then enlarged an illegal campaign of media, which was to harass me, to move from Berkeley and to never return.

I think the point of unfair business practices was reached, when VAN HALEN did several albums with nothing but overproduced Bob Gaebler tunes, and by their third album, WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST, David Lee Roth was doing double jump-kicks like Lowell grad KENNETH ABIKO, while the cover featured Roth framing Abiko lookalike Alex Van Halen.

The S.F. kids began to keep me out of the touch football and to harass me, directly, while the L..A. kids began to steal anything not nailed down, like my jacket, amplifiers, etc.

When you incorporate like THAT much weird but hard coincidence or fatal warning dilemma, to ME, I look out, when a made SFPD Captain like JOHN EHRLICH gets a trend going, to harass me, and this illegal trend continues, all the way from 1977 through 2009.

MY causes of actions aren't getting into court, and we are nearly twenty years, after the US started flipping depleted uranium shooting galleries, toward Iran, right through Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, without taking CIA-client Saddam.

Business may not be lawful commerce, if circumstances of illegally quartered standing armies in the US will not resolve migration, to profiteering, to call shots and hold, as RICO gangs.

NO? Then leave Arabs, Iran, and Korea alone!

You may not charge to the bank, your charging toward North Korea, when you let the CIA and NSA churn the 9/11 attacks, by hiding from the FBI, any information about known terrorists, which intended to attack, then, INCLUDING BY AGGRAVATED BILL OF ATTAINDER, TO PREVENT THE FBI AGENTS WITH INFORMATION, TO CAUSE NOTICE OF THIS, in the public interest.

The CIA and NSA may not so continue, without trial to rehabilitate them and any persons culpable, at preventing timely relief, from illegal W.E.S. and illegal interests, profiteering at either intellectual property theft or at removal of civil rights and liberties, and habeas corpus.

You shills for pre-US Constitution mass murder and torture by British and Roman Imperialists have been killing Asians, Arabs, and Africans with US applications of Vatican and London-contrived European wars, WWII, after suppressing how the British started WWI by invading Palestine in 1882, and the American corporate invasion of Hawaii in 1893 established to all the existence of an illegal, secret treaty, between the US and UK.

How can you pretend lawful British treaties, when England and Spain sue the US, now, over torture, derived from their own, predatory imperialist, organized criminal gangs, now reduced, but still illegally interested? The US must introduce ME, as material witness, or the US will be compelled to divest profiteering, by our own RICO and all US Code.

DON'T KEEP THE SAME OLD, FAILED TACTICS, and yet claim 'strategy,' but look how good at graft but not math, is Obama, Mr. ZERO.

Anywhere along the Atlantic or Pacific ridges and trenches are places, for creating a pop and drop incident, which may be devised as weapons, to send TSUNAMIS, barreling toward the unprepared US coastline.

Swim like Phelps, from the black-hole-sun, which will menace our orbit, making a La Palma calving event more likely, whereby the Northwest face of the volcanic island of La Palma in the Canaries shall drop into the Atlantic, causing a nasty tidal wave, all over the several nations of the North Atlantic Ocean, heard of NY-DC?

But when you WATERBOARD-TORTURE people you are trying to keep from hiring a lawyer, since you are churning all the courts, YOU ARE GOING TO GET HOISTED, CAPTAIN PITARD-RETARD, by a wall of brown water with killer-flotsam like houses and cars bobbing in it, since the lawyers have been kept out of court in re Israel, since the 1970s when I was at CAL, no doubt, and then you all let the fat Bushwacks run media, as if Jews are from Tel Aviv, but heard of King Saul?

How about, your Steve Doucy will leave a nasty Campbell Brown, on every coast? The mud volcanoes of the Marianas' Trench are the key, to how to prevent or cause earthquakes and volcanoes, but will Obama notice, the reason for ficticious Captain Jean-Luc Picard is the Marianas' Trench mission, in 1951, which included a Picard and a smarty, named Walsh?

Are you ready for the STAR TREK or the football, to pack up and leave, for lack of budget, during the ABRAHAMIC RIOT, aggravated severally by Reagan-RICO evasion of review?

The Abrahamic riot derives from the stoning of Moses and his Ethiopian-born Cohen wife, at Sinai, since Jews are from Ethiopia. Abraham threatened Isaac, or didn't you GET IT? David busted loose from the Philistines to control the Sea of Galilee, but we need not send F-16s to kill Iran over this, since you are GOING SWIMMING, one morning, for being idiots, since 1882 and the British invasion of Palestine, while the US trend is to invade Hawaii and OUR HOMES, since the illegal 1893 coup, against the Hawaiian royal family.

Here's a pig-nose in a poke at you, you're gonna joke at it, too, but lose that smile because all the while, I can see my 1970s CAL classmates, in Lady GaGa, which is high-plainly BAD NEWS, from this informed drifter, to coastline residents. Where this muse wanders, you need to map, since the quiz afterward will be, HOW CAN OBAMA CLAIM HE COULD NOT SEE THE CRASH OR THE TIDAL WAVES, COMING? I saw the financial crash coming for twenty years, since that is how long deregulation of energy has been touted.

Lady GaGa is a Catholic-educated muse, which features my CAL GF Toni's boobs and dancing goof, Linda Fields' artsy and voice, Laurie Stern's face and forestry, Nancy Skinner's Mae West-tsunami forecast, for the Stern Grove in SF. Laurie Stern went out with Mike Young's flying brown-face; beware the WAVE. Khalid Sheik Mohammed looked like Sam Begler of Beverly Hills and CAL; 9/11 went down, and no lawyers represent me or al Qaeda, yet. You wanted to clean up the hairy butt, already. DO NOT INCITE #8.

But show business kept stealing and overproducing the music I played at CAL, the whole time Obama was blowing out CO2 from his and all his whores' cars, since 2006. Get into the big dig or legalize everything, Barry and Hillary. You schlepped with U2, one campaign too many.

AC-ZZ has been a ripoff, inc., ever since 1971, when my guitar started drawing heat and corporate writeoffs, to make songs about our second-floor Barrington Hall drug activity, for muses like The WALL and all, while the get-down sides from ripps in Berkeley were made into themes like SCHOOL'S OUT and COLD ETHYL; see how gas used to be syphoned, in the 1970s?

Ronnie Kashinai went to Mountain View H.S., became a drummer, and got involved in the eh, going to CDC? He looks just like the dark underwear guy doing GaGa in the Poler Face vid.

Last time this happened, Khalid Sheik Mohammed looked like Sam Begler from Beverly Hills and CAL in the 1970s. The Twin Towers didn't make out so well, on 9/11/2001.

Since 9/11/2001, no lawyer serves. The State Bar cheats me and all courts. The several administrations have advanced rich kids from lousy private academies, while hiding all attorneys in any service, from cause of action, while illegally continuing in all courts.

When John Ehrlich from Lowell H.S. in SF and John Sjobring from hell and Barrington Hall USCA at CAL goofed me at a 1980 co-op reunion, John Lennon got shot. Hey, he was letting Johnny Winter front with Lennon hits, to apply my playing, illegally copied. So he got shot by Mark David Chapman, who now looks like Dr.Evil, in Goldmember.

When R.S.Mueller III did an illegal case on me, Scott Dyleski got busted. The wife of one of the churning attorneys got herself all cut up.

See Scott Evil, in Goldmember? Get a clue. SNL duped me or put up groups which did that, ever since John Ehrlich and I were at CAL, in the 1970s.

Turns out, students and corporate and government crooks in collusion knew I was getting duped, they knew CAL was burning me, and they were after the creators of Windows, so they had to keep CAL going, despite SCHOOL'S OUT, by crooked, fronting Sheriff Joe Arpaio's buddy Vincent Furnier giving him illegal business advantages, while he keeps the drug war up, without protecting the border, but look at Furnier and WB steal AC-ZZ and sing about it, since the 1970s, but not one review issues, and President Obama signed W.E.S., for his duping, corporate music cronies.

CAL needed to revise its modus for illegal profiteering on media conditioning into a legal plan to educate students, by 1979. CAL is THIRTY YEARS too late, to lawfully relieve this crime, when RICHMOND STATION creeps to become a cause of action, to stop the State, in 2009.

Into this clowning, inc. versions of our Barrington Hall Room 208 crept Reserve SFPD Captain John Ehrlich, who was a rich kid from Woodside, who knew Room 208 contained generations of drug dealers, including those parodied before he moved into Barrington, such as Pink Cloud, see DARK SIDE OF THE MOON and THE WALL, when I lived in 103 and 108.

Got HOT BLOODED? That and a lot of other corporate dupe came from Room 103. A lot came from Room 102, much was played in 108 or downstairs, or at SILVER BALL GARDENS, on Durant Avenue, until I got RATT'd on in Mountain View, since I moved back in 1980, after RATT and Dan Halen and everybody got the cartoon-drop on me, in Berkeley, and shifted their mikes to our home phone and to any creepy Santa Clara County neighbors, who make money and flip stuff.

All the Pink Floyd howl is about drug deals, late at night, which we experienced, since CAL and the other schools sort dealers, whores, pig cops, and pig corporate dicks, illegally interested, illegally continuing, illegally funded, and uglier, daily. Cops know the music has drugs and whores, since cops are giving the corporate musicians their illegal intellectual property for overproduction, or THE WHO would not have guitar at Killburn in 1977, after Pete Townshend drops his guitar, but the chords continue, syncing from the P.A., guitar on ground.

Green Day took off on the Tommy Castagnola-Warren Spencer-generation of Room 208, Barrington Hall, 1970s, which was the subject of my conversation, in October 2006, when Captain Ehrlich and I found ourselves at another Barrington Hall reunion.

I suppose Captain Ehrlich guessed Pink Floyd was spoofing a previous generation of Room 208 pot-dealers and Pink Cloud, who formerly occupied a third floor Barrington Hall closet space, as crasher emeritus, officially proclaimed by crazy students, who never purged the surveillance, when they knew it existed, never engaged Deans, and so, CAL, the UC, and CSUs are all for review.

CAL may not engage police or corporations or any profiteer, for illegal surveillance, since the 1970s, illegally fund itself and all persons connected, and then continue, without city attorney action, for CBPC 17206, to relieve all class grounds for unfair business practices relief, or quit.

SFPD knew or should have known it is illegally continuing all cases, while illegally funded, seeking any current contract and any retirement pay, in seditious bad faith.

Captain Ehrlich knew the recent State funding would crash, including by my direct notice, October 2006.

Captain Ehrlich was at Sheik Mohammed-lookalike-pot-dealer Sam Begler's apartment, all the time, in the 1970s. He burned weed, with us, when I used to carry my red Gibson around.

But when John Ehrlich got close to me, he was hostile. Ehrlich and his associates turned against me, repeatedly trying to harass me, to coerce me to never come to Berkeley, again.

CAL was burning me, to enable illegal corporate and police surveillance, and then CAL flipped Windows the same way as caused any music I played to be overproduced and exactly copied.

Any music stolen was never recovered, with any real property such as Barrington Hall, which was illegally sold and deactivated by the USCA, in 1989, to be re-acquired as a rooming house.

Then-US Rep. Ron Dellums was at The FINAL WINE DINNER, March or April 1989, with whore Alison apRoberts, which flipped her tricking on Shattuck Avenue, to a tainted journalism degree and a post at the SacBee, and an illegal pitch for selling Barrington on account of proximity to PINK CLOUD. I once assigned extra workshifts to her, to make up for her Shattuck tricking, 1973-74.

Dellums was doing Alison apRoberts, from the look of them. NO TWO WAYS, for those hos.

Whores may not so appoint or mis-define drug dealers, where neither is legal, and both are disinclined to lawful disposition of the Regents of UC or the University of California or any city, which neglects CBPC 17206, since enactment of Prop.64, 1/1/2005.

Captain Ehrlich, SFPD may not affect RICHMOND STATION or the State, from his proximity to the recording industry's excessive profiteering, where CAL and the State evade review.

Whores and dealers may not continue, where they are an aggravated hazard, and swine flu is now a proximate hazard, where illegal interests must divest, for another cause and for tainted persons, proximate to imminent further injury and to inciters of riot, CPC 404, which at misconduct must desist, while all minor persons and general rioters must desist, in good faith.

DHS must notice fraud, by several administrations, to take intellectual property and simultaneously incite riot and coerce illegal hazards, which must desist in all ways, instantly.

The planets hover over JANET. The volcanoes will roar, as if she is rooted in Neopolitan cement, since Nostradamus first resembled Usama bin Laden, or vice versa.

Robert Gaebler
Tuessday, May 5, 2009

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Food Inc.

marvindublin — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:26:15 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0 - Trailer

Sinja posted this on a couple of tribes. I'm sharing it as much as possible.

Cheers.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

This Week on The New American Dream

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:39:07 GMT

http://www.newamericandream.net/index.html

The New American Dream
... well ... because we're dreaming of Dick Cheney and George Bush in a big black car limousine motorcade with those little American flags on the front quarter panels on their way to prison

... we're dreaming of a USA truth commission and Cub Scout tours of the "secret" FBI and CIA

and some other stuff

This Week's Feature Interviews:

Monday - Timbre Wolf, a musician who moved from Tulsa to Hawaii

Tuesday - Al Markovitz, of Norfolk, Virginia, the Tulsa of the east coast, editor of the Blue Collar Review, "journal of working class literature"

Wednesday - Aimee England, the mayor of Tulsa — no, actually, Aimee lives in Michigan and spent over twenty years working in an independent, radical bookstore

Thursday - Lee Rayburn, radio show host, formerly of Air American Radio and also Madison, Wisconsin. [never been to Tulsa.]

Friday - Bartcop, of Bartcop.com, from where else? Tulsa.

Columns:
Steve Clemens of the Twin Cities
Lydia Sems from Atlanta

Poetry:
More from Ava Bird of Berkeley

and some other stuff

Thank you.

The Dream Team
http://www.newamericandream.net/index.html

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

National Protest Against Bank Bailouts (In Tucson)

XenitH — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:59:04 GMT

THE GAME IS OVER…

DO NOT COLLECT $200 BILLION

JOIN THOUSANDS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY IN A
NATIONAL PROTEST AGAINST
BANK BAILOUTS

Saturday April 11, 9AM
CHASE BANK - SPEEDWAY AND SWAN Tucson, AZ
(NE CORNER)
(Parking at mall on NW corner. Bring a sign or use one of ours)

Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big to function in a free market. The corporations that caused this mess must be broken up and held accountable. It’s not enough to try to patch up the current system. We demand serious reform that fixes the root problems in our political and economic system and we demand that the reform happen in an open and transparent manner.

Sponsored by: Tucsonans for a New Way Forward For more info: www.anewwayforward.org To help, contact: Richard Kaiser dikyzr@yahoo.com, John Kromko 791-7497, or CJ Jones cj@mcn.org

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country! - Thomas Jefferson

Our country is under new management; too bad the owners are the same. – J. Kromko

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

Dreaming the NEW American Dream

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:42:37 GMT

California poets Ava Bird & Rex Butters, and....

Santa Cruz artist Russell Brutsche - Karen Kwiatkowski of Virginia

Protests to stop immigration raids ... and more.
____________________

http://www.newamericandream.net

The New American Dream

What's New?

* Karen Kwiatkowski column
* Ava Bird poetry
* Rex Butters poetry
* Gary Mennie poetry

Columns:
Sherwood Ross — why not shut down a few prisons in the United States as well?
Mickey Z — Americans are cowards, too comfortable, will never-ever-not-in-one-million-years revolt-or-even-bother-to-stand-up — no matter what the rich folks do to them.
Lydia Sems — It's The American Dream that is the problem.

and more from Jack Saunders ...

Resistance:
* Planned civil disobedience in Minnesota to stop raids against immigrants
* Protests at Creech AFB against U.S. drone terroristic activity
*100 days of protest against Guantanamo to culminate

All this, Northern Exposure, The Big Lebowski, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights ... a certificate for free toast ... and more.

Join us.

The New American Dream
Dude.
... because ... Sister Mary Anne told us, "There are no wrong questions, if you don't know the answers."

... from the Dream Team

http://www.newamericandream.net

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Congressman Barney Frank Takes Time 4 Hemp!!!!

Casper Leitch — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:30:13 GMT

Congressman Barney Frank talks about his efforts in Congress to end the War On Drugs in a visit with Casper Leitch and joint-host, Gatewood Galbraith - and it's free to download at http://www.Time4Hemp.TV

We've also posted a new Time4Hemp-MUSIC Podcast that's free to download and share. It features over 90-minutes of great Classic Music To Get Stoned To. Please pass this information on to everyon and anyone you feel would enjoy this material.

Keep Strong!
Casper Leitch
Creator/Host: Time 4 Hemp

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

New Middle East Culture & Politics tribe

Steven — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:53:08 GMT

New Middle East Culture & Politics tribe

This group is open to all who want to discuss Near East and Middle East culture & politics and imperialist intervention in a meaningful way.

Those who want to argue using personal attacks, lies, slander, red baiting, and ridicule instead of addressing the issues will be banned from the group. People with a history of doing so in other groups will not be allowed entry into this group.

In addition, it is fine to question the legitimacy of any and all religions, but racism and attacks on entire oppressed groups such as Palestinians and Kurds is not allowed.

Join Near and Middle East Culture & Politics:
http://tribes.tribe.net/neareast

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

US Congress opens under Democratic control

Steven — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:28:37 GMT

US Congress opens under Democratic control
By Patrick Martin
7 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/cong-j07.shtml

The 111th Congress opened Tuesday with the Democratic Party in firm control of both houses. Nancy Pelosi was reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives by a margin of 255 to 174, reflecting the 21-seat gain made by the Democrats in the November 4 elections.

The Democrats hold 256 House seats to 178 for the Republicans, with one seat vacated by Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who will be White House chief of staff in the Obama administration. The open seat in northwest Chicago will undoubtedly be filled by a Democrat in a special election, giving the Democrats a total of 257 seats.

In the Senate, an incoming group of 34 took the oath of office from outgoing vice president Dick Cheney. These included five new Democratic senators who replaced or defeated Republicans, giving the Democrats a 55 to 41 majority, with two independents who vote with the Democrats, and two vacancies, both likely to be filled by Democrats. That would give the Democrats an effective 59-41 majority.

The Democratic congressional leadership has bemoaned its failure to reach the 60-vote margin in the Senate required to overcome a filibuster, in order to excuse in advance the right-wing policies that will be pursued by the Obama administration.

Obama himself has gone even further, in the name of “bipartisanship,” claiming he needs to get 80 votes in the Senate for his stimulus plan, thus insuring that the right wing of the Republican Party has veto power over economic policy, despite the repudiation of the Republicans at the polls two months ago.

This so-called 60-vote threshold, while discussed endlessly by the media, is a transparent pretext for Obama abandoning the reformist pretenses of his election campaign on issues like health care, education, the environment and increasing taxes on the wealthy.

In reality, the Democrats enjoy top-heavy majorities that would allow them to enact policies without a single Republican vote. The Democratic majority in the House is the largest for either party since 1994. The Democratic majority in the Senate is the largest for either party since 1978.

During the 12 years of Republican control of the House, from 1995 to 2006, the Republican majority ranged between 221 and 230 out of 435 seats, far less than the incoming Democratic majority. The Republicans prevailed on virtually every policy question not because of their numbers, because they were more determined and ruthless in serving the interests of the US ruling elite.

The Democrats are equally subservient to the dictates of the corporate oligarchy, but they play a different role, acting as the safety valve for popular discontent and posturing as the defenders of working people and the poor, while opposing any measures that would genuinely help the vast majority of the population. This is what lends a two-faced and half-hearted character to their political performance, both in opposition and in power.

For example, the Democratic majority in the last Congress—larger than the Republican majority that impeached President Clinton—failed to take any action against the crimes of the Bush administration. There was no cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq, and Congress did not even mount a major investigation into such events as the launching of the illegal war, the promotion of an official policy of torture, or the government response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Democratic Party's spinelessness in the face of Republican opposition, or even criticism, was demonstrated at the opening session of the Senate regarding the vacancies that resulted from the decision of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bar two Democrats from taking seats to which they were legally entitled.

One vacancy was created by the resignation of Barack Obama after his election as president. On December 30, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich nominated the former state attorney general, 71-year-old Roland Burris, to fill the vacancy. Reid instructed Senate personnel not to seat Burris because of the criminal charges brought against Blagojevich, which include the claim that he sought to sell the Senate appointment.

No indictment has yet been brought against the governor, despite massive publicity given to the charges filed by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Last week Fitzgerald asked a federal judge to give him an additional 90 days before seeking a grand jury indictment, an indication that the case against Blagojevich is less than solid.

While the Democratic-controlled Illinois state legislature has begun hearings on a possible impeachment of Blagojevich, no action has been taken and he continues to exercise all the powers of his office, including those related to federal elections, most recently, in setting the date for a special election to fill the seat of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff.

While most legal experts cited in the media agree that the governor’s appointment of Burris is within his powers, and there has been no allegation of corrupt relations between Burris, who has been out of office for six years, and Blagojevich, Reid and the Senate Democratic leadership are frightened of the Republican and media barrage that would follow the seating of Burris.

The other Senate vacancy is an even clearer demonstration of political cowardice. It is the result of the protracted recount of the election in Minnesota, which ended Monday with the state canvassing board declaring Democrat Al Franken the victor over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, by a margin of 225 votes, with 1,212,431 votes for Franken and 1,212,206 for Coleman.

In the normal course of events, such an action would be definitive. Franken would be seated, while Coleman pursues an appeal through the state courts, as is his right. Such a procedure was followed most recently in 1997, when Democrat Mary Landrieu was seated as the senator from Louisiana, while her Republican opponent pursued an unsuccessful court challenge. Notably, Landrieu’s seating required the consent of then Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, because the Republicans controlled the Senate.

Today, a Democratic majority has decided not to seat an elected Democrat in deference to the court challenge filed by his defeated Republican opponent. Reid cited Republican threats of filibusters and other procedural delays as one reason for refusing to seat Franken immediately as the senator from Minnesota.

An attorney for Coleman indicated that the Republican senator would cite the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore as part of his appeal. He will be making an argument that because different counties in Minnesota used different standards to decide on whether to accept or reject challenged absentee ballots, the state election process is a violation of equal protection provisions—the same argument made by the Bush campaign in Florida in 2000.

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

Farewell speech, Bush insists “war on terror” must continue

Steven — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:28:30 GMT

In farewell speech, Bush insists “war on terror” must continue
By Bill Van Auken
16 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/bush-j16.shtml

In his final speech from the White House Thursday night, President George W. Bush defended his legacy of war, torture and domestic repression while vowing that the “war on terror,” the ideological mainspring of his administration, must go on.

Speaking just five days before he leaves office, Bush directed his remarks at justifying the criminal record of his eight years as president, while seeking to ensure that the main thrust of his policies will continue after the inauguration next Tuesday of President-elect Barack Obama.

As he has done so often over the past seven years, Bush attempted one last time to wrap himself in the bloody mantle of September 11 and claim that the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington were the driving force behind his administration’s decisions to invade Afghanistan, wage war on Iraq and arrogate to itself the right to torture, kidnap, murder, conduct illegal domestic spying and hold prisoners without charges or trials in US-run concentration camps.

Bush leaves office the most unpopular US president in history. He is hated around the world and reviled by the great majority of the American people not only for the wars of aggression and anti-democratic measures that have been the preoccupation of his administration, but also for his championing of economic policies that served to widen social inequality and pave the way to the eruption of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

An intellectual and moral cipher who was catapulted into the White House thanks to family connections and a stolen election, Bush’s name will be forever associated with the most shameful episodes in modern American history, from the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to the abandonment of the people of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, to Wall Street’s plundering of the economy at the expense of millions of Americans’ jobs and homes.

Under these conditions, the tone of the president’s speech was as delusional as its content was dishonest.

Bush cast himself as the principal victim of September 11. “As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11,” he declared. “But I never did. Every morning I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.”

Bush declared that by invading Afghanistan and Iraq he had “taken the fight to the terrorists.” He once again claimed victory in these wars, describing Afghanistan, whose corrupt and isolated regime is unable to exert its rule outside of Kabul, as a “young democracy that is fighting terrorism.” As for Iraq, where America’s intervention has claimed the lives of over 1 million people and turned more than 4 million more into exiles and internal refugees, he claimed credit for forging “an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East … a friend of the United States.”

He also claimed vindication for policies that have created the scaffolding of a police state in America, extolling the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and measures to provide America’s security agencies with “new tools” to prosecute the war on terror. That such “tools” have involved the scrapping of bedrock democratic principles such as habeas corpus and ridden roughshod over constitutional rights against unlawful detention and unreasonable search and seizure was of no concern to the outgoing “commander-in-chief.”

Bush grudgingly acknowledged that there could be “legitimate debate” over the actions taken by his administration, but insisted that such debate could not question the success of his policies. “America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil,” he proclaimed.

The reality is that the tragic events of September 11—and the Bush administration’s failure to prevent them—have never been seriously investigated, much less explained to the American people. Without an explanation of how these attacks—carried out by individuals who in several cases were under CIA surveillance—were allowed to unfold in the first place, it is impossible to claim that measures taken in their aftermath prevented new ones.

Only one thing is certain: The administration seized upon September 11 as its pretext for carrying out two military interventions that had been prepared and planned years before. Their aim was not the eradication of terrorists but rather US domination over Central Asia and the Persian Gulf to seize control of their oil resources and secure a decisive strategic advantage over US capitalism’s principal economic rivals.

Rather than such obvious geo-strategic interests, Bush insisted that the global explosion of American militarism was part of a worldwide struggle between “good and evil,” in which Washington was fulfilling the will of “Almighty God” by “leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.”

As for “evil,” the president proclaimed that “Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.” The remark came as the murderous assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded over 6,000 Palestinians, the bulk of them civilians, neared the end of its third week. Throughout this campaign, Bush has defended Israel’s war, carried out with US-supplied weapons, uttering not a word of sympathy for its murdered victims.

Bush felt compelled to defend his administration’s massive bailout of Wall Street. “When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them,” he said, referring to the trillions of dollars in public moneys that Washington has placed at the disposal of the major US financial institutions. “All Americans are in this together,” he insisted, providing the standard rhetorical justification for imposing austerity measures on working people in order to salvage the fortunes of the financial elite.

He insisted that the country would return to “the path of growth” and “show the world once again the resilience of America’s free enterprise system,” a rosy forecast belied by a continuous rise in layoffs and fall in manufacturing, sales and every other economic indicator, which together point to a systemic crisis of the capitalist system of a world-historic and revolutionary character.

In the end, however, the speech was one more attempt to terrorize the American people with the supposedly ubiquitous threat of terrorism.

“While our nation is safer than it was seven years ago,” he said, “the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack… We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.”

The implication of this argument is clear. The “global war on terror” must go on, regardless of the change in administrations.

Bush, together with Cheney and other top officials in his administration, deserve by every legal, moral and political standard to be placed on trial for war crimes. Yet he delivered his last ignorant speech with an obvious sense of impunity. He no doubt is confident, and with good reason, that the incoming Democratic administration will not only refuse to pursue any investigation, much less prosecution, of administration officials for their crimes against the country and the Constitution, but will, in the end, maintain the essential framework through which Washington has carried out war abroad and social reaction and repression at home over the past eight years.

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US tortured Guantanamo prisoners, Army judge admits

Steven — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:24:34 GMT

US tortured Guantanamo prisoners, Army judge admits
By Patrick Martin
15 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/tort-j15.shtml

In an extraordinary public declaration, the top military judge overseeing the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay admitted two of the principal charges long made against the Bush administration—that prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp have been tortured, and that the torture was carried out in accordance with an official policy set in Washington.

In an interview with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Susan Crawford said that prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani had been so systematically abused through isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and exposure to cold that he was in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured Qahtani," she told Woodward. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

A 61-year-old former Army counsel and former Pentagon inspector general, Crawford served from 1991 to 2006 as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. In February 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates named her the convening authority of the military commissions. In May 2008 she dismissed war crimes charges against Qahtani, without giving her reasons publicly.

While saying that she did not know any specifics of the treatment of the five other Guantanamo prisoners accused of 9/11 offenses, Crawford said, "I assume torture," noting that Bush administration officials have admitted that several of the prisoners, including alleged 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheik Mohammed, had been waterboarded.

Crawford made clear that the abuse of prisoners was not the result of lower-ranking interrogators being overzealous, but the consequence of policies set at the top. The techniques used against Qahtani were approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "A lot of this happened on his watch," she said.

The responsibility, she suggested, goes even higher, to the Bush White House. "I think the buck stops in the Oval Office," Crawford told the Post. "I think he hurt his own effort," she added, referring to Bush's establishment of the system of military tribunals. "I think someone should acknowledge that mistakes were made and that they hurt the effort and take responsibility for it."

A Saudi national, Qahtani was refused entrance to the United States at the airport in Orlando, Florida in August 2001. Bush administration officials have described him as the "20th hijacker," an Al Qaeda militant who was seeking to join the 19 other men, mostly Saudis, who took part in the September 11 attacks.

He was subsequently picked up by US forces in Afghanistan and shipped to Guantanamo in January 2002, where he attracted little initial attention—inexplicably, given his supposed role in 9/11. His interrogation began in November 2002 and continued for three months, followed by another three months of solitary confinement.

The grisly nature of his treatment at Guantanamo has been previously reported in the American press, based on statements from defense attorneys and others familiar with the case. But no high-level official—let alone the presiding judicial authority—has confirmed the details and categorically declared his treatment to be torture.

"The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent," she told the Post. "You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture.

Qahtani was repeatedly strip-searched, frequently with female agents involved, forced to wear women's underclothes and a dog leash while chained and being interrogated, threatened with assault by military dogs, and compelled to perform a series of dog tricks. He suffered long periods of sleep deprivation, including "48 of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations," according to one document.

The suffering was so intense that Qahtani was hospitalized twice with bradycardia, a severe lowering of the heart rate which can be fatal. At one point his heart rate was only 35 beats per minute. According to his attorney, Qahtani suffers from loss of memory and ability to focus, as well as paranoia. Still imprisoned at Guantanamo, he maintains his innocence and denies any connection to Al Qaeda.

Crawford, a Republican and career military jurist, expressing sentiments now widespread in the Pentagon, voiced her concern that the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been a public relations disaster for the US government, as well as endangering US military personnel who may be captured in the future.

"I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," she told the Post. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."

The treatment of Qahtani "did shock me," she said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

Crawford's interview with the Post coincided with another major legal blow against the kangaroo courts at Guantanamo Bay. A former Guantanamo prosecutor, Darrel Vandeveld, filed a declaration with a US appeals court Tuesday supporting the release of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan youth seized by US troops in 2002 and held in Guantanamo for the past six years.

Vandeveld, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve responsible for the cases against seven prisoners facing military tribunal, resigned his position last September citing the abuse of Jawad by Afghan police and the US military and the use of evidence he said was suspect, false or outright fabricated, including a confession signed by Jawad in a language, Farsi, that he does not speak.

Jawad is one of two prisoners facing trial at Guantanamo Bay who were 17 years old or younger when captured by US forces. The Bush administration is prosecuting both Jawad and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr as adults, although international agreements require that both be classified as "child soldiers" and treated as victims of the conflict.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch issued an appeal Monday to President-elect Barack Obama to halt proceedings against Jawad.

This appeal came one day after an ABC television interview in which Obama backed off from his election campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as soon as he takes office, and distanced himself from suggestions that top Bush administration officials should face prosecution for authorizing torture, illegal wiretapping and other attacks on democratic rights.

Meanwhile, the Times of London reported that nearly one fifth of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have gone on hunger strike and are being force-fed by the military authorities. According to the newspaper, of the 248 inmates of the facility, 44 are refusing food and 33 are suffering the brutal reprisal of liquid being forced up their noses through tubes and into their stomachs. One attorney for several prisoners said the actual total of hunger strikers was over 70, nearly one third of those still held.

Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has incarcerated more than 700 men at Guantanamo, portraying them as, in Rumsfeld's words, "the worst of the worst." Of these, nearly 500 have been repatriated and released without charges—and without any compensation for the loss of years of their lives to brutality and false imprisonment.

The testimony of Susan Crawford, Darrel Vandeveld and other military and civilian officials who have spoken out on the crimes taking place at Guantanamo or their cover-up would be of critical importance in bringing the top officials of the Bush administration to justice.

All the officials responsible for the Guantanamo Bay atrocities should face an international tribunal for their crimes—as well as the other acts of torture, illegal detention, kidnapping and murder committed by US agencies in the course of the "war on terror." This should include Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the high-ranking CIA and military officers who implemented the torture policy, as well as executive branch lawyers who wrote the legal apologetics for these gross violations of international law.

Obama's statement that he wants to "look forward rather than back" amounts to declaring a political amnesty for all the crimes committed by the Bush administration. Obama and the congressional Democrats are adamantly opposed to any serious investigation into these crimes because such an effort would expose the complicity of the Democrats themselves—as well as cut across the program of state violence and repression that the Obama administration intends to carry out in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries targeted by American imperialism.

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California: Police shooting of unarmed man provokes outrage, fuels protests

Steven — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:54:50 GMT

California: Police shooting of unarmed man provokes outrage, fuels protests
By Kevin Kearney
12 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/oakl-j12.shtml

The New Year’s Day police shooting of a 22-year-old man by the transit police has provoked outrage and fueled protests in Oakland, California. Unlike most incidents of police abuse, the shooting was captured on video and was broadcast on Oakland news station KTVU. It can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKy-WSZMklc.

The footage is a chilling depiction of what appears to be a merciless police execution of an unarmed man: Several uniformed officers are seen talking to Oscar Grant on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train platform at the Fruitvale station. Behind them, three young men are seated against a wall, handcuffed as suspects in a reported fight on the train. The video shows a standing Grant raise his hands, palms open, in a gesture of peace and cooperation, as if to calm the officers.

Grant seems to offer himself for arrest and Officer Johannes Mehserle then roughly places him on the ground, face-first. Grant appears to react to the unnecessary roughness by looking back momentarily. Then—after a brief attempt to handcuff Grant—Officer Mehserle inexplicably pulls out his gun, points it at Grant—who is still laying face down—and pulls the trigger, killing him.

Grant was unarmed. The Alameda County coroner’s office said Wednesday that the bullet penetrated his back, exiting his abdomen where it ricocheted off the concrete platform and re-entered his body at the torso, which ultimately killed him.

The video provides what appears to be direct evidence that Officer Mehserle committed murder in cold blood under cover of his position of authority. Nonetheless, Mehserle retained his job with BART for over a week, resigning voluntarily last Wednesday only to avoid a belated police internal affairs investigation.

Outrage over Oscar Grant’s police shooting death grew steadily. On January 7, hundreds participated in a peaceful afternoon protest at the Fruitvale BART train station where he was killed. By this time, millions had already seen the video and discussed it via the Internet.

In response to the protest, the Fruitvale BART station shut down early and the protesters migrated to other BART stations. Protesters finally arrived in downtown Oakland, where they were confronted by hundreds of aggressive riot police, firing tear gas. The once peaceful protest was thus forced into side streets where some individuals reportedly broke out car windows, set fires and damaged storefronts in anger.

Once the protest arrived downtown, several participants blocked the intersection of 14th and Broadway, near the downtown BART station entrance holding signs that read, “Your idea of justice?” and “Jail Killer Cops,” and chanting “The fascist police, no justice, no peace” and “We are all Oscar Grant” before a line formation of riot police, all uniformly clad in helmets and gas masks.

It was nearly midnight before police dispersed the crowd, arresting dozens whom they had managed to corner near the Paramount Theatre. According to the San Jose Mercury News, at least 105 protesters were immediately arrested for a variety of offenses, including assault on a police officer, looting, vandalism and arson.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, most of the 105 people arrested were cited on misdemeanor charges, while many others are still being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in connection with alleged felonies.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums engaged the protesters earlier in the evening in an attempt to disperse the crowd. He managed to lead some of them to City Hall, where he gave a speech typifying the government inaction and impotence that was being protested in the first place: “I sense your frustration,” he told the crowd. “I understand that you’ve lost confidence in a process because you’ve seen what you believe is a homicide ... But listen to me, we are a community of people. We are civilized people. We are a nation of laws.”

He went on to say, “I have asked Oakland police to engage in a fair, parallel investigation, the way you’d investigate any homicide in Oakland … If that leads to an arrest, that’s what it would lead to.”

“I’m asking people to disperse,” the mayor pled, “Let’s leave in a spirit of peace.”

Mandingo Hayes, a construction worker from San Pablo, said he participated in the protest because “we’re tired of all these police agencies getting away with shooting unarmed black and Latino males.” When asked by the Chronicle about protesters who allegedly damaged a police car, he responded, “For a police car to get abused, and for a person to get shot and killed, which would you rather be?”

It later surfaced that BART could have forced Officer Mehserle to talk with internal affairs investigators immediately, because unlike criminal investigations—where Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination would apply—officers involved in on-the-job shootings are forced to comply with administrative inquiries at penalty of losing their job.

Moreover, the Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff has yet to file charges against Officer Mehserle. In fact, Mehserle has not even been arrested for the incident. This stands in contrast to the hundreds of working and poor citizens who are routinely charged and jailed every month in Alameda County for the most petty and laughable offenses.

Dodging the question of whether or not charges will be filed against Mehserle in the future, Orloff said he expected a case to be “totally prepared” in about two weeks. “I know people are unhappy with that,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of emotion. I have to sit back and look at this as objectively as I can with all the facts that are available and make the decision….”

The public outrage seems mild when one considers the nature of the killing and the relaxed attitude of public officials. To date, Mehserle has refused to speak with police or the district attorney about the incident. In the meantime, new excuses are being advanced for the killing.

BART—now facing a $25 million claim on behalf of Grant’s mother and four-year-old daughter—is investigating whether Mehserle mistook his weapon for a Taser stun gun. In should be noted, however, that this same explanation has been used as an excuse in at least two other execution-style police shootings in the last two years—most notably in Torres v. City of Madera (California), in which a sheriff shot a man who was already handcuffed in the back of a patrol car.

On the day of the protest, nearly 1,000 friends, relatives and community members turned out for Oscar Grant’s funeral, held at Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward, where many in attendance shared memories of the 22-year-old father.

One mourner recalled that after Grant’s four-year-old daughter was born he refused to remove two huge pink flags from his car that proclaimed, “It’s a girl,” until the flags finally disintegrated. Another recounted a routine church fishing trip, for which Oscar was so excited that he dressed up in full gear: jacket, hat and 15-foot deep-sea fishing pole. “To me, Oscar was a gift of life, the very apple of God’s eye,” said his aunt, Donna Smith.

Local officials and media outlets have expressed more outrage and concern over what has been exaggeratedly referred to as the “mayhem” of the protest, or “the violence” of the “mob,” than over the real act of violence: the killing itself. The press has also attempted to depict the long simmering hostility between police and the working population in solely racial terms.

A good example is the San Francisico Chronicle’s description of the protest: “The roving mob expressed fury at police and frustration over society’s racial injustice. Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting the businesses and prized possessions of people of color.” The article then goes on to interview a number of citizens “of color” who suffered property damage, prominently noting the race of each.

Racial profiling and harassment are inexcusable facts of life for working and poor minorities in California’s Bay Area, but at root the protests are a manifestation of a broader working class resentment against police abuse. These are the concerns of all workers and the poor, not just a single racial group.

Police abuse is endemic in major cities and towns throughout California and Oakland is no exception.

As recently as 2003, Oakland city officials were forced to pay $10.9 million to scores of citizens who claim they were beaten and falsely charged by four police officers—Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 37; Jude Siapno, 34; and Matthew Hornung, 31, Francisco “Choker” Vazquez—known as “the Riders.”

Steven Lavoie, a longtime city resident and librarian at the Oakland History Room at the main library, told the Oakland Tribune, “Oakland is the venue for much larger social problems. And I don’t think the people of the privileged class … understand the impact of injustice in this community.”

As the economic situation in the US deteriorates, leaving millions more homeless, jobless, and without access to adequate health care and other basic services, victimization of workers and young people by the police, prosecutors and the courts will undoubtedly escalate. The public outrage over Oscar Grant’s death is certainly a harbinger of what’s to come.

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Liberation News flyer: Israel Out of Gaza!

Steven — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:52:06 GMT

Copies of the following statement were distributed in Santa Cruz:

Israel Out of Gaza! Down with U.S. Imperialist Sponsored Mass Murder in Gaza!

Statement of Liberation News, by Steven Argue:

More than a week of Israeli military assaults on the population of Gaza has left 700 people dead, 200 of them children. In attempt to conceal its crimes, Israel has barred foreign media from Gaza. Yet, many stories of war crimes are still getting out as civilian centers, a school, and aid workers are deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. In areas hit by bombing, Israel has refused rescue operations the ability to operate, leaving many more people to die.

Gaza is a small strip of land that contains 1.5 million people. Most of these people were driven from their land by the Israeli Army’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. With the birth of Israel, a new homeland was created for one people by removing the original inhabitants through force and violence. Palestinians who were forced to flee are not given the right to return to their homeland. Meanwhile, Jews from any country in the world are automatically given citizenship.

Gaza was seized by Israel in 1968, putting refugees from Israel once again under Israeli occupation. In 2005, the Palestinians of Gaza gained formal independence. Yet, the area to which Palestinians have been confined by Israel has no economic basis for independence. Gaza is more like a reservation for Native Americans in the United States or a Bantustan as they existed in Apartheid South Africa. Imports, exports, and travel are all controlled by Israel.

Ever since 2006, Israel, with the help of the U.S. backed dictatorship in Egypt, has choked off Gaza from needed imports, electricity, exports, and fuel. As a result, the people of Gaza suffer unemployment, malnutrition, problems with the water supply, and poverty.

A condition of the cease-fire was lifting this blockade by Israel. For its part, Hamas dramatically reduced rocket fire coming from Gaza. During this time, not a single casualty resulted from that rocket-fire at a time when Israel continued to kill Palestinians. Israel, however, never made any attempt to uphold its end of the bargain, and continued to force collective misery on the Palestinian people through the blockade.

The war against the people of Gaza is not a defensive action by Israel; it is a continuation of Israel’s policy, since its birth in 1948, to inflict death, terror, and misery on the native people in order to establish a nation ruled by one ethnicity and one religion. Yet, despit all of this, lies are being fed to the American people by the corporate media, and the Democrats and Republicans trying to justify Israeli war crimes and collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people.

While giving no political support to Hamas, Liberation News stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and Egypt. The U.S. props up these repressive governments with billions of dollars in military aid every year. The people of the Near East will be much better off when they are allowed to decide their own governments without the intervention of U.S. supplied weapons.

Yet, to acieve such a dramatic end to U.S. imperialist intervention will take the building of a socialist party in the United States that struggles to end the economic basis of U.S. imperialism, i.e. the capitalist profit system of exploitation and greed. Liberation News is dedicated to this goal.

Subscribe free to Liberation News: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Protest: Santa Cruz Clock Tower, 5 PM, Friday, January 9th.

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Detroit: Hundreds rally against Israel atrocities

Steven — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:07:32 GMT

Detroit: Hundreds rally against Israel atrocities
By Tom Eley
9 January 2009

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/demo-j09.shtml

On Thursday, hundreds of workers and youth demonstrated in downtown Detroit against Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally was the fourth called by the local Congress of Arab American Organizations (CAAO) in two weeks.

Thursday's protest in Detroit
A team of Socialist Equality Party members spoke with demonstrators and distributed statements by the Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, including “Israeli atrocities in Gaza: a political impasse and moral collapse, “Hands off Gaza!” and “The Gaza crisis and the perspective of permanent revolution.

Since December 27, Israel’s IDF, armed to the teeth with among the world’s most deadly military machines, has carried out a savage assault on the densely populated, and essentially defenseless, civilian area. Israel’s impunity and brazenness, coupled with the war’s one-sided character in which the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed is more than 70 to 1, has provoked revulsion throughout the world.

The war has served to once again expose Israel and its benefactor, the US, as the world’s most dangerous bandit states. It has also exposed the complicity of the petty Arab dictators and political formations of the Middle East—both nationalist and Islamist—along with the European powers, and the United Nations, all of which, in one way or another, are committed to the oppression of the Arab masses.

What is posed by the events in Gaza is the need for an independent perspective, based on the unity of the working class throughout the Middle East and beyond. The demonstrations among workers and youth taking place in dozens of countries on every continent against Israel’s butchery are a welcome step in this direction. But a resolution to the crisis gripping the Middle East can only come through a conscious political struggle for international socialism.

The demonstration in Detroit, which numbered about 2,500 at its peak, was dominated by young Arab Americans, both workers and students. There were many Palestinian flags, and the crowd chanted “Free, Free, Palestine!” “Israeli is a terrorist state!” and “No Justice, No Peace!”

There was a large-scale police presence, with numerous squad cars and at least two helicopters hovering overhead. Police separated the protest from a tiny pro-Israeli counterdemonstration. At the end of the protest, police squad cars led a march through downtown Detroit to a local church, where speakers representing a number of participating organizations enjoined the crowd to put pressure on President-elect Barack Obama.

The WSWS spoke with many demonstrators during the rally. The most typical sentiments expressed were anger and disgust toward the US, Israel and the Arab regimes of the Middle East. There was deep outrage over the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza. Some protesters held gruesome posters of the disfigured corpses of small children killed by Israeli bombs.

Nadine Chamala, a student from Dearborn High School, said that she believes that the purpose of Israel’s assault is “to destroy what’s left of Palestine.” But she held special anger for the Mubarak regime in Egypt, saying that they “were playing the worst role” in the war. “What Mubarak is doing is just as bad as Israel,” she said. “They are slamming the door shut on the Palestinians.”

Widad and Hussein described themselves as both teachers and students at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

Widad complained of the news coverage and politicians in the US, who “blame a whole people for attempting to defend their homes. They try to use religion and Islam as a rationale for carrying out crimes against the Palestinians.” “The US is the biggest defender of Israel,” Hussein added.

Neda, a student at the University of Michigan, said that in supporting Israel the US was betraying the democratic ideals established by its own revolution. “The United States was based on the self-determination of a people,” she said.

Many protesters expressed their disgust with Obama. This marked a change from the mood at a rally in Dearborn held little more than a week ago, where protesters expressed the hoped that Obama, once he assumes the presidency, would ameliorate the plight of the Palestinians.

Of Obama, Widad said, “We all want and wish for big change. A lot of us have a feeling of disappointment. We all supported Obama in the election.”

The Arab American population in the Detroit area is heavily working class. The World Socialist Web Site was able to speak with some autoworkers at the demonstration.

Raed and Zuhare are two young autoworkers at Chrysler. Zuhare called Egypt’s complicity in the attack on Gaza “worse than the Israeli act itself.” Raed said Mubarak was bowing before pressure from the US and Israel, but he blamed Zionism for the crisis in the Middle East. “Before Zionism,” he said, “Jews and Arabs lived together in peace for centuries.”

The WSWS also spoke separately with Ali, another autoworker. The three young autoworkers all expressed concern over their jobs.

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Praise from Cheney for Obama’s national security team

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:58:04 GMT

Praise from Cheney for Obama’s national security team
17 December 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/pers-d17.shtml

As President-elect Barack Obama met with his national security team in Chicago Monday, his appointments drew enthusiastic praise from a most revealing source: the outgoing vice president, Dick Cheney.

“I must say, I think it’s a pretty good team,” Cheney told ABC News. “I’m not close to Barack Obama, obviously, nor do I identify with him politically. He’s a liberal. I’m a conservative. But I think the idea of keeping Gates at Defense is excellent. I think Jim Jones will be very, very effective as the national security adviser.”

He went on to offer qualified praise for Obama’s pick for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. “I think she’s tough. She’s smart, she works very hard and she may turn out to be just what President Obama needs.”

The comments of the vice president called attention to the most salient characteristic of the five-hour meeting convened by Obama on Monday. The national security group assembled by the candidate of “change” is dominated by very same individuals who are directing national security for the administration of George W. Bush and are responsible for policies that were overwhelming repudiated by the electorate in November.

Robert Gates, responsible for prosecuting the “surge” in Iraq, was there, along with Gen. Jones, who backed Republican John McCain in the presidential election. Also present was Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Admiral Mike Mullen, selected by Bush and Gates as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It appears that both are also likely to remain at their posts.

Why shouldn’t Cheney think it’s a “pretty good team”? It’s largely the one he played on.

As for Clinton, she lost the Democratic primary contest in large measure because of her support for the war in Iraq. During the campaign, Obama flayed her for having been wrong on this “most important foreign policy decision of our generation.” Now he has made her his chief foreign policy aide.

Cheney’s kind words for Obama’s selections came in a wide-ranging interview with ABC News broadcast on Monday and Tuesday in which the vice president defended torture in general and waterboarding in particular.

He acknowledged that he had been “involved in helping get the process cleared.” While a vast understatement of his intimate involvement in this grisly facet of US policy over the past seven years, this admission nonetheless provides one more piece of evidence that the vice president is guilty of war crimes.

He insisted that the US prison camp at Guantánamo should be kept open as long as Washington continued its “global war on terrorism,” whose end, he allowed, was unforeseeable.

He defended the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program. “It’s worked. It’s been successful. It’s now embodied in the FISA statute that we passed last year, and that Barack Obama voted for,” he added.

He likewise defended the war in Iraq, insisting that the world is “better off” because of it and declaring that “we made the right decision,” despite the subsequent exposure of the administration’s false pretext for the war—weapons of mass destruction.

After summing up and justifying all of the crimes carried out by the Bush administration during its two terms in office, Cheney called upon the incoming Obama presidency to continue them.

It should, he said, “retain the tools that have been so essential in defending the nation for the last seven-and-a-half years” and eschew any inclination to “fall back on campaign rhetoric to make these very fundamental decisions” about national security.

The composition of the Obama national security meeting in Chicago—together with the statements made by the president-elect stressing his intention to leave a “residual force” of tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq and embracing the overall framework of a never-ending “war on terrorism”—give every indication that Cheney’s advice will be heeded.

There were further indications along these lines in an article on the meeting published Tuesday by the New York Times. It noted that in addition to those assembled in Chicago, Obama has “sought the counsel of an old Republican realist—Brent Scowcroft” and also consulted “former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war.”

Others whose advice Obama has solicited, according to the Times, include former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, the veteran of the CIA’s Operation Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam who went on to become a member of the Project for a New American Century and the “Vulcans,” the right-wing foreign policy advisers to George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign. Armitage also served as a chief foreign policy adviser to McCain in 2008.

Rounding out the list are Gen. Tommy Franks—“we don’t do body counts”—and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, rejected by his own state’s Democrats because of his vociferous support for the Iraq war.

The latest poll released Tuesday by the Washington Post and ABC News shows that 70 percent of the US population believes that Obama should carry out his campaign pledge to withdraw all US troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Fully 43 percent expressed the view that he should not wait that long, but pull them out immediately upon taking office.

This sentiment had everything to do with Obama’s victory in both the Democratic primaries and the general election. Yet, the will of the people expressed at the polls is to be repudiated and the policies of militarism, aggression and repression continued. This is what Cheney really meant in his remarks about ditching the “campaign rhetoric” and “retaining the tools” employed over the past seven years. He has ample grounds for his confidence in the incoming administration.

The continuity expressed in those Obama has tapped for his national security team is not just with the Bush administration, but with his own Democratic Party as well. In election after election—2002, 2004, 2006—the Democrats have acted politically to disenfranchise the millions of Americans who demanded an end to war, diverting their opposition into the safe confines of the two-party system while continuing support for and funding of US military aggression.

This, in the final analysis, was the purpose of the Obama campaign as well. The likes of Gates, Jones, Armitage, Scowcroft and Shultz are not merely Obama’s advisers. They are leading figures in a ruling establishment for which Obama is to serve as a political front man, providing a new face for US imperialism.

The evolution of Obama’s policies in the transition period and the way in which his administration is taking shape represent the most damning exposure of the failure of American democracy. Controlled and run by two parties that serve as political instruments of the major banks and corporations and a narrow financial elite, it is utterly impervious to the will of the people and incapable of enacting policies that uphold the interests of the vast majority of the population, those who work for a living.

Many on the so-called “left”—from the editors of the Nation to groups like the International Socialist Organization—are now putting forward the conception that the Obama administration portends great progressive changes that will be realized so long as sufficient popular pressure is exerted upon it. Such claims serve only to obscure the hard political realities that have already emerged in the transition period and reflect the rightward movement of the political tendencies that make them.

The policies of the Obama administration will not be determined by the popular illusions of those who voted for him, or by a bit of “left” pressure. Rather, they will be driven by the needs of American imperialism under conditions of a desperate worldwide financial crisis that makes the eruption of militarism an even greater danger than before.

With barely a month to go before the change in administrations, it is necessary to draw the appropriate political conclusions. The struggle to put an end to war and settle accounts with the criminal policies pursued by Washington over the last eight years can be advanced only through a movement independent of the Democratic Party and against the Obama administration. It requires above all the emergence of a mass party of working people fighting for a socialist policy aimed at putting an end to capitalism, which is the source of war. This means building the Socialist Equality Party.

Bill Van Auken

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Time 4 Hemp celebrates the Holidays with an All-Star line-up 4...

Casper Leitch — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:15:50 GMT

...you to party with, and it's free to download at http://www.Time4Hemp.TV

You and your friends are invited to big the holiday party at 'Time 4 Hemp' and smoke out with the remarkable guests who dropped by to share in the fun!

Joining in for this event are (in order of arrival):

Neal Smith - Vice-Chairman of Indiana NORML

Jack Herer - Author of 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' considered by some to be the Bible of the Hemp Movement

Steve Hager - Creative Director of 'High Times' magazine

Chris Conrad - Publisher of 'The Leaf' newspaper and founder of the Business Alliance of Commence in Hemp

Mikki Norris - Editor of 'The Leaf' newspaper and founder of the Cannabis Consumers organization

Josh Schimberg - President of Texas NORML

Ethan Nadelmann - Founder of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

Alison Myrden - one of the first 20 people in Canada to be granted permission by her government to use Medical Marijuana

Steve Bloom - Publisher of the on-line magazine, 'CelebStoner'

Lynnette Shaw - Co-author of California Proposition 215

Keith Stroup - Founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

Eddy Lepp - Marijuana Farmer and Hero of the Marijuana Movement

Paul Krassner - Author of 'Pot Stories For The Soul' and one of the comic geniuses of the 20Th century

Ed Rosenthal - Author of several marijuana grow books and featured writer for 'SKUNK' magazine

Gatewood Galbraith - One of the Founding Fathers of the Hemp Movement

Tokin' Tam - A Founder of the Global Marijuana Music Awards (GMMA)

Peter Christ - A Founder of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition organization (LEAP)

Holly G. - Colorado activists and medical marijuana user

Marc Emery - Publisher of 'Cannabis Culture' magazine

Jodie Emery - Editor of 'Cannabis Culture' magazine

Featured Musical Artist (in order of FIRST appearance):

Emerald Night - Kenny G - Shirley Bassey
The Killing Time Band - Cannabis Chorus - Afro Man
Jet Baker - Adam Sandler - Brian Setzer
Kevin Bloody Wilson - B B King - Chief Greenbud
The Tall Brothers - Rubber Band - Lana Brown - Willie Nelson

Please pass this information on to everyone who you know would enjoy the programs and have yourself a HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON AND A GREAT NEW YEAR!!

Keep Strong!
Casper

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Redrock drilling

Maia — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:47:21 GMT

As you may or may not know, the BLM and Bush Administration is trying to auction off oil and gas leases in Redrock wilderness in Utah (Dinosaur National Monument, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Capitol Reef National Park) this Friday 19 December.
Whether or not you're a resident of Utah or have been to these places, please register your opposition and spread the word.
If you'd like, here is a link to the NRDC's form letter; all you have to do is fill in some spaces.

www.nrdconline.org/campaign..._giveaway

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

SERIAL KILLERS tribe

marvindublin — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:54:32 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/serialkillerstribe

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

NO ON PROP 8

marvindublin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:50:49 GMT

http://people.tribe.net/marvindublin/photos/fb84b00d-cab7-4b93-8511-ee2ac81ff4e9

This makes or breaks the legality of gay marriage in CA.

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

Black File 7001: In 1999, Lee Vin Bah became an unknowing human test animal in a U.S. Government mind-control and torture black project. Wednesday, October 08, 2008 [Revised: 10.12.2008]

Lee Vin Bah — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 06:58:31 GMT

Black File 7001: In 1999, Lee Vin Bah became an unknowing human test animal in a U.S. Government mind-control and torture black project.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008 [Revised: 10.12.2008] [Press Statement]

Black File 7001: McCain’s Genocidal Holocaust in America

The McCain Doctrine:
Empty dribble for those unable to distinguish horse manure from shoeshine. McCain’s inner-cracker surfaces with “That one!” aka “Those people!”, “Tar Baby!”, “Little Black Sambo!” or “Jew Boy!” McCain’s comment caused me to remember my youth in the Southern U.S. and gas stations with three bathrooms for men, women and colored. One night I went to sleep as a Jewish child and woke up the next morning to hear my family saying that the U.S. Government now considered us white. As for my race, I chose to remain “human” while at least attempting to recognize same in all people as the individual threads within the beautiful fabric of our humanity.

McCain – “I’ve been on nuclear powered ships”:
Yes, second from the bottom of his graduating class, John McCain wet starts his Skyhawk on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal in 1967, detonates a Zuni missile on the F4 Phantom parked behind his jet and causes the infamous fire aboard the ship killing 132 U.S. Navy sailors and wounding countless others. McCain’s military career has consistently recognized the admiral’s son successfully making touchdowns for the opposing team - stop John you’re running the wrong way…the goalpost is the other direction! McCain’s political career has the same “reverse maverick” modus operandi while supporting an illegal war in Iraq that should result in first degree murder charges being brought against George W. Bush and his administration, as cited within Vincent Bugliosi’s book titled, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

McCain – “My friends my record speaks of continuous service to the nation”:
Whose nation wrong way McCain – North Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Dubai, land of the Bush bin Cheney harem whores? Allegedly, McCain with a false war hero persona sided with his communist captors in North Vietnam during the war. McCain, you must DECLASSIFY YOUR SEALED MILITARY AND ASSOCIATED RECORDS to answer the charges that while a POW of the North Vietnamese, you voluntarily and without being tortured did give aid and comfort to the enemy of the United States by producing over 32 propaganda tapes denouncing America as a nation of war criminals and did treasonously provide classified military flight path routes to the NVC, which allowed them to reposition their antiaircraft weapons and kill U.S. pilots on their return trips back home. Tell the American people why you and Kerry changed the standing rules that allowed U.S. Military Commanders on the ground to immediately implement a rescue mission to recover POWs and MIAs when sighted and now require a two day delay be communicated through the Pentagon before taking action, which may as well be two years in jungle time? McCain you allegedly support crossing into Pakistan to kill the complicit Bush family’s friend and ally, Osama bin Laden, but you won’t rescue our U.S. Military POWs and MIAs after the CIA has confirmed over 15,000 sighting. Not to mention that my sources close to the U.S. Special Forces operating in that region confirm that the Whitehouse via the Pentagon telephonically gave a special operations team the following orders after identifying the target for neutralization; “do not to kill Osama bin Laden and remove your team from the area.” When the team later inquired about their combat pay, they were told the mission had been classified and technically speaking since on paper they were never in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, they are therefore not entitled to combat pay. Wonder if this was one of the same formulas used by your syndicated Republican consortium to systematically rape the financial assets of the American people – where were you 90% of the time for the past eight years? Maverick? – no I think you have been more like sedentary hot buttered goat custard.

McCain – “No one in this country supports genocide” – vomit!
Guess what “my friends”, McCain headed a Senatorial Investigation Committee to cover-up the Bush family’s continuing genocide of Americans and scapegoated their blame onto the back of a power company engineer for another Republican act of treason. My sources so very close to the U.S. Secret Service that I once declined their offer to be photographed sitting at Bush 41’s Whitehouse desk, volunteered that President and former CIA Chief, George H.W. Bush ordered the clandestine testing of a military Electromagnetic Pulse [EMP] weapon on New York City from a refitted A-6 Intruder jet-bomber with a golden canopy that “Killed American Citizens.” New Yorkers died that day, just like on 911. On the date of that EMP weapons attack ordered by Republican George H.W. Bush, American citizens died from an inability to obtain emergency services following massive regional power outages caused by the covert use the U.S. Military against our nation’s people while on U.S. soil. Following 911, it’s too bad that Rudy Giuliani affected such a rapid clean-up of the crime scene area to destroy any evidence; especial with what I suspect would have been found after the botched demolition operation on WTC Building No.: 7 that suddenly decided to drop into its own footprint without being touched. The Bush oligarchy historically recognizes an ongoing lineage of treason to perpetuate their global continuing criminal enterprise and the largest theft of government funds in the history of the known world.

President and former CIA Chief, George H.W. Bush replaced CIA Chief William Colby who died during a suspected assassination on August 27, 1996, before he could testify in the 1953 staged suicide/murder of U.S. Army scientist Dr. Frank Olson [CIA MK-ULTRA] from the same top secret laboratories in Fort Detrick, MD that recently recognized another alleged suicide in one Dr. Bruce E. Ivans [911 Postal Anthrax produced from within the same facility].

Black File 7001: The Genocidal Holocaust in America
U.S. Genocidal Black Projects in torture and mind-control have continued in development since the CIA’s importation of 1600 Nazi SS war criminals to America during “Operation Paperclip” where they continued their inhuman atrocities on human test animals within the MK-ULTRA Program. Those monstrous practices were first begun at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. These genocidal black projects are covertly funded by billions of dollars from American taxpayers and are rarely scrutinized beneath their program titles by the congressional intelligence committees and their elected members with top secret crypto clearances. Typically these black projects and their methodologies are shrouded beneath federal programs with misnomer titles; kept under wraps at top secret military installations; are concealed within academic research grants; tested during the surrounding events of natural disasters; monitored within the public education system; entrenched within technological devices and surveillance equipment; and are hidden from public scrutiny around the world within prisons, hospitals and centers of academic learning that occasionally double as a blacksite facilities to varying degrees. These formulas for torture are applied against every thread of our existence and the total fabric of humanity by the controlling few against the many whom I feel will increasingly find their revolutionary voice for a restorative democracy that recognizes the human being in all people. Exposing these U.S. black projects causes’ whistleblowers like me to become Targeted Individuals [TIs] who are cauterized through “slow kill” and “silent kill” methods that psychologically wall-off mind-control victims with layers of suicide programming or are rapidly silenced by assassination. Self-inflicted harm is the cornerstone of the four principle components within the CIA torture matrix. This means that the “deep state” proponents of genocidal black projects in torture and mind-control within the U.S. Government infrastructure use covert operatives or jackal agents to harm or murder innocent American citizens. The only reason why these criminal agents and enemies of humanity have not murdered me to date is because I write and publish. The jackals and other criminal actors known to me have been warned along with their handlers that unannounced appearances will be considered a mortal threat. My contacts in the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been notified.

The Federal Witness Protection Program [WitSec], complete with a blacksite facility staffed by government psychologists assisting in the mind-control and torture program, recognizes a clandestine shadow network with given WitSec Inspectors and associated federal agents and agencies conducting sadistic and genocidal practices against Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and Government Whistleblowers who unknowingly become human test animals within the fraudulent federal program.

This human laboratory control sample within the WitSec is subjected to an evolving mind-control and “no-touch” invisible physical torture experiment sourced from methods produced by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA Program and the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual [The Torture Bible]. The ongoing cover-up by WitSec’s administrators includes their lying under oath before the U.S. Congress to conceal the wrongful deaths of U.S. Government Witnesses from the lasting erosive effects of psyops, mind-control and torture while in and after having exited the Federal Witness Protection Program.

This additionally includes the theft of government funds while robbing the American taxpayers of $Billions through padded numbers to feather their budget. In 2000, I assisted the USDOJ to investigate and successfully prosecute my first WitSec Inspector, John W. Dubois [name authorized by U.S Marshals Service for release] for the same charge. Dubois was later released from prison and allowed to stalk me, convey veiled death threats and later accosted me by the arm while I was near death from cancer treatments.

WitSec Headquarters took no action after filing over 30 security notices, which remains in keeping with the most of our state and federal elected representatives; including Senator Ron Wyden, Congressman David Wu, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, and Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers. Actually my volunteer work as a consumer advocate has placed nearly $30 thousand in the State of Oregon’s depleted coffers and I like Oregon’s AG, but their motives that extends beyond the perpetuation of the “Dark Figure of Crime” is best known to each of them and should be explained to the Oregon voters before the next election; certainly I am affording them yet another opportunity to respond, since they already know my legal name and contact information.

Every frontline covert operator working deep cover assignments, Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and Government Whistleblowers who are granted a fraudulent Protective Person’s Status under Title 18 of the U.S.C. only to become unknowing human test animals in clandestine experiments, on average begin developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] within 24 days of exposure in their given operational areas. Some are affected sooner and all experience the complete deconstruction of Constitutional Civil Liberties and inalienable human rights entitled any person [human being] and/or an American citizen after being psychologically pressed into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

The oil rich nations of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Dubai that supported the attacks against America on 911, today are the only entities making money during the final glut of their end game to destroy America with the treasonous assistance of their complicit partners in the Republican Bush-Cheney administration.
With every economic hardship that our fellow human brothers and sisters are continuing to experience with the collapse of U.S. Republican capitalism, respectfully for those of us who remain an unseen minority as a protect class within plain-sight of mainstream America, the concentrated formulas used against us are horrifically deconstructive and are infinitely worse than anything being generally experienced at this moment.

This is Clandestine Genocide being conducted against American citizens by the U.S. Government. For my group of Veterans of Voluntary Covert National Service, no matter how much the economy and life improves for the majority of Americans living on Main Street, USA, our existence as Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses, Government Whistleblowers and Targeted Individuals [TIs] will remain one of Adjunct Human Slavery within a Virtual Death Camp Environment that continues to systematically and systemically murder our members who are equally entitled American citizens of good character. From that hellish place we watch the blessings of liberty enjoyed by our fellow citizens like “bubble boys” able to move about you while never allowed to penetrate the membrane of that inhuman vessel that falsely imprisons us away from our constitutional entitlements and inalienable human rights. The culpable actors within the U.S. Government have made it virtually if not completely impossible for most of use to find employment. The women in our group have to a degree been able to obtain public assistance, albeit an unnatural reduction from their former financial statuses before the WitSec Program.

This becomes an egregious human rights violation and Constitutional Crime committed by the U.S. Government against its veterans of covert national service who apparently are systemically targeted for eventual death following their voluntary participation as partisans of liberty.

A convicted felon in prison has more recognized civil liberties and opportunities made available to them than American citizen who went above and beyond the call of duty to participate in our government system to make the world and our nation a better place for all human beings.

Female Government Witness and Whistleblower Subjected to Rape Torture!
One female government witness and whistleblower recently communicated that following her discovery that a number of Republican Senators were laundering millions in U.S. taxpayers’ dollars through quasi federal programs, that she was kidnapped and subjugated to human sexual slavery for the sadistic pleasures of those wishing her death. Once programmed through mind-control techniques she was raped for two days, hung by the neck and thought left for dead until she awoke in a pool of her own blood and feces with her sexual organs destroyed.

After a 24 hour reconstructive surgery and a period of recuperation, she returned to a university where she completed her degrees only to have those targeting her for torture and mind-control, separate her from securing those University Degrees while leaving her with $30 thousand dollars in debts for student loans. Somehow she will have to pay-off those federal student loans while continuing to seek restorative justice and restitution for the crimes committed against her. Be aware that all American citizens and other innocent victims of genocidal human experimentation are being subjected to these crimes against humanity by the same individuals who espouse the rights of a blastocyst while processing Christianity. That said, even the members of the Nazi SS attended the Catholic Church.

Like this brutalized human being and gentle woman, I remain disenfranchised from the completion of my degrees by the actionable offences of the WitSec Program and without an audit conducted by the federal government, to this day I am not certain if the WitSec Inspectors actually caused me to pay nearly double what I owed in federal student loans.

Under the Bush oligarchy and within the Bush-Cheney administration, whose members were the first to avoid government service and the first to send our youth to be murdered for financial profits, a former Nazi became a Catholic Pope and the grandfather of Karl Rove [Roverer] aka “The Architect” built the Birkenau death camp. Karl Heinz Roverer was the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was the Reich-Statthalter or Nazi State Party Chairman for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A.G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp where tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and others were slaughtered through genocide. During that time and before while reaching back to 1920, the namesake of the two Bush presidents, George Herbert Walker and former Republican Senator, Prescott Bush laundered the financial assets of the Nazi industrial complex through WWI, WWII, and the Jewish Holocaust against the United States of America while our nation was at war with Nazi Germany. That treasonous legacy continues today as recognized since September 11, 2001.

The Federal Witness Protection Program with its “deep state” blackops proponents sharpened the blade of tactics later used against detainees inside Abu Ghraib Prison on the unknowing human test animals within the WitSec black project. To date the CIA torture matrix has killed and murdered an estimated 115 human slaves tortured to death inside Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq; 35 were ruled homicides. The developers of the ongoing CIA torture matrix within the U.S. Government continue to target innocent American citizens for “slow kill” and “silent kill” deaths on U.S. soil and the majority of our alleged elected representatives remain silent. What excuse will they give when this matter reaches the light of public examination?

Other Examples of Black Projects Shrouded from Public Scrutiny
Some other examples of the programs and shrouds used as covers for the testing and development of the torture matrix include: The War for Profit Corporatist Deconstruction and Reconstruction Model; the No Child Left Behind Initiative that erodes the education process in High Schools, funds the testing materials exclusively sold by Neil Bush’s education software company, defrauds varying percentages of students from attending college, herds others into the cheap labor pools, and targets new immigrant American citizens for military service under an anti-American and treasonous administration; the New Phoenix Program; “Project Monarch II”; the CIA MK-ULTRA Program [the Manhattan Project of mind-control to create the perfect Manchurian Candidate] with projects Bluebird, Artichoke and over 250 subprojects; Dr. Ewen Cameron’s development of the July 1963, CIA KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec; “Project X” where KUBARK and other new variations that had largely been used in South America from 1983 to 1987 were remixed into a second “Bible” of the perfect torturer, titled Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1993; the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the genocide of New Orleans with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ funding for strengthening the levees being diverted by Republicans to build a “Teapot Museum in North Carolina”; the FEMA trailer camp as Guantanamo Bay in New Orleans with free bus rides to Wal-Mart; Guantanamo Bay Prison, Cuba; Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq; the three word mantra “War on Terror”; Color Code Terrorism Alerts and related Fear Tactics [terrorism]; Fluctuating Gasoline Prices that rise and fall with pending legislation and elections; the Attacks on September 11, 2001 by the oil trading partners of the Bush family; the 911 Postal Anthrax from the top secret laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD and the alleged suicide of Dr. Bruce E. Ivans; the 1953 staged suicide/murder of Dr. Frank Olson, from the top secret laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD; the tactics of Psyops Terrorism used against the American people and the world; the Genocide of over 100,000 innocent Iraqis [women, men, children, and infants] as War Crimes and First Degree Murder; the unconstitutional Judicial Selection of a U.S. President; the lies told to regain control of a Democratic Congress only to deconstruct the U.S. Constitution and the hopes of American citizens with Nancy Pelosi’s “Impeachment is off the Table”; “No-Touch” Invisible Physical Torture Techniques; Targeting Individuals [TIs] with Psychotronic Weapons using Electromagnetic Pulse Energy, Radiofrequency, Microwave Radiation, and Subliminal Imaging to “Alter” Brainwave Patterns that collectively result in Mind-Control or “Brainwashing”; the “Memory Pill” aka Brainwashing made simple by Big Pharma [also involved with MK-ULTRA]; the Punishing of Goodness while Rewarding Criminality and Gross Incompetence; Pharmaceutical particulates in our Toilet to Tap Drinking Water Systems; Atmospheric Nitrogen Fertilizer and Sulfuric Acid from Coal Furnaces compounding Global Warming and Affecting the Balance of Nature with increasing numbers of Dead Zone in the Earth’s Oceans; Plastics Consumer Products manufactured from Oil being used as “Slow Kill” Poison Delivery Systems; Video Surveillance Cameras installed on virtually every street pole for the harvest of a Retinal Recognition Database while simultaneously causing Desensitization to Empirical Intimate Intrusions and Psyops Suppression of the Sovereign Thought Process to create a Toxic and Self-Consuming Society [Self-Inflicted Harm of the CIA Torture Matrix]; the Psychological Conditioning of being Electronically Strip Searched or Raped by NSA X-Ray Body Scanners in Airports while some unknown operator sits in a closed room recording the images of small children and adults into a Database for Republican Pedophiles; Microwave Antenna Arrays positioned throughout most cities that have been removed in Germany from the known harm caused by prolonged exposure; the Electoral College measured against the Popular Vote to manipulate the will of “We the People”; Electronic Voting Machine Irregularities; Ad Nauseam Rhetoric repeated through the Propaganda Ministries that have deconstructed a Constitutionally Entitled Free Press; the Absorption of Generational Wealth for Converting those in the Middle into a Peasant Class Society; the Perversion of Language with a “War on Drugs” verses the Perpetual Promotion of Prescription Pharmaceuticals with many Patented before an Illness has been Invented; and the Deregulation and Privatization of America’s Economic Infrastructure to finish what they started on 911. All of the above and more, depending on the individual concentration or a collective lamination of same, recognize the means of causing psyops terrorism and torture technique that although tested on those of us who walk unseen among you in their most concentrated forms, have increasingly been implemented against the general population of America and the World since September 11, 2001.

Standing Alone for the Human Victims of Torture.
With the exceptions of Senator, Barack Obama; Congressman, Dennis Kucinich; and Congressman, Elijah E. Cummings, the majority of our elected Congressional members, including my Senator, Ron Wyden and Congressman, David Wu have supported genocidal torture programs through their craven silence and failure to implement a Congressional investigation regarding my firsthand experience of having become an unknowing human test animal and victim of torture as Non-Criminal Federal Witness, No.: 7001.

Even though John McCain publically stated “my friends no American would allow genocide to occur when it is completely within our power to stop it.” This unfortunately is not the case and like the past this same government demeanor that once allowed the genocide of over 6,000,000 human beings during the Jewish Holocaust is at play again. My story, Black File 7001 has been blacklisted by the propagandized corporate news media, most of the progressive news media, including Democracy Now, NOW on PBS, Air America Radio, and The Ed Schultz Show. Of course talk radio is what it is and I quit listening over a year ago, but Democracy Now and NOW on PBS, are two shows that I have followed and supported for years; only they will be able to answer the reasons for their own silence.

Currently and while still seeking asylum in Canada, I am attempting to contact Oprah Winfrey with Harpo Productions, Inc., the Canadian BBC and would welcome communications with any genuine journalism organization, publisher, film maker, literary agent or elected political representative willing to discuss the Black File 7001 story. My thank to those of you who have sent a petition to the Government of Canada requesting they grant asylum under the conventions of torture cited by the UNHCR and retroprosity for my Protective Person’s Status issued by U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno under Title 18 of the United States Code.

The Bush-Cheney administration validates Black File 7001
Ironically, Black File 7001 has been reverse validated by the Bush-Cheney administration through their federal agent’s unlawful use of a communication facility while telephonically threatening, “Bah – you have people in very high places afraid to death that you are going to destroy their programs and they said if you publish your book, they will “invent” a criminal charge against you.” Following my invitation for his handler’s to go pound salt in their asses, agents of the Sensitive Operations Division of the Social Security Administration and the WitSec Program first awarded my Social Security Disability Benefits and then in an act of political retribution, punitively withdrew same under written letters of protest from the U.S. Government’s own federal judge. In an egregious violation of several federal laws that extend to a charge of treason under the Federal Identities Act, those mandated with my protection deliberately commingled federally sealed classified government documents and illegally unsealed my covert SSA file for public viewing from January 8, 2001 [my son’s birthday] until the U.S. Attorney in Seattle, WA suddenly contacted my attorney advising that she was filing a Motion to Reseal on July 14, 2008 – the Bush-Cheney administration is trying to perform a cover-up of the many crimes committed against me. A federal court judge is deciding the case on civil appeal in Seattle, WA.

Again, the administrators of the Federal Witness Protection Program [WitSec] have lied before the U.S. Congress regarding the deaths of government witnesses from the causal effects of the genocidal program while financially raping the American taxpayers with padded numbers they alleged represents 18,000 government witnesses when liberally speaking the number is more likely no higher than 8,500. Only 6% of the total number are Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and the rest are Custodial and Criminal Federal Witnesses.

The ongoing egregious federal crimes and human rights violations committed against me directly or in layers and the mechanisms that have denied my constitutional right of legal redress under duplicitous use of national security protocols, have deconstructed my ability to enjoy the fundamental right to life, complete my university degrees, secure employment, recognize my Social Security, and retain my Social Security Disability Benefits from the actionable offences committed in political retribution by a corrupt government system that has leaking classified government information under Title 18 of the United States Code to a telecommunications company engaged in this blackops RICO conspiracy. The erosive effects caused by psyops and “no-touch” invisible physical torture by the U.S. Government, recognizes a resulting harm that has remained infinitely more damaging during the past eight years than the singular event relating to the Valerie Plame Wilson matter.

The list of criminal offenses committed against me along with the commingling and leaking of federally sealed and classified information is lengthy and has created a mortal threat environment around my geographic location in violation of the WitSec mandate. This further serves as the U.S. Government’s passive sanction for my assassination that increasingly becomes a probability nearing the end of the treasonous Bush-Cheney administration.

Under this administration and others, this is the clandestine reward for those good citizens and former law enforcement members who gave something extra in service to our nation. With a Protective Person’s Status as a Protected Class, we are “disappeared” into an unequal parallel within our mothercountry that is barren of constitutional civil liberties and inalienable human rights. While being mummified for voluntary covert national service, our individual sense of self-identity is eroded into an existence of adjunct human slavery within a virtual death camp environment were an unnatural death waits in the shadows. Once situated in the plain-sight of the general population, we are confronted by the constant threat of lethal deportation or vicarious extraordinary rendition back to our birth identities and certain death from known mortal threats and often the actionable offences committed in political retribution by the very U.S. Government personnel allegedly tasked with our protection.

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Many of you have written Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Canada and again I am indebted to you for your sense of humanity and kindness. Should any of you have time or the inclination, I would be equally grateful for a note being sent to your Elected Representatives, Oprah Winfrey, the BBC, and any progressive journalist who might assist me in sharing the Black File 7001 story. Whether my life is forfeited in this process, G-d or the Mother of All Things has placed this mission in my path and as her servant I obey.

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Anti-Bailout Demo in San Francisco Monday 9/29

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:53:37 GMT

How Stupid Does Nancy Pelosi Think You Are? Let's get loud!

In response to the bipartisan "done deal" of the Wall Street bailout plan, Cindy for Congress is calling for another non-partisan protest in front of the Federal Reserve Bank: 101 Market (corner of Market and Stearns) at 4pm on Monday, September 29th. Last Thursday, we had a very energetic protest of about 250 activists who were: Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, socialists and decline to states who were saying the same thing: NO CORPORATE WELFARE: HEY NANCY, BAIL US OUT!

The new corrupt deal that the Democrats and Republicans in DC have cobbled together to rob each and every American to pay for corporate excess contains little or no protection for working Americans to recoup our losses under this criminal regime. They are using our hard earned money from our hard-worked labor to rescue corporate pirates who have been living large during the bubble: and when their artificial bubble bursts, We the People are left picking up the pieces FOR THEM!

Almost 100% of America (according to some polls) do not want this bailout to happen, yet Pelosi and her crew are again caving into BushCo to our detriment!

Tired of being trickled on by the fatcats' trickle down economics?

Please make yourself heard at the Federal Reserve! Tomorrow, bring pots and pans and other noisemakers!

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THIS is the fastest way to build the world we need!

Tim — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:08:26 GMT

We have a huge, idealistic, smart, practical "movement" going, over on Facebook: The Next Step Together. There are more than a thousand folks in the group now, About 100 joining daily. There's proposal on the table to run our own presidential "election", and we are trying to enroll the entire world! Join us and bring in all your friends! It's all about acting PRACTICALLY, QUICKLY, WITH HUGE NUMBERS... So job ONE is getting EVERYONE IN!

Learn about the Next Step Together at http://nextsteptogether.net
Join the Next Step Together Group on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24568801853

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

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Obama says bailout will postpone spending plans

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:22:48 GMT

Obama says bailout will postpone spending plans
By Patrick Martin
24 September 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/obam-s24.shtml

In a further demonstration of his subservience to Wall Street, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that the $700 billion bailout of US financial institutions now moving through Congress would force a delay in additional spending by an incoming Democratic administration.

In an interview Tuesday morning with NBC’s “Today” show, Obama said of the bailout, “How we’re going to structure that in budget terms still has to be decided.” He continued, “Does that mean I can do everything that I’ve called for in this campaign right away? Probably not. I think we’re going to have to phase it in. And a lot of it’s going to depend on what our tax revenues look like.”

The new spending Obama has proposed on programs like education, infrastructure and health care is so minimal, compared to the vast social need, that it doesn’t deserve the label “reform.” It is barely a sop. But even this is likely to be withheld initially, and then canceled outright once the cost of the Wall Street bailout mushrooms, as it inevitably will.

As late as the weekend, in an interview with John Harwood of CNBC, Obama had rejected suggestions that the magnitude of the Treasury expenditure for purchasing mortgage-backed securities would put any new social spending off the agenda. He claimed that he would proceed with a proposal to expand health insurance as well as additional funding for education, the environment and child care.

But by Tuesday the Democrat had abandoned even this position, promising only to retain a series of tax cuts in the first budget of an Obama administration—which will inevitably accrue more to upper-income families—while making no such pledge for social spending.

Obama also sought to demonstrate his fidelity to the financial aristocracy by attacking his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, for initially opposing the federal bailout of AIG, the world’s largest insurance company. The Federal Reserve Board agreed last week to take an 80 percent interest in AIG in return for an $85 billion loan last week.

“I think what has been clear during this entire past 10 days is John McCain has not had clarity and a grasp on the situation,” Obama said.

When his NBC interviewer Matt Lauer pointed out that the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joseph Biden, had also initially opposed the bailout, Obama pointed out that he himself had deferred comment. “I think that in that situation, I think Joe should have waited as well.”

This extraordinary rebuke to his own running mate demonstrates that for Senator Obama, nothing is more important than demonstrating that he puts the future of Wall Street above all other considerations, and that he aims to win the presidency, not on the basis of a populist appeal, but by persuading the financial aristocracy that he will be the most capable representative of their interests.

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Homelessness Challenge

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:21:04 GMT

I would like to share these two videos with Jeff Brown, author of "SoulShaping, Adventures in Creation"

I like what he is doing, because it's almost a 'barter system', a way for the homeless to share their talents and energy, aside from asking for handouts. I think it's empowering. Basically, he's employing Slim...very cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOlmIOcc0NA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp40jzSzvv4

Now that, is activism.

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The Village Idiot

Daniel J — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:05:44 GMT

The Village Idiot
by Daniel J Towsey
http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/canadiantruthsoldier/message/201

Ok now this is going to be an interesting one. We now have a modern version of the village idiot.

It is an individual that has always thought outside the box, a critical thinker.

They can be identified by many different labels.
Such as ‘activist, freedom fighter, decenter, visionaries, conspiracy nut, delusional, paranoid, a truth soldier, or just plain insane.

I am sure I could come up with many other definitions for an individual who likes to be a free thinking spirit.

An individual can never be free or achieve his or her full intellectual potential without one indispensable ingredient. This ingredient has now effectively been removed from our society.

In its place we have what is termed corporate image.]

Do you know what that key ingredient is? Should I tell you know?

No maybe I won’t tell you yet. Hummm, I think I will tease you a little more and present you with some more food for thought.

Ok where do I start..

Oh first I would like to say that if you are reading this, it means that you are most likely a free thinker, or at minimum, your an information bot from the NWO, a data miner, or even an intelligence agency droid.

So here goes...

I have experienced the feeling of being labelled as a village idiot for when i go out in the public and try to inform and wake up the common folks. Some see me as nothing but an idiot. But luckily some do not make a judgment until after they have gone online and read my “The last democracy” or many of my other articles.

After which, the next time they see me. They are in silent shock at the fact that I am not the village idiot. But rather that the village is full of idiots and that I am truly just “A Truth Soldier” who has always rejected and distrusted the corporate image.

If the individual takes the time to read and study all my articles. They would come to the horrible realisation that we have been completed deceived by the new world order bankers corporate image media, all our lives...about everything.

and that the world is truly run by the insane...for they never seek or speak the truth. for without truth all we have is insanity. Please read my “Recipe for insanity” article....

So think you now know what is missing from the village (society).....

“Seeds of truth”
When the seeds of
truth are sown,
the grassroots
truth revolution
will blossom
from the enlightenment

The Closed minded know everything and see nothing with their heads buried in the dirt and their rear exposed and vulnerable to the NWO penetration.

I dedicate this article to my friend Paul Wedge
Links

The Last Democracy
http://social.infowars.com/blog_entry.php?user=danieltowsey&blogentry_id=2779
A Truth Soldier
http://my.opera.com/danieltowsey/blog/2008/02/19/a-truth-soldier
Recipe for Insanity
http://www.mychurch.org/blog/105990/recipe-for-insanity
For Canadian Issues and documentary videos
http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/canadiantruthsoldier
for health,environment, issues and documentary videos
http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/truthsoldierclub/
for political, issues and videos
http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/conspiraciesclub/
for downloadable pdf versions of all my previous articles
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/danieltowsey/
PLEASE CHECK OUT MY IMAGES OF BEAUTIFUL NOVA SCOTIA CANADA AT
http://community.webshots.com/user/towsey

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FREE MP3 - HEMP 4 FUEL - LOTS OF MUSIC!

Casper Leitch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:04:36 GMT

Gatewood Galbraith, one of the Founding Fathers of the Marijuana Movement, joins Casper Leitch in a joint effort to RE-INTRODUCE the use of Hemp for FUEL in America. In this very special segment, the two discuses the Pickens' Plan that's being hyped by T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore's historic speech to Congress in which the former Vice-President called for America to be free from dependence of foreign fuel in 10-years or less. This podcast (and 5 short video clips) is FREE TO DOWNLOAD at http://www.Time4Hemp.TV

Featured Musical Artists (in order of appearance):

Human - Hemp St Rhythymz - Willie Nelson
Counting Crows & Vanessa Carlton - Green fever
Pink Floyd - Stevie Wonder & Ray Charles
George Harrison - Sharl Crow
Los Marijuanaous - Michel Jackson

We also hear from Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens.

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DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:52:41 GMT

DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney

By Steven Argue

Protest plans have been in the works against the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for some time now, with organizers opposing the Democrat Party’s policies of war and occupation, backing of continued corporate policies that cause global warming, and their attacks on immigrants.

The people who have been organizing the protest schedule formed a coalition called Recreate ‘68. A rightward split has occurred in this coalition, and another group has also been formed called the Alliance for Real Democracy. The Alliance for Real Democracy is organizing their own separate events, one of which is a reception for Democrat Party delegates complete with drinks and BBQ.

The Alliance for Real Democracy is made up of the Colorado Green Party, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, the American Friends Service Committee, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Colorado Street Medics, and Students for Peace and Justice.

While the Alliance for Real Democracy consists largely of white liberals who are trying to influence the hopelessly corporate run Democrat Party, Recreate ‘68 is made up primarily of minorities, socialists, anarchists, communists, and other radicals who have fewer illusions in reforming the Democrat Party and who instead want to organize the power of the people.

Glen Spagnuelo, spokesperson of Recreate ‘68, says he’s not bothered by the formation of the Alliance for Real Democracy, because both groups oppose the war in Iraq and neither is advocating a violent protest.

Yet, the Alliance for Real Democracy has gotten extensive coverage in the corporate media of Colorado for their violence baiting of Recreate ‘68. The stand of Recreate ‘68 is, however, one where they simply explain that they are not planning violence, but if the police attack them, they do not disavow the right of protesters to self-defense.

As Benjamin Whitmer of Denver explained in the letters column of the Rocky Mountain Times in a June 5, 2008 letter entitled, “Re-create 68 members aren't violent extremists”:

“I’m a little confused as to the media’s portrayal of Glenn Spagnuolo and the members of Re-create 68 as violent extremists. Though Mr. Spagnuolo is getting painted as Vlad the Impaler with a bag full of severed heads, I’ve yet to hear of him engaging in a single act of violent protest. Moreover, I’ve attended several Re-create 68 meetings – meetings which, it’s worth noting, are never without a media presence – and have yet to hear a single suggestion of violent protest from him or from anyone else attending.

“The controversy seems to stem from Re-create 68’s refusal to disallow the right to self-defense to its members. Re-create 68’s explanation of this refusal is clear. There will be people protesting with Re-create 68 arm-in-arm with their children and elders. In large part, these will be representatives of communities which have most suffered from the never-ending betrayal of the Democrats. To attempt to deny them the right to defend themselves is to deny a fundamental human right.”

Yet, the Alliance for Real Democracy is demanding everyone roll over and die when and if they are violently attacked by the police, and painting those who do not have such a commitment as “violent”. The coverage their denunciations have received in the corporate media play into the hands of government attempts to deny permits, and, ultimately plays into the hands of police violence if the government does decide to physically attack these protests. In fact, the Alliance for Real Democracy’s denunciations of the right to self-defense and denunciations of Recreate ‘68 as “violent” creates a ready made excuse for the police and government that may actually cause police violence.

In addition, the Green Party of Colorado has issued false statements to the press and all over the internet claiming that Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will not be participating in the Recreate ’68 events. Here is one such statement from Dave Chandler, co-chair of the Colorado Green Party, Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the Seventh Congressional District, and supporter of a Denver ballot measure that would seize the vehicles of illegal immigrants:

“Cynthia McKinney, Green Party candidate for President, and Rosa Clemente, Green Party candidate for Vice President are NOT participating in any Recreate ‘68 activities. Both candidates, and the Green Party of Colorado, are refuting this announcement and are stating that neither candidate, nor the Green Party of Colorado, are in any way associated with Recreate ’68, nor will any of their candidates be speaking at or attending any event, nor are they in any way associated with the group Recreate ’68.”

This is a blatant lie. Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente will be speaking at the Recreate ’68 events.

Liberation News does not endorse the Cynthia McKinney campaign, partly because she is running on the Green Party ticket, a capitalist party. Yet, she has the right positions on many issues, and does show what a candidate who is not beholden to corporate interests can speak out on, such as for single payer healthcare, immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for freeing political prisoners in the U.S. like Mumia Abu-Jamal.

It is for these reasons, and the good principled stand that McKinney is taking on the protests at the Democrat National Committee, standing up to the leadership of the Green Party of Colorado, that Liberation News prints Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente’s statement on the DNC in full:

*******
Open Letter from Cynthia McKinney

As the United States activated Navy ships and the Air Force to begin an airlift of non-specified goods into the former Soviet state of Georgia, and military exercises began in the Persian Gulf near Iran, I received communications from certain individuals among the Colorado Greens who were organizing campaign support events there, suggesting that I not participate in an anti-war program being organized by other individuals in Colorado.

Perplexed, I began to do my research to understand the nature of the fissure that I seemed to be placing myself in the middle of. The communications to me about not participating in one of the scheduled events became more and more shrill. The events ran through August 26th. When the lineup of speakers, including Rosa and me, was announced for the events in question, I received multiple communications stating in various ways that the sender from the Green Party of Colorado, was on the verge of desperation over the latter.

Within a few hours, I was reading messages stating that the Green Party of Colorado would be ruined if I participated in the End the Occupations/End the War march and rally slated to take place on the morning of August 24th on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol, or if Rosa participated in a Freedom March and Rally for Human Rights and Political Prisoners at Civic Center Park the following day.

An article appeared in a local Colorado newspaper stating that Rosa and I would not appear at the events for which we had been scheduled. Rosa responded to our Colorado Green Party contact that yes, indeed, we were appearing at the two events. Both Rosa and I then received messages demanding to know by a time certain what our plans were, and asserting that the Green Party of Colorado would be totally ruined if we associated with the group sponsoring the events. In addition, we were told that at least one resignation and sustaining membership would be tendered to the Party, and that Rosa and I could expect no support on the ground in Denver from the Green Party of Colorado, including a planned fundraiser and a place to stay.

Without receiving any additional response or information from either Rosa or I, the correspondent sent a message informing us that all Green Party of Colorado events previously scheduled for us had been canceled. Further, the message stated that ballot access petitioning by Green Party of Colorado would cease in neighboring Wyoming and that all efforts would be made to remove Rosa's and my names from the ballot in Colorado. The message also noted that the Colorado delegation overwhelmingly supported Elaine Brown at the Green Party Convention.

With the e-mail messages flying "fast and furious," I hope I have mentioned the highlights of this episode in somewhat chronological order. What Rosa and I would like to address now, is the ideological and rational order that produced this outcome. At the very first Green Party debate held in San Francisco earlier this year, I pleaded for unity of action and purpose as we face the challenges that confront us as a country. Rosa and I are proud to join with others who are sick and tired of war, occupation, human rights abuses, and the continued incarceration of our political prisoners. We are proud to join with others who are willing to do something about it. In the context of activities in Denver, that means cooperating with some organizations new to us and others with which Rosa and I have had a long-standing relationship. Let me explain some of those relationships.

I am proud to have received a Backbone Award from the Backbone Campaign, one of the co-participants of the anti-war, anti-occupation events in question, according to the organizers.

Rosa and I are pleased to have received the endorsement of M-1 of Dead Prez, who put out a video of endorsement and is rallying other conscious Hip Hop, Generation X voters to the Green Party with Rosa and I as its nominees. Rebel Diaz was on the stage with Rosa as she accepted her Green Party nomination for Vice President. Both Dead Prez and Rebel Diaz are participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

Fred Hampton, Jr.'s mother, a victim of COINTELPRO, came to Georgia in the mid-1990s to help me gain reelection after a malicious redistricting case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Ward Churchill has traveled to my Congressional district to educate my former constituents on the COINTELPRO of yesterday and the COINTELPRO of today. Natsu Saito introduced me to other victims of COINTELPRO. I asked Kathleen Cleaver to co-author a report that was submitted to Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time of the World Conference Against Racism, on the unsolved murders of Black Panther Party members who were victims of COINTELPRO. Fred Hampton, Jr., Ward Churchill, Natsu Saito, and Kathleen Cleaver are all participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

As a Member of Congress, I supported the release of all political prisoners and welcomed information from the American Indian Movement about Leonard Peltier. I have at many times in my political career been allied with the ACLU, and have always supported Pam and Ramona Africa and the MOVE Organization. The American Indian Movement of Colorado, King Downing of the ACLU, and Pam and Ramona Africa of MOVE are all participating in the events in question, according to the organizers.

Mumia Abu Jamal has endorsed the Power to the People Campaign and my Green Party candidacy. According to the organizers, Mumia will transmit a message to all of us participating in the events in question.

Finally, I have appeared on various stages with many Palestinians; I have proudly spoken at rallies organized by Larry Holmes. Debra Sweet with World Can't Wait was among the very first to my knowledge to organize around impeachment as an imperative and I support hers and all other impeachment groups in their efforts. And finally, I have known Ben Manski for a long time as a socially conscious activist who is also a member of the Green Party. According to the organizers, a Palestinian refugee is slated to speak at the events in question, as well as Larry Holmes, Debra Sweet, and Ben Manski.

Rosa and I have not been given any rational, ideological, or strategically-acceptable reason by the Green Party of Colorado to dissociate ourselves from the movement that this country so desperately needs and that these individuals and organizations participating represent, as we all attempt to hold the Democratic Party accountable for its complicity in all of the crimes of the Bush Administration. Therefore Rosa and I will keep our appointments in Denver and we hope that the members of the Green Party of Colorado will attend our sessions and listen to what we have to say. I have faith that by taking principled stands against war and occupation, human rights abuse, the prison-industrial complex, and in support of freedom for political prisoners, the Green party will emerge stronger.

Cynthia McKinney
Green Party Nominee for President of the United States

Rosa Clemente
Green Party Nominee for Vice President of the United States

*******
Liberation News endorses and encourages people to attend:
Recreate ‘68 Protest: Speakers and Free Concerts Schedule
http://recreate68.com/?p=135

FYI:
Alliance for Real Democracy: drinks and BBQ for Democrat Party delegates and their other scheduled events:
http://slapstickpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/07/alliance-for-real-democracy-dnc.html

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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Neighborhood activism: fundraising for a new park

Jen — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:04:00 GMT

www.associatedcontent.com/article/945801/seattle_capitol_hill_community_rallies.html

A bunch of Hill folks get together to fundraise for a park to be on John and Summit.

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Do you know of any web sites, that should be on our list?

Leslee — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:10:15 GMT

Hi Gang. I have been busy starting a tribe that is simply a list of must see web sites that powerful people hope we will never see. Sites about corporate corruption, government corruption, Rip offs and sleazy business practices, art with a message, important documentaries on line and access to information you won't find on the 6:00 news.

If you know of any sites, you think should be on the list, please post it here.
http://tribes.tribe.net/importantwebsites

Thanks everybody. I am looking forward to seeing what interesting sites you post.

Leslee

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:07:09 GMT

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama and McCain are proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO THE BIPARTISAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!

NO TO OBAMA and MCCAIN'S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

*~U.S. and Allies Out of Afghanistan!!~*
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

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Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch: Afghanistan

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:39:22 GMT

Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch
John Pilger

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2008/07/pilger-obama-afghanistan-news

Published 24 July 2008

74 comments Print version Listen RSS I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children to a US bomb - but mass murder in Afghanistan isn't news

On 12 July, the Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practised routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security". Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday".

Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people - his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."

A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while the Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at a wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated - at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.

The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided . . ." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.

The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" - journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghan istan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power - because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.

Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same wilful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton - and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values' . . . there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain . . ."

Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.

Also see:

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War
by Steven Argue
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/07/14/18516240.php

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

YouTube of RNC/DNC conventions

Tedster — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:50:37 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=magUBVXrgiQ

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Naomi Klein Debunks Bush's offshore drilling plans

trancedan — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:37:33 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlEt86dMFTE

Fox Business Channel has an “after-the-market-closes” show, called Happy Hour, which appears to exist in a surreal space of unreality: bar setting, complete with a bartender and business men with their brewskis in the background, host Rebecca Gomez looking like she’s ready to hook up and whose only research before interviewing Naomi Klein ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein ) appears to be skimming the reviews of The Shock Doctrine ( http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine ) on Amazon, and to top it off, guest host Eric Bolling admits to not only being an oil trader, but never looking at the book! That’s respect, I’ll tell you, for the collective intelligence of their viewers as well as Naomi.

Still, with all the obstacles FBC places in the way of having an intelligent discussion, Klein manages to get in some great points that leave the embarrassingly ill-informed Faux hosts with little to do but sputter inanities like “Naomi, do you like capitalism?”

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Human Rights Report from Malaysia

sharif — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:25:18 GMT

The political situation here in Malaysia is pretty dire, it amazes me to see how this country is suffering from the same issues people face back in Iran, governments using peoples religious beliefs to control the populace, harass the population and limit public freedom of speech and basic human rights.

The moral police, similar to the "basij" militia in Iran use the Sharia law against Malays of all ethnicities and religious backgrounds (something people aren't aware of around the world since people are very scared and reluctant to talk about), using *mis-information*, lies and cover-ups of mind boggling proportions this government has jailed the opposition labeling them as drug traffickers, Islamic extremists!!!, homosexual, Tamil tigers, etc.

Indeed Malaysia is in the forefront of the war of terror and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and yet we hear nothing about this grass roots struggle in the western world. If you are able please spread this information and let the world know about this struggle for freedom in this part of the world.

People here are excited to see the opposition's chances of gaining power and see this as a possible relief from the oppressive tyranny that goes unnoticed here. Although some have said that they aren't putting all their hope in the opposition since they might be just a facade as it is yet to be seen if they are really any different or simply another tool in the current government's arsenal of smoke and mirrors. Hopefully everything will be fine and people of Malaysia will be free.

Free Malaysia!

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:02:05 GMT

Obama Lays Out Plans for Continued War

By Steven Argue

In a July 14, 2008 New York Times Op Ed, Barack Obama says:

"As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces."

In other words, he does not plan to get all of the troops out of Iraq and he will only get most of the troops out in two years. And what does he explain he will do with these troops? Redeploy them. Redeployed where? His rhetoric has been clear: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Obama goes on to call for a surge in Afghanistan as well as war in Pakistan:

"Ending the war [in Iraq] is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan [...] As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters [...]"

U.S. intervention has also been very bad for the people of Pakistan. It is US intervention that has kept a long series of dictators in power there. The US has no right to intervene against those fighting that dictatorship that it labels "terrorists". Likewise, it is US intervention in support of a long series of Pakistani dictators that is the cause of Bhutto's death, brutal repression against the majority, exploitation, and poverty, all of which has resulted in rebellion against the Pakistani government. The US has already harmed the Pakistani people enough with massive aid to dictators and would do more harm by sending in troops.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROPOSED MILITARY INTERVENTION IN PAKISTAN!

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama is proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO OBAMA”S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

In addition, at AIPAC, Obama’s speech laid the groundwork for war with Iran:

“The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. [...] The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

A war on a major oil producing nation under the imperialist excuse of weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar? Bush would have a good case for a charge of plagiarism against Obama.

And what will the Iranians think of more imperialist intervention?

In 1953 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and put the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in power. Mossadegh had plans to nationalize the Iranian oil fields, a plan that would have taken a good chunk of the oil profits out of the private control of major international oil companies. Such nationalizations have greatly helped people in other countries, such as Venezuela, where oil wealth is used to better the conditions of the poor and provide needed programs like healthcare.

The CIA sponsored overthrow of the Mossadegh government paved the way for 26 years of dictatorship under the U.S. backed Shah. Freedom of speech did not exist under the Shah, and the CIA participated in the torture of political opponents to the Shah. Meanwhile, U.S. oil corporations made massive profits from Iranian oil while the vast majority of the Iranian people lived in extreme poverty and did not benefit from the oil wealth.

The Iranian people rightly saw the Shah as a puppet of U.S. imperialism, and finally overthrew his dictatorship in 1979. Unfortunately, repression was so bad under the Shah that the only place that people could organize opposition was in the Mosques. This gave the Mullahs a tremendous advantage in taking control of the revolution. The Islamic nature of the revolution led to a deterioration of women's rights and socialists, many of whom had naively supported the Islamic Revolution, were executed by the clerical fascist state.

Despite the brutal nature of the new Iranian government, in that respect the same as the old regime the U.S. had supported, the U.S. was not satisfied. The new regime nationalized the Iranian oil fields under government control. In addition, the new government was full of anti-imperialist rhetoric and took American hostages; a natural result of 26 years of U.S. imposed dictatorship and exploitation. The U.S. government hated the Iranian revolution most for nationalizing the oil, and they feared that the Iranian Revolution may become an influence for similar anti-imperialist revolutions in the region.

As a result, the U.S. encouraged then ally, Saddam Hussein, to send Iraqi troops to invade Iran. During the war, the U.S. armed both sides, but most armed Iraq and provided Iraq with military intelligence. The Iraqi invasion of Iran began on September 22, 1980 and the war continued until 1988. As a result of the war, between half million and a million and a half people died. This U.S. support to Iraq also helped enable Iraq to murder between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign of 1988. At the time, the U.S. corporate media was silent about this crime, and only exposed it later when U.S. alliances changed.

So U.S. intervention against Iran imposed decades of dictatorship, repression, war, exploitation, poverty, and, just in the Iran-Iraq war alone, the deaths of around a million Iranian people. Like Iraq, U.S. troops on the ground in Iran will not be treated as liberators.

The Iranian working class has many scores to settle with their Iranian rulers, but as bad as the current regime in Iran is, Iranians need only look across the border into Iraq to see that U.S. occupation will be much worse. War, a puppet capitalist regime, a million dead, torture, millions of refugees, and an occupier mainly interested in privatization to loot resources. As Iraq shows, there is no liberation at the hands of U.S. occupation. And as the CIA’s Shah showed; there is no liberation under a U.S. imposed puppet. Only anti-imperialist socialist revolution can begin to solve the problems faced by women, ethnic minorities, and the working class of Iran.

NO TO OBAMA’S THREATS AGAINST IRAN!

U.S. HANDS OFF IRAN!

On Iraq, Obama has never promised to fully withdraw. In a debate in September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

In addition, Obama has directly supported the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq by voting in the Senate to fund it. If it were not for the Democrat votes in congress, the recent $162 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have never passed.

This most recent New York Times Op Ed from Obama continues on with a pro-war position. Obama is clear. He wants a gradual redeployment of the majority of troops to fight other wars while calling for continuing to keep some troops fighting in Iraq.

On Blackwater mercenaries fighting in Iraq, Obama also refuses to support a ban, and promised to continue to use Blackwater when he becomes president (Democracy Now!, June 2, 2008).

The US government has no right to be in Iraq murdering, torturing, and humiliating their people while making massive profits for the military industry and other contractors. The U.S. is attempting to privatize Iraqi oil to eliminate Iraqi control over this most important resource and give U.S. and British oil companies control over the oil. The puppet government the US has set up is a death squad government that should not be protected by U.S. troops. Continued occupation of Iraq is a continued attempt to subvert the national will of the Iraqi people and it must end immediately, yet Obama's plan is to only leave, partially, after a couple years, and this, assuredly, only after the oil law has been passed and oil ownership handed over to the multi-nationals. This, as Obama's own use of the term "redeployment" indicates, will free U.S. troops up for other oil wars.

NO TO OBAMA’S “PHASED REDEPLOYMENT”!

U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!

U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD!

Another major cause for war in the Middle East is U.S. military support to the racist regime in Israel. Obama promises to continue this practice. At AIPAC Obama promised:

“Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade — investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation. First, we must approve the foreign aid request for 2009. Going forward, we can enhance our cooperation on missile defense. We should export military equipment to our ally Israel under the same guidelines as NATO.”

This despite Israel’s recent war of aggression against Lebanon, a war that, if it were not for the heroic resistance of Hezbollah fighters, would have ended in another Israeli occupation like Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon that took place in the 1980’s. That occupation included crimes against humanity committed by Israeli and allied Christian Phalangists when they massacred thousands of Palestinians in cold-blood at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

In addition, Obama’s speech made no reference to the suffering faced by the Palestinian people as a result of the creation and continuation of the Jewish state. Israel is a state that created a homeland for one people, through force and violence, by denying the homeland of Palestine’s original inhabitants. Also missing from Obama’s speech was the brutal blockade currently being carried out against Palestinians in Gaza. Obama expressed zero sympathy for the Palestinians and other Arabs, only promises to supply Israel with the weapons to kill more Arabs.

Massive U.S. military aid helps keep the repressive governments of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in power. Instead of promising more U.S. military aid, that aid should be cut off to better allow the people of the Middle East to decide their own future.

NO TO OBAMA’S PROMISE OF BILLIONS TO ISRAEL!

Another indicator of where Obama stands on imperialist war is how he sees the past wars of the United States. Of H. W. Bush and his war on Iraq Obama recently stated, "I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm." (Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008)

Leading up to that war, Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi Ramaila oil fields. Iraq saw this as theft. In addition, the Kuwaiti monarchy went against OPEC quotas and increased oil production by 40%, bringing down the price of oil on the world market, something Saddam Hussein called economic warfare.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was, at that time an ally of the United States in the wars against Iran and the Kurds. He had received massive U.S. military backing in those wars. When he assembled troops on the Kuwaiti border, US ambassador April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein and told him, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Saddam Hussein saw this as a green light from his powerful U.S. ally to invade Kuwait. Soon after, he did.

But Saddam Hussein was set up by the United States because the U.S. wanted a war. The reason for this was to prop up the profits of the military industrial complex. The Soviet Union had just fallen, and the military industries needed an excuse to keep spending billions of dollars of our tax dollars on the military.

Saddam Hussein was the perfect boogie-man to meet their needs. The U.S. corporate media pointed out that he had murdered tens of thousands of Kurds, never mentioning why they were silent when the operations were taking place with weapons supplied by the United States.

The U.S. corporate media also claimed that premature babies in Kuwait had been taken out of incubators and left to die so that the incubators could be shipped back to Baghdad. The whole story was a complete fabrication, and the corporate media even admitted it after the war, but the lie served its purpose in swaying many people who otherwise questioned going to war for the repressive Kuwaiti monarchy.

In addition, President H.W. Bush claimed as reason for war, "Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression." This was based on supposed Pentagon satellite photos. Yet, from commercial satellite photos acquired by the St. Petersburg Times, this was proven to be a lie, the desert Bush senior and the Pentagon referred to was nothing but empty desert.

While playing up false stories of baby killers and the new Hitler that was going to march across the Middle East, the U.S. corporate media ignored Kuwait’s theft of Iraqi oil as well the historic claim of Iraq to Kuwait, with Kuwait being a construct of British imperialism to divide the territory and limit Iraqi access to the sea.

In addition, the U.S. corporate media completely ignored the repressive nature of the Kuwaiti monarchy that U.S. troops were sent to fight and die for. The vast majority of those living in Kuwait were denied the right to vote and other more basic rights. This included women and people labeled foreigners, many of whom had been in Kuwait for generations. Some who had ancestors in Kuwait prior to 1920 were even denied Kuwaiti citizenship. Palestinian workers built modern Kuwait, but they were kept in second class status. This situation was so bad that many Palestinians aided the Iraqi troops and saw them as a liberation army. After the U.S. re-installed the monarchy, most Kuwaiti Palestinians were driven out of Kuwait.

For women in Kuwait the Iraqi invasion also brought hope. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Under Saddam Hussein, over 50% of Iraqi doctors were women. Iraqi women were allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They were allowed to drive. Iraqi women could even freely criticize men. In addition, Iraqi women had the right to work and control their own funds. This was in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive monarchy of Kuwait where women had / have no rights what-so-ever.

In carrying out the war to defend the Kuwaiti monarchy the U.S. used depleted uranium (DU) weapons that have contaminated Iraqi water, soil, and food with radiation. This radiation has caused large numbers of birth defects and other diseases for the Iraqi people. In addition, U.S. soldiers were not given protection and, as a result, became ill in massive numbers with the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Like Agent Orange poisoning in Vietnam, the military brass pretended they had no clue to the cause of this illness that became dubbed “Persian Gulf War Syndrome”. Yet this was later exposed as a lie when reports were made public warning the military brass of the health risks of DU weapons before the war.

Government demographer Beth Osborn Duponte lost her job when she estimated the civilian loss of life in Iraq to be around 83,000, 13,000 directly from U.S. bombing and another 70,000 civilians dead as a result of U.S. targeting of civilian necessities such as water treatment facilities, medical facilities and supplies, and the electric power grid.

In addition, Duponte estimated deaths of Iraqi troops to be around 40,000. Many of the Iraqi troops killed were buried alive. In defense of U.S. actions Col. Lon Maggart said, "People somehow have the notion that burying guys alive is nastier than blowing them up with hand grenades or sticking them in gut with bayonets, well it's not."

So Obama has no problems with Bush targeting civilians, irradiating U.S. troops and the Iraqi people, burying people alive, lying to the American people, and re-installing a repressive monarchy in Kuwait. In addition, Obama wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan, send troops into Pakistan, is already threatening Iran with war, will never fully pull out of Iraq and only promises to pull out most troops in two years after an extended gradual re-deployment of troops to other wars, will continue to use murderous Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, and promises billions in military aid to Israel. Enough said.

Obama will be nominated the presidential candidate of the Democrat Party on August 24-28 at the Democrat Party National Convention (DNC). In opposition to the DNC convention, protests are being organized, with organizers stating:

"On August 24-28, the ruling elite and their defenders will converge in Denver Colorado, in an attempt to recuperate the gains of global social movements and produce another myth of progress. Lip service to global warming, the economic crisis and the war will endow them with the magic to spread amnesia across the hearts and minds of North America... Outside those doors, however, so many will exclaim, smash and sing a harmonious ‘no.’...”

In addition, there will be protests at the equally pro-war Republican National convention being held September 1-4 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Although virtually ignored by the corporate press, there are other presidential candidates who are running in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans who are for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. These include Cynthia McKinney running on the Green Party ticket, Brian Moore of the Socialist Party, Gloria La Riva on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket, and Róger Calero on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Corporate controlled elections and media assure that these authentic anti-war candidates will not get elected, but these candidacies do help expose people to positions of politicians not controlled by corporate interests and the pro-war Democrat Party machine. In addition, through some of these campaigns, more people become exposed to socialist ideas and the ideas of class struggle methods to bring about change.

A vote for Obama or McCain is a vote for war! So that's what, in active terms, you're really voting for when you vote Democrat or Republican. Those of us voting for third parties, or refusing to vote, will not change the country directly through the elections either, but at least we won’t be dumb enough to vote for own oppressors and exploiters that are waging imperialist war. Instead, we will have the sense to be working for something different.

And those of us in unions should be angry that our hard earned union dues are being squandered on the Democrat Party when that money should instead be put into stronger strike funds to strengthen our ability to fight for better contracts, for socialized medicine, and for bigger strikes against the wars.

Build the Anti-War Movement! For More Strikes for Immediate Withdrawal Like the May 1st ILWU Anti-War Strike That Shut Down 29 Ports! Support Soldiers Refusing to Fight Including the 10,000 U.S. Soldiers Who Have Gone AWOL! Build the Socialist and Anti-Imperialist Movements! U.S. Hands off Iran! U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan Now!

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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FBI to descend on protesters..uh I mean terrorists at DNC.

blackegg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:49:14 GMT

http://www.politicswest.com/26452/fbi_descend_denver_dem_event

""Hundreds" of FBI agents will be in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, according to James Davis, the FBI special agent in charge of the Denver field division that oversees Colorado and Wyoming.

The FBI is "responsible for gathering intelligence on, primarily terrorist activity, any possible terrorist activity with regard to the convention, and make sure we get that intelligence to our partner agencies so they can be prepared," according to a "Colorado Matters" interview that aired today on Colorado Public Radio. The audio is available here.

Davis also said that, "We don't have any information right now about any credible threat to the convention on a terrorist level."

Host Ryan Warner asked about the number of additional FBI agents that will be in town.

"I don't want to say exactly how many, but I can tell you that it's in the hundreds," replied Davis.

He also said that, "Primarily, the folks we have coming in are here to respond to an incident that rises to our jurisdiction."

WARNER: "What would that be?"

DAVIS: "Like a terrorist attack."

WARNER: "O.K. So it's pro-active in many ways, having that many men and women here?"

DAVIS: "It is. I'm comfortable in saying that I would be very happy if they went home without ever doing anything."

Earlier in the interview, regarding the possibility of disruptive protests at the convention, Davis said the FBI is looking at "tactics and groups similar to what we've seen in conventions in the past and other major meetings" such as "blockage of streets and attempts to disrupt traffic flows, that sort of thing."

Davis would not say whether undercover FBI agents have joined protests groups or attended their meetings.

More generally, Davis acknowledged the possibility the convention could draw criminal activity - and that law enforcement partner agencies were aware of that.

"Criminals are smart enough to recognize that law enforcement is going to be very busy during that time. General crimes, things that occur regularly, are more attractive - I think - to criminals at that time when they know that police are going to be heavily otherwise occupied." "

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Declaring Our Independence, Creating the Next Society

trancedan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:34:45 GMT

In honor of Independence Day, I think it's appropriate to begin a thread focused on the kind of society that we, the people, would like to replace the American Empire after its inevitable collapse. Let's attempt to do our best at keeping the comments constructive, limiting the criticism to the ideas, without moving into ad hominem attacks. What kinds of Revolutionary Ideas do you propose, and can begin to implement, as we turn the corner on the end of an era?

Here, to get us started, is an interesting article I found well worth reading that explores some of the reasons and suggestions for the Next Society:

http://rinf.com/alt-news/activism/creating-the-next-society-your-revolutionary-ideas-needed-now/3988/

>>> It’s fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that the American Empire, as currently configured and operated, is simply not sustainable. Financial collapse is inevitable (and accelerating, it seems), and even mainstream America can no longer deny the obvious signs that things have gone terribly wrong: Skyrocketing fuel prices, unprecedented inflation in food prices, rampant epidemics of preventable degenerative disease, plummeting real estate prices, an increasingly-worthless national currency, disastrous war failures, rampant dishonesty in Washington, and accelerating climate changes that are causing flooding, crop failures, droughts and worse. It is becoming increasingly difficult for even the Pollyannas of the world to argue that the United States of America has a bright future. <<<

<snip>

>>>>Now, those are just my ideas. You may not agree with them all, and in fact I hope you don’t! What we need are YOUR ideas (and other people’s ideas) to be part of the conversation in creating The Next Society. It will soon be time to put the new ideas on the table, throw out the old ideas, and create a new society. Consider: What hasn’t worked? What has worked? What makes sense today that didn’t make sense in 1776? (Like internet voting, for example, which eliminates the entire need for the U.S. Congress, since the whole idea of “representatives” was based on the need for remote representation of people living in far-off places without connectivity…) Does our tax system currently work? Do you like the IRS? If not, what would work better? (The Flat Tax, perhaps?) Does voting work? Not very well. Instant Runoff Voting works much better. Why not implement that in the Next Society?<<<<

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

What to expect at the DNC...

blackegg — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:46:09 GMT

From:
http://dncdisruption08.org/?page_id=9

While we’ve got 500 (or 5000) of our closest friends in town this August, we’ve
got a ton of things we want to get done.

• shut down, disrupt, or delay the convention
• storm convention events
• dismantle Denver’s capitalism, gentrification, and eco-devastation networks
• feel our movement’s power as a confrontational force
• make direct action a threat again
• bring our international anarchist movement back into the public consciousness
• build momentum for the opposition to the RNC
• ensure that the DNC is a thing of rowdy beauty
• turn the DNC’s festivities into our own
• bring the direct action that meets the needs of local communities
• continue multiracial coalitions with multiracial turnouts
• stop racist development and the targeting of immigrant communities
• further Denver anarchist community’s ties with other local struggles.
• have such a good time and create something so magnificently awesome that
no one will ever want to leave. ever.

COME IF YOU'VE BEEN TO A ZILLION PROTESTS!
something old

Can you hear it? Put your ear to the ground, listen to the rustle of the leaves,
the background noise of your dreams : something different is going down this
summer, and you’re going to want to be in on the fun. We’ve been keeping on
the down low the past few years - healing, community projects, processing the
past, reassessing our strengths. Many of us have been waiting for the moment to
once again rise up and strike at the heart of the machine. We’ve had a chance
to rest, we’ve learned from our mistakes, it’s now or never to get back in the
streets. We’re going to Disrupt the DNC, Crash the RNC, Roadblock I-69,
Treesit the University of California, and then we’re going to bring the whole
fucking thing down.
This summer is ours. We’re going to be big, we’re going to be fierce, and we’re going to win.

AND IF YOU'VE BEEN TO NONE!
something new

Seattle? Quebec? Cancun? You’ve heard the myths. You wish you’d been there.
You’ve never been to a mass action and thinking about it makes you a little scared
and a lot excited. Harness the fear, ride the excitement, and be a part of the next
chapter of the history that’s being written at this very moment. If you don’t know
what if feels like to hold an intersection with a tight group of your friends, while
the capitalists sit stuck in their bus unable to reach their convention center... If
you’ve never experienced a crowd of a hundred new friends swarming a street
and forcing police to retreat.. If you haven’t prepared food for hungry protesters
and then seen the grateful smiles of a thousand satisfied bellies...

Bring your new ideas, bring your enthusiasm, bring it. DNC Denver is the next big thing
and you can be here with us to make it happen.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Who's going to Denver's DNC?

blackegg — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:47:45 GMT

I'm considering moving up there for a few months.
Here's a list of grassroots activists you may already know about.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_9654625

Protest groups
CodePink

Founded: 2002

Mission: CodePink is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social-justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, prevent new military actions and redirect resources into health care, education and other "life-affirming" activities.

United for Peace and Justice

Founded: 2002

Mission: A coalition of more than 1,400 local and national groups that have joined together to protest the Iraq war and support the fight for global economic justice.

Tent State University

Founded: 2003

Mission: A network of student-led projects intended to create a more- effective democracy, with issues that range from war opposition to high tuition costs.

People Call for Change

Founded: 2008

Mission: This coalition hopes to build a grassroots movement for social change, from monitoring corporate power to promoting health care and civil liberties. Spiritual values underlie their positions on issues, which arise from secular and religious traditions.

Students for Peace and Justice

Founded: 2007

Mission: A local vehicle for student action to end the war and create progressive social change.

American Friends Service Committee

Founded: 1917

Mission: The organization, which espouses nonviolence, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. Today, the group takes a strong anti-war position and works on a variety of issues, such as economic justice and immigrants' rights.

Students for Democratic Society

Founded: 2006

Mission: Inspired by the original organization by the same name that dominated the 1960s protest movement, this new version wants to revitalize student activism in the United States, work to stop all wars and create a participatory democracy.

The Backbone Campaign

Founded: 2003

Mission: A grassroots campaign to encourage citizens and elected officials to stand up for progressive values, focusing on issues of democracy, economic justice, ecology and international relations.

posted in *Activists* - 4 replies

Recommendations for Tomorrow's Elections (CA)

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:29:53 GMT

Recommendations for Tomorrow's Elections (CA)

Liberation News recommends people get out to vote tomorrow, to vote NO on Proposition 98, and YES on Proposition 99. In addition, a letter from Attorney Kate Wells urging Santa Cruz voters to vote for Steven Wright for judge is also included.

Proposition 98 would amend the State Constitution to prohibit rent control and eliminate renters’ protections against slumlords. It is being sponsored by the California Apartment Owners Association, the California Association of Realtors, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. While the fake progressive city of Santa Cruz has no rent control, the elimination of rent control in other cities due to this proposition would result in people loosing their roofs and becoming homeless. Liberation News joins the California Labor Federation, the American Association of Retired Persons, and the League of Women Voters in saying NO on 98.

Proposition 99 would amend the constitution to bar state and local governments from using eminent domain to seize owner-occupied residences and transfer it to commercial developers and other private parties. Such protection from eminent domain abuse will be a positive step forward, while this would also preserve the process for using eminent domain for beneficial projects like schools and hospitals. Most importantly, this measure would leave rent control in place. Proposition 99 states that if it is approved by more votes than Proposition 98, Proposition 98 will not take effect. Liberation News joins the California Labor Federation, League of California Homeowners, League of Women Voters, and the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the Consumer Federation in urging you to vote YES on 99.

In addition, Kate Wells, an attorney who has gone to bat in support of homeless rights and free speech rights in Santa Cruz, would like Santa Cruz voters to see her following message:

********************
To those concerned:

I urge you all to vote for Steven Wright for Superior Court Judge in tomorrow's election. His opponent, Ari Symons, a life-long Republican who suddenly changed her registration to Democrat at the beginning of her campaign, has been declared unqualified to be a judge by the relevant state judicial commission (she appealed the designation and was again found to be unqualified.) She is also a prosecutor in the D.A.'s office and we already have way too many ex-prosecutors on the bench. Wright was the preferred candidate by 75 % of his fellow attorneys; he was found qualified by the state commission; he is a defense attorney and he is a fair-minded, competent and compassionate person. I have personally known Steve for 25 + years and have the highest regard for him. Please pass this on to all of your local email correspondents. Recently, the so-called "Progressive Coalition of Santa Cruz County" has passed out doorhangers endorsing Symons making it appear that she is the progressive candidate - NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH !

Thanks for passing this message on.
Kate Wells
*******************

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

This is an article of Liberation News, Subscribe Free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

John Pilger: "From Kennedy to Obama; Liberalism's Last Fling"

Sat, 31 May 2008 19:50:59 GMT

ZNet
May, 31 2008

"What is Obama's attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy's. By offering a 'new', young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party -- with the bonus of being a member of the black elite -- he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell's role as Bush's secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent." -- John Pilger
-------
From Kennedy To Obama; Liberalism's Last Fling
By John Pilger

In this season of 1968 nostalgia, one anniversary illuminates today. It is the rise and fall of Robert Kennedy, who would have been elected president of the United States had he not been assassinated in June 1968. Having travelled with Kennedy up to the moment of his shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June, I heard The Speech many times. He would "return government to the people" and bestow "dignity and justice" on the oppressed. "As Bernard Shaw once said," he would say, "'Most men look at things as they are and wonder why. I dream of things that never were and ask: Why not?'" That was the signal to run back to the bus. It was fun until a hail of bullets passed over our shoulders.

Kennedy's campaign is a model for Barack Obama. Like Obama, he was a senator with no achievements to his name. Like Obama, he raised the expectations of young people and minorities. Like Obama, he promised to end an unpopular war, not because he opposed the war's conquest of other people's land and resources, but because it was "unwinnable".

Should Obama beat John McCain to the White House in November, it will be liberalism's last fling. In the United States and Britain, liberalism as a war-making, divisive ideology is once again being used to destroy liberalism as a reality. A great many people understand this, as the hatred of Blair and new Labour attest, but many are disoriented and eager for "leadership" and basic social democracy. In the US, where unrelenting propaganda about American democratic uniqueness disguises a corporate system based on extremes of wealth and privilege, liberalism as expressed through the Democratic Party has played a crucial, compliant role.

In 1968, Robert Kennedy sought to rescue the party and his own ambitions from the threat of real change that came from an alliance of the civil rights campaign and the anti-war movement then commanding the streets of the main cities, and which Martin Luther King had drawn together until he was assassinated in April that year. Kennedy had supported the war in Vietnam and continued to support it in private, but this was skillfully suppressed as he competed against the maverick Eugene McCarthy, whose surprise win in the New Hampshire primary on an anti-war ticket had forced President Lyndon Johnson to abandon the idea of another term. Using the memory of his martyred brother, Kennedy assiduously exploited the electoral power of delusion among people hungry for politics that represented them, not the rich.

"These people love you," I said to him as we left Calexico, California, where the immigrant population lived in abject poverty and people came like a great wave and swept him out of his car, his hands fastened to their lips.

"Yes, yes, sure they love me," he replied. "I love them!" I asked him how exactly he would lift them out of poverty: just what was his political philosophy?

"Philosophy? Well, it's based on a faith in this country and I believe that many Americans have lost this faith and I want to give it back to them, because we are the last and the best hope of the world, as Thomas Jefferson said."

"That's what you say in your speech. Surely the question is: How?"

"How? . . . by charting a new direction for America."

The vacuities are familiar. Obama is his echo. Like Kennedy, Obama may well "chart a new direction for America" in specious, media-honed language, but in reality he will secure, like every president, the best damned democracy money can buy.

As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America's divine right to control all before it. "We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good," said Obama. "We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people [emphasis added]." McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing "terrorists" he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn't quarrel. Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel's starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" to now read: "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added]." Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, "is a threat to all of us".

On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of "100 years", his earlier option). Obama has now "reserved the right" to change his pledge to get troops out next year. "I will listen to our commanders on the ground," he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. Like McCain, Obama has voted repeatedly in the Senate to support Bush's demands for funding of the occupation of Iraq; and he has called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. His senior advisers embrace McCain's proposal for an aggressive "league of democracies", led by the United States, to circumvent the United Nations.

Like McCain, he would extend the crippling embargo on Cuba.

Amusingly, both have denounced their "preachers" for speaking out. Whereas McCain's man of God praised Hitler, in the fashion of lunatic white holy-rollers, Obama's man, Jeremiah Wright, spoke an embarrassing truth. He said that the attacks of 11 September 2001 had taken place as a consequence of the violence of US power across the world. The media demanded that Obama disown Wright and swear an oath of loyalty to the Bush lie that "terrorists attacked America because they hate our freedoms". So he did. The conflict in the Middle East, said Obama, was rooted not "primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel", but in "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam". Journalists applauded. Islamophobia is a liberal speciality.

The American media love both Obama and McCain. Reminiscent of mating calls by Guardian writers to Blair more than a decade ago, Jann Wenner, founder of the liberal Rolling Stone, wrote: "There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline . . . Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon 'the better angels of our nature'." At the liberal New Republic, Charles Lane confessed: "I know it shouldn't be happening, but it is. I'm falling for John McCain." His colleague Michael Lewis had gone further. His feelings for McCain, he wrote, were like "the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls".

The objects of these uncontrollable passions are as one in their support for America's true deity, its corporate oligarchs. Despite claiming that his campaign wealth comes from small individual donors, Obama is backed by the biggest Wall Street firms: Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the huge hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. "Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors," wrote the investigator Pam Martens, "consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages." A report by United for a Fair Economy, a non-profit group, estimates the total loss to poor Americans of colour who took out sub-prime loans as being between $164bn and $213bn: the greatest loss of wealth ever recorded for people of colour in the United States. "Washington lobbyists haven't funded my campaign," said Obama in January, "they won't run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president." According to files held by the Centre for Responsive Politics, the top five contributors to the Obama campaign are registered corporate lobbyists.

What is Obama's attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy's. By offering a "new", young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party - with the bonus of being a member of the black elite - he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell's role as Bush's secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.

America's war on Iran has already begun. In December, Bush secretly authorised support for two guerrilla armies inside Iran, one of which, the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, is described by the state department as terrorist. The US is also engaged in attacks or subversion against Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bolivia and Venezuela. A new military command, Africom, is being set up to fight proxy wars for control of Africa's oil and other riches. With US missiles soon to be stationed provocatively on Russia's borders, the Cold War is back. None of these piracies and dangers has raised a whisper in the presidential campaign, not least from its great liberal hope.

Moreover, none of the candidates represents so-called mainstream America. In poll after poll, voters make clear that they want the normal decencies of jobs, proper housing and health care. They want their troops out of Iraq and the Israelis to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbours. This is a remarkable testimony, given the daily brainwashing of ordinary Americans in almost everything they watch and read.

On this side of the Atlantic, a deeply cynical electorate watches British liberalism's equivalent last fling. Most of the "philosophy" of new Labour was borrowed wholesale from the US. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were interchangeable. Both were hostile to traditionalists in their parties who might question the corporate-speak of their class-based economic policies and their relish for colonial conquests. Now the British find themselves spectators to the rise of new Tory, distinguishable from Blair's new Labour only in the personality of its leader, a former corporate public relations man who presents himself as Tonier than thou. We all deserve better.

www.johnpilger.com

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

The Big World Gathering - Take Your Power Back

truthgathering — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:32:43 GMT

THE BIG WORLD GATHERING
http://www.worldgathering.net

What is The Big World Gathering?
The Big World Gathering is happening now wherever you are by you sharing with others what you really feel and think about life today, and by distributing information you believe is important. At a later stage, perhaps soon to happen, all our individual actions may help lead to something quite surprising; a major world change.

"Awake, awake, the world is young,
For all its weary years of thought.
The starkest fights must still be fought,
The most surprising songs be sung."
~ James E Flecker

Surprising Songs for The Big World Gathering ...
The Big World Gathering Theme Tune 1 ~ (5+ mins):
http://www.worldgathering.net/wwwmp3/wg1.mp3
The Big World Gathering Theme Tune 1 ~ (1+ mins):
http://www.worldgathering.net/wwwmp3/wg2.mp3
Big World Gathering Love Song ~ Time ~ (2+ mins):
http://www.worldgathering.net/wwwmp3/time.mp3
World-Action Big Gathering Theme Tune ~ (1+ mins):
http://www.worldgathering.net/wwwmp3/wa18.mp3

Special Images for The Big World Gathering:
http://www.worldgathering.net/logos.html

Subscribe to the BWG NEWS List at Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/worldgathering

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'THE GATHERING' by Sitting Bull

It is very important that as many people as possible, in different places, should take part in the Gathering. Decide where and when and how to gather. Your participation is needed.

This is the beginning of the break we are all waiting for; for you all on Earth and ourselves out here. This is the beginning of the turn around. We have waited so long for the change. It is time. This is the beginning of the end of the old ways; the turning of the tide.

State what you believe is true. Courage is the ability to go beyond the familiar. Exchange the information and hopes you have. Always in the world, a change starts with a few people. These few speak the feelings and thoughts of a multitude. They speak the heart of humanity's soul.

The people and ETs who will come together shall ring in a return, a turn around. There will come a flow on Earth which will burst the dark energies surrounding you and your planet. That which you believe is true must be stated. The truth is the key.

May strength and vision be yours as you establish the new. Follow your hearts. Let your inner light be your guide. Realise the beauty and greatness you have within yourself and step ahead. This is the time so many have waited so long for. Never doubt it has started.

The young of all nations are looking for a new direction. It is time to light a beacon to show the way for all humanity. Let your feelings, thoughts and beliefs be your guiding light. The power of the moment. The wishes of the people. The good times ahead.

It is time for the gathering.

Tatanka Yotanka - The Sitting Bull
(This message is through a clairvoyant in Holland, Europe, in recent years)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Special Words for The Big World Gathering:
~ The Rainbow Dream Vision of Hope: "This prophecy is a dream and vision that is a potential reality for mankind. It is not an ultimatum. But it is ours to behold and to create if we only dare to create it together." ~
~ A Central American Mayan Elder: "Human beings must come together in support of life. At present, each person and group is going his or her own way. There is hope if people can come together and unite." ~
~ E F Schumacher: "We must do what we conceive to be the right thing and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we will be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we will be doing the wrong thing and we will just be a part of the disease and not a part of the cure." ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'The Gathering' by Matthew

Last night I had a gathering for all my departed friends
I asked Jim Morrison where he'd been
He just laughed and smiled,
Spoke of what he'd seen

He said "I've been to the end of the rainbow"
He said "I've seen supernovae burst"
But before I could ask a question,
He said "Let me finish first"

He said "I have something to tell you",
This really is the MASTER KEY
ONLY! ONLY LOVE!
Will set this planet free

He then spoke ok Atlantis,
And what has come to pass
In an alien war of genocide,
He and his friends escaped the blast

* * *
Now these ones are returning,
They see our hearts are burning
The Universe is yearning,
For us to break on through

Well now you see here is my request,
The letter to your heart
Will you join us now,
Let the healing start

First there came THE question,
Then I found THE door
Now I have come through it,
A stronger man for sure

I will ask you the same question,
I can lead you to this door
If you will walk through it,
You will be Wiser than before

Yes now I have this question to put to you
Are you going to resist,
Will you break on through?
Will you break on through?

I am waiting for you...

The Gathering

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Special Images for The Big World Gathering:
http://www.worldgathering.net/logos.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subscribe to the BWG NEWS List at Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/worldgathering
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big World Gathering is happening now wherever you are by you sharing with others what you really feel and think about life today, and by distributing information you believe is important. At a later stage, perhaps soon to happen, all our individual actions may help lead to something quite surprising; a major world change.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big World Gathering ~ http://www.worldgathering.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

1950: 100,000 Executed by Imperialism's Korean Dictatorship

Mon, 19 May 2008 17:49:00 GMT

[The US war of aggression in Korea murdered 5 million Koreans. Part of that murder was the cold blooded executions of over 100,000 leftists and suspected leftists by the South Korean government in 1950. Over 54,000 U.S. soldiers died in the U.S. war to defend that murderous U.S. imposed regime. The following AP article exposes what many on the left have known about for decades, but has been hidden from the general public in the United States by the government and corporate media. -Steven Argue]

AP Probes 'Cold-Blooded Slaughter' in South Korea
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003805038

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press

Published: May 18, 2008 4:15 PM ET

DAEJEON Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions - intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners - were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were ``the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War,'' said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.

That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is ``very conservative,'' said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he told The Associated Press.

In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.

Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped ``secret'' and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.

Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.

In 2002, a typhoon's fury uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine. Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.

Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up. The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.

``Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger,'' said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.

The retired prison guard told the AP he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They ``knew nothing about communism.''

The 17 investigators of the commission's subcommittee on ``mass civilian sacrifice,'' led by Kim, have been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents - not just mass planned executions, but also 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.

The commission last year excavated sites at four of an estimated 150 mass graves around the country, recovering remains of more than 400 people. Working deliberately, matching documents to eyewitness and survivor testimony, it has officially confirmed two large-scale executions - at a warehouse in the central South Korean county of Cheongwon, and at Ulsan on the southeast coast.

In January, then-President Roh Moo-hyun, under whose liberal leadership the commission was established, formally apologized for the more than 870 deaths confirmed at Ulsan, calling them ``illegal acts the then-state authority committed.''

The commission, with no power to compel testimony or prosecute, faces daunting tasks both in verifying events and identifying victims, and in tracing a chain of responsibility. Under Roh's conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, whose party is seen as democratic heir to the old autocratic right wing, the commission may find less budgetary and political support.

The roots of the summer 1950 bloodbath lie in the U.S.-Soviet division of Japan's former Korea colony in 1945, which precipitated north-south turmoil and eventual war.

In the late 1940s, President Syngman Rhee's U.S.-installed rightist regime crushed leftist political activity in South Korea, including a guerrilla uprising inspired by the communists ruling the north. By 1950, southern jails were packed with up to 30,000 political prisoners.

The southern government, meanwhile, also created the National Guidance League, a ``re-education'' organization for recanting leftists and others suspected of communist leanings. Historians say officials met membership quotas by pressuring peasants into signing up with promises of rice rations or other benefits. By 1950, more than 300,000 people were on the league's rolls, organizers said.

North Korean invaders seized Seoul, the southern capital, in late June 1950 and freed thousands of prisoners, who rallied to the northern cause. Southern authorities, in full retreat with their U.S. military advisers, ordered National Guidance League members in areas they controlled to report to the police, who detained them. Soon after, commission researchers say, the organized mass executions of people regarded as potential collaborators began - ``bad security risks,'' as a police official described the detainees at the time.

The declassified record of U.S. documents shows an ambivalent American attitude toward the killings. American diplomats that summer urged restraint on southern officials - to no obvious effect - but a State Department cable that fall said overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean ``internal matter,'' even though he controlled South Korea's military.

Ninety miles south of Seoul, here in the narrow, peaceful valley of Sannae, truckloads of prisoners were brought in from Daejeon Prison and elsewhere day after day in July 1950, as the North Koreans bore down on the city.

The American photos, taken by an Army major and kept classified for a half-century, show the macabre sequence of events.

White-clad detainees - bent, submissive, with hands bound - were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.

Trembling policemen - ``they hadn't shot anyone before'' - were sometimes off-target, leaving men wounded but alive, Lee said. He and others were ordered to check for wounded and finish them off.

Evidence indicates South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 here, said commissioner Kim. A half-dozen trenches, each up to 150 yards long and full of bodies, extended over an area almost a mile long, said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, chairman of a group of bereaved families campaigning for disclosure and compensation for the Daejeon killings. His father, accused but never convicted of militant leftist activity, was one victim.

Another was Yeo Tae-ku's father, whose wife and mother searched for him afterward.

``Bodies were just piled upon each other,'' said Yeo, 59, remembering his mother's description. ``Arms would come off when they turned them over.'' The desperate women never found him, and the mass graves were quickly covered over, as were others in isolated spots up and down this mountainous peninsula, to be officially ``forgotten.''

When British communist journalist Alan Winnington entered Daejeon that summer with North Korean troops and visited the site, writing of ``waxy dead hands and feet (that) stick through the soil,'' his reports in the Daily Worker were denounced as ``fabrication'' by the U.S. Embassy in London. American military accounts focused instead on North Korean reprisal killings that followed in Daejeon.

But CIA and U.S. military intelligence documents circulating even before the Winnington report, classified ``secret'' and since declassified, told of the executions by the South Koreans. Lt. Col. Bob Edwards, U.S. Embassy military attache in South Korea, wrote in conveying the Daejeon photos to Army intelligence in Washington that he believed nationwide ``thousands of political prisoners were executed within (a) few weeks'' by the South Koreans.

Another glimpse of the carnage appeared in an unofficial U.S. source, an obscure memoir self-published in 1981 by the late Donald Nichols, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, who told of witnessing ``the unforgettable massacre of approximately 1,800 at Suwon,'' 20 miles south of Seoul.

Such reports lend credibility to a captured North Korean document from Aug. 2, 1950, eventually declassified by Washington, which spoke of mass executions in 12 South Korean cities, including 1,000 killed in Suwon and 4,000 in Daejeon.

That early, incomplete North Korean report couldn't include those executed in territory still held by the southerners. Up to 10,000 were killed in the city of Busan alone, a South Korean lawmaker, Park Chan-hyun, estimated in 1960.

His investigation came during a 12-month democratic interlude between the overthrow of Rhee and a government takeover by Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee's authoritarian military, which quickly arrested many then probing for the hidden story of 1950.

Kim said his projection of at least 100,000 dead is based in part on extrapolating from a survey by non-governmental organizations in one province, Busan's South Gyeongsang, which estimated 25,000 killed there. And initial evidence suggests most of the National Guidance League's 300,000 members were killed, he said.

Commission investigators agree with the late Lt. Col. Edwards' note to Washington in 1950, that ``orders for execution undoubtedly came from the top,'' that is, President Rhee, who died in 1965.

But any documentary proof of that may have been destroyed, just as the facts of the mass killings themselves were buried. In 1953, after the war ended in stalemate, after the deaths of at least 2 million people, half or more of them civilians, a U.S. Army war crimes report attributed all summary executions here in Daejeon to the ``murderous barbarism'' of North Koreans.

Such myths survived a half-century, in part because those who knew the truth were cowed into silence.

``My mother destroyed all pictures of my father, for fear the family would get an image as leftists,'' said Koh Chung-ryol, 57, who is convinced her 29-year-old father was innocent of wrongdoing when picked up in a broad police sweep here, to die in Sannae valley.

``My mother tried hard to get rid of anything about her husband,'' she said. ``She suffered unspeakable pain.''

Even educated South Koreans remained ignorant of their country's past. As a young researcher in the late 1980s, Yonsei University's Park Myung-lim, today a leading Korean War historian, was deeply shaken as he sought out confidential accounts of those days from ordinary Koreans.

``I cried,'' he said. ``I felt, 'Oh, my goodness. Oh, Jesus. This was my country? It was true?'''

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission can recommend but not award compensation for lost and ruined lives, nor can it bring surviving perpetrators to justice. ``Our investigative power is so meager,'' commission President Ahn Byung-ook told the AP.

His immediate concern is resources. ``The current government isn't friendly toward us, and so we're concerned that the budget may be cut next year,'' he said.

South Korean conservatives complain the ``truth'' campaign will only reopen old wounds from a time when, even at the village level, leftists and rightists carried out bloody reprisals against each other.

The life of the commission - with a staff of 240 and annual budget of $19 million - is guaranteed by law until at least 2010, when it will issue a final, comprehensive report.

Later this spring and summer its teams will resume digging at mass grave sites. Thus far, it has verified 16 incidents of 1950-51 - not just large-scale detainee killings, but also such events as a South Korean battalion's cold-blooded killing of 187 men, women and children at Kochang village, supposed sympathizers with leftist guerrillas.

By exposing the truth of such episodes, ``we hope to heal the trauma and pain of the bereaved families,'' the commission says. It also wants to educate people, ``not just in Korea, but throughout the international community,'' to the reality of that long-ago conflict, to ``prevent such a tragic war from reoccurring in the future.''

CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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NYT: Obama admires Bush Sr.: ''no complaints about handling of Desert Storm"

Sat, 17 May 2008 18:31:39 GMT

Support for Empire is support for Empire -- any way you cut it. There's a reason Corporate American bankrolled Obama's campaign
...
**************
"I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm."

Source:
- Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/opinion/16brooks.html?em&ex=1211169600&en=1577a90ae5048a04&ei=5087%0A

See:
Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Police Break 60 Year Old Homeless Woman's Arm

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:53:23 GMT

[Donna Deiss is a politically active homeless woman in Santa Cruz, who was also an advocate for tenants rights before she was unfairly evicted. The homeless in Santa Cruz, as well as activists who criticize the local government, are often victims of police harrassment, false arrests, and police violence. -Steven Argue]

60 Year Old Homeless Woman Says Police Broke Her Arm
by Robert Norse
Saturday May 10th, 2008
Donna Deiss called in last night to report that yesterday around 5 PM, Officer La Moss (Badge #114) assaulted her, broke her arm, and then put her in handcuffs when he attempted to question her at Three Tree Lot near Lighthouse Field. Deiss was taken to the Watsonville hospital, had to wait hours for x-rays, whichconfirmed her arm was broken.
Deiss reported the following to me in a phone message last night and an e-mail this morning:

She was talking with friends yesterday on Westcliffe Drive near her RV. An undercover police officer, whom she later identified as Officer LaMoss, arrived in a black unmarked car and said he wanted to talk to her and others in the group. She read La Moss a statement from the ACLU about the rights of community members vis a vis the police and walked to her RV.

The cop followed her. She got in and tried to close the door. Le Moss, not saying she was under arrest or detained, reached in and grabbed her right arm, pinching the skin as he twisted it behind her back, breaking it. She screamed her arm was broken, but his response was to call for backup. 4 more police cars arrived. She continued screaming for 911 and finally paramedics showed up.

The police said they were impounding her RV, which she lives in.

She was taken to Watsonville hospital, waited hours for x-rays and painpills. She is charged with battery and an additional charge. X-rays confirm her arm was broken. She needs an attorney and community support.

This is an account from Donna Deiss (with someadditions from her friend Shane). Donna has previously been harassed by rangers as part of the 'clear out the hippies' campaign at Three Tree Lot and the other lots around Lighthouse Fields. Recently the City's Parks and Recreation Department had its 'No RVs' signs painted over by state Rangers, for apparently violating state law and policy regarding parking (i.e. RVS are allowed to park).

See related stories: 'Harassment of Homeless in RVs, a Letter from Donna Deiss' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/08/18452903.php ,

'Superintendant Hammack Stonewalls on RV Ban in Coastal Parking Lots' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/09/12/18447267.php , and

'Coastal Access Denied to Motorhomes and Trailers in Santa Cruz' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/08/30/18444952.php for related stories.

HOMELESSNESS AND POLITICAL REPRESSION, THE GREEN PARTY FAILS THE TEST IN SANTA CRUZ by Steven Argue
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2001/12/5085.shtml

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Antidepressants are NOT safe or even useful for most depressed people.

Leslee — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:49:05 GMT

If you believe antidepressants are safe or even useful for most depressed people, you need more info. The drug industry has become very rich by lying to us and selling us useless, dangerous drugs.

http://theeffexoractivist.org

http://www.counterpunch.org/cox01272008.html

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045

http://www.ssristories.com/index.php

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/effexor/petition.html

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

activist art

Leslee — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:27:19 GMT

http://news.webshots.com/album/548559364Kdapmv

Any other activist artists here?

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:46:26 GMT

On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

By STEVEN ARGUE

Thirty eight years ago, on May 4, 2008, at Ohio’s Kent State University, the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the US war in Vietnam. The students were shot from distances of 275 to 400 feet, giving lie to claims that the students posed a threat to the Guardsmen. Four students were murdered and nine were injured. Nobody ever did time for those murders.

Before May 4, 1970, an anti-war movement had been building in the United States. The American people were increasingly impatient with the war, and an active anti-war movement helped build that kind of consciousness. People wanted an end to the war and Nixon kept promising a “light at the end of the tunnel.” On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. This was the opposite of what people wanted to hear. Protests erupted on campuses that had not had them in the past, like Kent State. For many, the cold blooded murder of students at Kent State and murders of students soon after at Jackson State, were the final straw.

Immediately after the Kent State shootings 8 million students went out on strike, and some Universities, such as Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. This brought an end to the war. The US government could not win the war because they were facing fierce battles from the Vietnamese and many US soldiers were actively resisting the war. Commanding officers were winding up dead as they tried to force soldiers to kill people in a foreign land for a war they did not believe in. Nixon could not win a war with drafted soldiers who refused to fight, and this was a factor that forced the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam.

Three million Vietnamese were murdered as a result of the US occupation of southern Vietnam and massive U.S. bombing of the north. Over 50,000 US soldiers died. It was resistance, both by the Vietnamese people, and the resistance of the anti-war movement in the United States that brought an end to the US occupation of Vietnam. Had the working class of the United States been ready to join that strike of 8 million students in May 1970, we would have potentially had a revolution in the United States, but at that time the working class was not ready.

Today, after the lessons of Vietnam, and after decades of bi-partisan union busting, outsourcing, privatization, and declining living standards for the US working class, the U.S. working class is now stepping out and taking the lead in the struggle against the criminal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. On May 1st, 2008 10,000 U.S. port workers of the ILWU went out on strike against the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, shutting down all 29 ports on the West Coast for eight hours. Within the union, Vietnam Vets were some of the strongest advocates of the strike.

Joining the strike in solidarity with the demand of immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq were the Iraqi port workers at Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair. They joined U.S. workers in a deeply symbolic one hour strike to end the occupation.

In going out on strike, the union ranks of the ILWU defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them not to strike. They also defied the employers of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) who declared the strike “illegal”. This is the kind of defiance the working class will need to emulate in other industries, both to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to start winning better contracts.

Today, over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. In addition, the U.S. has installed a religious death squad government where women's rights have eroded, the economy has deteriorated, the environment has been seriously devastated by the radiation of US DU weapons, millions of refugees have fled the country, people are often arrested without cause and tortured, the US bombs civilians from the sky, and basic infrastructure like water and electricity have been destroyed by the US and not rebuilt by the US occupiers.

It is also a war that has cost the U.S. thousands of lives, tens of thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars in debt. Yet, for a few extremely wealthy Americans it has meant massive profits for military contractors and other businesses with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, multinational companies like Exxon, BP and Shell are drooling as the U.S. government tries to force an oil law down the throats of the Iraqi people that would turn ownership of Iraqi oil over to these corporations.

Meanwhile, the pro-war Democrat Party voted for the war and keeps voting to fund it. Today, the Democrats are once again pushing for $178 billion in funding for the war. Neither Clinton nor Obama would promise to withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2013 ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07). In addition, the two of them have offered differing versions of expanding these wars into Iran and Pakistan.

Whoever wins the upcoming election, it will take increased action by the working class to end these wars. ILWU member Jack Heyman is correct in saying of the May 1st strike against the war, “There's precedent for this action. In the '50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end.” The longshore workers’ May 1st strike does indeed show the way forward. More strikes, and bigger strikes, along with building a workers’ party independent of the Democrats and Republicans, can indeed end these wars.

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

PLEASE WATCH = "IN LIES WE TRUST" = IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

Daniel J — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:31:49 GMT

PLEASE WATCH = "IN LIES WE TRUST" = IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE
Join the "TRUTH REVOLUTION"..

http://www.restoretherepublic.com/component/option,com_seyret/task,video\
directlink/Itemid,40/id,559/

TORRENT WITH extras
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1375455

PLEASE READ "A Truth Soldier"
http://danieltowsey.blogspot.com/2008/02/truth-soldier.html

Make copies and share them with people you care about, make some and write
"PORN" and leave copies in malls and other places...

Only the truely informed will have any chance..

Please join "conspiraciesclub' It's loaded with thousands of Articles,links,Videos, Documents and more.. http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/conspiraciesclub/

and for Canadians please go to "canadianconspiraciesclub" to learn about Bill C-51 before it's to late http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/canadianconspiraciesclub/

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

SF May 1st Strike: Cynthia McKinney, Danny Glover and Cindy Sheehan speaking

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:45:48 GMT

PORT WORKERS MAY DAY ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Clarence Thomas and Jack Heyman, Co-Chairs
Phone: 510.333.4301 * Fax: 510.215.2800
Email: news@may1.org

MEDIA ALERT

April 23, 2008

The Port Workers May Day Organizing Committee is proud to announce that Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman from Georgia; Danny Glover, renowned actor and political activist; and Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star mother whose son Casey was killed in Iraq four years ago, will be among the featured speakers at our "No Peace, No Work" Holiday mobilization in San Francisco on May 1st.

The West Coast longshore workers have voted to stop work to protest against the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Port Workers May Day Organizing Committee and the other rank-and-file committees in ports up and down the West Coast have received pledges of support from labor councils, local unions and anti-war, anti-racist, immigrant and other social justice organizations across the country and around the globe.

The "March with Longshore Workers" will assemble at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 1st, at the Longshore (ILWU) hall at Mason & Beach, and will march down the Embarcadero for a noon rally at Justin Herman Plaza.

Also see:

ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/nobloodforoil/thread/f02f3fd2-9632-403e-8829-e3817def77c0

This has been distributed by Liberation News, subscribe free:
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Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Cynthia McKinney Letter to ILWU in Support of Port Actions Against the War

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:40:10 GMT

Cynthia McKinney Letter to ILWU in Support of Port Actions Against the War

Power to the Committee to Elect Cynthia McKinney for President
Post Office Box 311759 _ Atlanta, GA 31131-1759
Telephone 510-250-0729
www.RunCynthiaRun.org

April 2, 2008

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the ILWU,

Your powerful Longshore Caucus resolution, "For Workers' Action to Stop the War", and your decision to stop work on the West Coast docks May 1st, inspires all of us who have taken up the struggle to end the disastrous war and occupation of Iraq, foisted on us by the Republican administration, and continually funded without substantial objection by both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress. Sadly, the Bush-Pelosi war policy is a formula for endless global conflict, deterioration of the rule of law among nations, and growing impoverishment, indebtedness and evisceration of workers' rights and civil liberties here at home.

While many unions pass resolution after resolution while doing little to actually stop the bloodshed, for generations the ILWU has shown that we can resist the war-mongering corporate politicians, and their profiteering attempts to divide the labor movement and weaken our capacity to organize and resist their destructive actions.

Once again, your union is setting a shining example for working people everywhere-as you did in 1978, when you refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; in 1984, when you refused to move South African cargo to protest the racist apartheid government; in 1996, when you honored the picket line for striking dockworkers in Liverpool, England; in 1999, when you shut down the Pacific Coast to protest the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle; in 2001, when you prepared a Coast-wide work stoppage in defense of five gallant longshoremen in Charleston, South Carolina, who were charged with felonies for walking a picket line; not to mention the numerous times that you have stopped trade on the West Coast waterfront in support of Black political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

I want you and your members to know that at least one 2008 Presidential candidate is proud to stand up publicly in full and unqualified support of your resolution to celebrate International Workers Day by protesting the war and occupation where it counts: at the point of production. My campaign, the Power to the People Campaign, will stand with you on May 1st, all along the West Coast, and anyplace where working people take up your call to resist the war. We'll be with you on the picket line.

With gratitude for the courage and principles of the women and men of the West Coast docks, I hereby offer my total support for your action. In the days leading up to May 1st, and beyond, I pledge to make backing up the ILWU a central goal of my campaign. Please contact me to discuss how we can best assist in your heroic effort.

In Solidarity,

Cynthia McKinney
Candidate for President of the United States
Power To The People Coalition

Also see:

ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/nobloodforoil/thread/f02f3fd2-9632-403e-8829-e3817def77c0

This has been distributed by Liberation News, subscribe free:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

Come to the May Day protest in San Francisco
WHEN: 10:30 a.m., May 1, followed by a rally at noon.
WHERE: Longshore Union Hall, corner of Mason and Beach (near Fisherman's Wharf).
WHAT: March to a rally at Justin Herman Plaza along the Embarcadero.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.ilwu.org/ and http://www.transportworkers.org/ or call (415) 776-8100.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Rev Wright talking about black churches being misunderstood got me thinking

Raymond — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:09:48 GMT

Rev Wright talking about black churches being misunderstood got me
thinking about things. It has me wondering how we can promote
understanding and tolerance of people's religions and ethnicities. I
feel that they only way it can be done is through a
gathering,discussion,education.

I was wondering wouldn't it be a good idea to have some type of
religious convention so that all churches,religious organizations
could participate and interact with one another and discuss
religious,ideological differences and maybe learn that they have some
similarities that give them some common ground.
They could also have some debate about their beliefs,practices too
Also invite the religious leaders and others to set foot in their
congregations and to observe what goes on... learn to understand
different religious believers.
They could hold the religious convention every year.
There can be an annual survey about people's religious
beliefs,practices that also include matters dealing with tolerance.
They could answer questions that include how many of them know people
of different religions,how many people read books about different
religions including the actual books pertaining to religion like the
Bible in regards to Christianity,the Koran in regards to Islam....ask
questions about interfaith friendships/dating/relationships/marriages.
Ask questions about religious bigotry,discrimination whether they
were victims or perpetrators.
During the religious convention, there can be pamphlets about
religious,and so people can read about other's religions...they can do
surverys on them to see what they approve and disapprove of .
In schools, there could be elective classes on religion. I feel that
religion is very important subject to learn in school....because it
seems religion dominates American culture to the point that all
religious beliefs influence our politics. There could be field trips
to religious institutions to actually experience customs,traditions.
I also believe that we shouldn't just study the good stuff....but also
the bad stuff including persecutions and how religions can oppress
people and limit their rights.

Now this same thing can be done in regards to ethnic groups.

Their their differences and their similarities.....learn about the
similarities to find common ground.
There could be a multiethnic,multicultural week.....where people of
all ethnic groups get together, teach about their cultures and way of
life even included various cuisine. There could be
multicultural,multiethnic exhibits. There could be an annual survey
in regards to ethnic relations including questions like how many
people know people of certain ethnic groups, how many people go to
gatherings,functions that involve different ethnic groups, things like
food..
also ask things about interethnic friendships/dating/relationships.
also ask negative stuff about experiences of ethnic
bigotry,discrimination. Ask about fears,resentments in regards to
ethnic groups....I also feel that questions of affirmative
action,reparations can be part of the survey. I also believe that
ethnic stereotypes need to be addressed during the survey to see how
many people believe in them.

These surveys can be done anonymously too.

I feel empathy and tolerance can only be done through actual
experiencing.

I feel that you have to walk a mile in a person's moccasins to
understand them.

That's just my view.

Raymond

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Vermont AFL-CIO endorses May 1 anti-war strike

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:44:11 GMT

Labor's First Strike Against the War Gains Momentum

Vermont Union offers strong endorsement of West Coast longshoremen's action.

The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.

Montpelier, VT -The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.

The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq "immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary", states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by "the direct actions of working people." Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers' Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.

The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to "discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008."

"Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action," said David Van Deusen, a District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.

Traven Leyshon, President of the Washington, Lamoille & Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, "Vermont labor has long called for an end to this war. The untold billions being spent on the war could instead be used to address our domestic needs. It is working people who pay the cost of the war - in some cases with our lives, but always with our sacrifices."

Full text of the resolution after the jump ...

Vermont AFL-CIO Resolution

In Solidarity With Longshoremen's West Coast Strike Against War

April, 2008

Whereas the war in Iraq is immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary,

Whereas this unjust war is opposed by the great majority of Americans & Vermonters, the bulk of organized labor, and by thousands of enlisted military personal,

Whereas this unjust war has already resulted in over 4000 American dead (including a disproportionate number of brave Vermonters), and tens of thousands of service men & woman being wounded,

Whereas this unjust war has further resulted in untold number of Iraqi deaths,

Whereas the Federal Government has not made any constructive moves towards the ending of this war and the full removal of US troops, and instead has taken the course of escalation and indefinite occupation,

Whereas the government of Vermont, and especially Governor Jim Douglas, have failed to find ways to bring Vermont National Guard troops home from Iraq,

Whereas this war will only be brought to an end by the direct actions of working people,

Therefore, Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO continues to stand in firm opposition to this war, and unequivocally supports the decision of the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to shutdown the west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on May 1st, 2008, as a means of resistance.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO stands in full solidarity with the New York Metro National Association of Letter Carriers who have resolved to conduct two minute periods of silence on May 1st, 2008, at 1PM, 5PM & 9PM in protest of the war and in support of the Longshoremen.

Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO encourages all Vermont workers to stand in solidarity with the historic actions being taken by the Longshoremen & other labor unions to end this war.

Let It Be Further Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO calls for all Vermont workers to discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008 as a means of resistance against this unjust war.

Also see:
ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/nobloodforoil/thread/f02f3fd2-9632-403e-8829-e3817def77c0

This has been distributed by Liberation News, subscribe free:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

Come to the May Day protest in San Francisco
WHEN: 10:30 a.m., May 1, followed by a rally at noon.
WHERE: Longshore Union Hall, corner of Mason and Beach (near Fisherman's Wharf).
WHAT: March to a rally at Justin Herman Plaza along the Embarcadero.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.ilwu.org/ and http://www.transportworkers.org/ or call (415) 776-8100.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:19:26 GMT

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Biofuel Caused Hunger Brings Down Haitian Prime Minister

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:06:39 GMT

In this Liberation News Mailing:

1. Biofuel Caused Hunger Brings Down Haitian Prime Minister
2. UK Protests call for Biofuel Targets to be Scrapped
3. Other Suggested Reading

********************
Movement to cap food prices brings down Haiti's prime minister
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By: Silvio Rodrigues
(Reprinted with permission of the Party for Socialism and Liberation)

Food crisis sparks mass demonstrations

Pressured by mass protests and riots against rising food prices, Haitian lawmakers dismissed Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis in hopes of defusing the crisis. Just days before, 16 of 27 Haitian senators signed a letter calling for the resignation of Alexis.

Demonstrations began on April 2 in Les Cayes, but quickly spread to other areas of the country. For several days, Haitians erected barricades of burning tires and old cars in the streets.

On April 8, thousands of Haitians marched to the presidential palace to protest the sharp increase in food staples and to demand the resignation of the President René Préval. (Utah Independent, April 8)

Demonstrators rammed the palace gates with a rolling dumpster in an attempt to storm the building. U.N. occupation forces in jeeps and assault vehicles responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Soon, the U.N. troops were overwhelmed by the size and fury of the crowds, who turned their anger against the surrounding stores. (Times Republic, April 8)

Opposition lawmakers spearheaded the vote against Alexis, a close ally of Préval, in hopes of mitigating popular anger and capitalizing on the crisis. Youri Latortue, nephew of former prime minister Gerárd Latortue, played a key role in the opposition campaign. Gerárd Latortue became prime minister following the 2004 coup against Aristide, working hand in hand with Washington and its imperialist allies. (Reuters, April 10)

Whether the opposition’s move will be effective remains to be seen. About 25 demonstrators gathered to chant "Aristide or death" outside the parliament following the vote. ""Alexis left? What's the difference?" asked a Haitian chicken vendor. (International Herald Tribune, April 12)

Alexis’ dismissal will do little to fill the stomachs of hungry Haitians. The poorest Haitians live on less than $2 a month. The country suffers from scarce arable land and imports most of its food, including more than 80 percent of its rice. (CTV News, April 12)

Cookies made from dirt, salt and shortening are a staple of the Haitian diet, costing only around 5 cents as of January. Doctors say that relying on the cookies for sustenance can be dangerous; for Haitians, they alleviate the pain caused by hunger. (National Geographic, Jan. 30)

The rising price of foodstuffs is a global phenomenon—protests have erupted in Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso and elsewhere.

The crisis springs from the inherent anarchy of capitalist production. Producers make economic decisions that affect the lives of billions with only their own short-term gains in mind. Among other factors, the growing demand for ethanol has shifted agricultural production away from food crops.

Because capitalists must constantly seek the most profitable alternatives in order not to be driven out of business by their competitors, they are unable to avoid such crises—or to offer a way out of them, for that matter. Subsidies or international "aid" are at times provided to temper popular unrest when it threatens imperialist interests.

It is hard to say whether such "relief" would appease the ire of Haitians at the present juncture. For the impoverished masses, the food crisis was the catalyst for an explosive outburst of deep-rooted hatred for the occupation. The February 2004 coup that toppled Aristide left an indelible mark in the consciousness of a people already well-familiar with imperialist intervention.

René Préval was elected to the presidency in 2006, supported by poor Haitians largely because of his past association with former president Aristide. At the time, two years had passed since the coup and Haiti was already under U.N. occupation. Some sectors of progressive and liberal opinion believed that the 2006 "democratic" elections indicated that things were getting better.

The imperialist occupation under the U.N. flag has continued throughout Préval’s presidency. One only remains in power under occupation by adhering to the framework stipulated by the occupiers. The Préval government has not—and cannot—end the imperialist occupation.

With neither the government nor the opposition offering a way out, poor and working Haitians are growing increasingly reliant on the most powerful force for change—themselves.

***************
UK Protests call for Biofuel Targets to be Scrapped

16 April 2008 joint press release by Biofuelwatch and Global Forest Coalition

London-There were demonstrations in London yesterday and groups across the UK also protested against the introduction of mandatory biofuel blending.

Outside Downing Street speakers from Friends of the Earth, Global Forest Coalition, GM Freeze, campaign against Climate Change and Biofuelwatch condemned the government's decision to go ahead with its biofuel policy against overwhelming evidence of catastrophic impacts on climate, communities, biodiversity and food security.

Other protests were held outside the constituency offices of Ruth Kelley, Secretary of State for Transport, and Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment. More protests took place at BP and Tesco fuel stations. BP and Tesco are two of the companies with significant investment in biofuels (also called agrofuels) from large-scale monocultures. They have been strongly lobbying for mandatory biofuel blending.

"The UK has chosen to ignore a vast mountain of evidence that biofuels are contributing to hunger, climate change, deforestation and human rights abuses," said Dr. Rachel Smolker, main author of "The Real Cost of Agrofuels." She continued, "Perhaps they are counting on new technologies using cellulose from wood and grasses, but these won't sidestep the problems either. Whatever feedstocks are used will result in further expansion of industrial monocultures, possibly including genetically engineered trees. The bottom line is that there is a limited amount of land available, a large population to feed and a desperate need to preserve remaining biodiverse ecosystems. Instead of focusing on improving efficiency and reducing consumption, the UK is mandating further destruction."

Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch adds, "Protests against the agrofuel industry and this government's biofuel policies will not end. The government is talking about vague 'sustainability standards', whilst agrofuels are causing ever greater harm to the climate, to forests and other ecosystems, to communities in the global South, to biodiversity worldwide, and to food sovereignty and food security. We need a moratorium on all agrofuel incentives and targets to prevent those catastrophic impacts."

On 8 April, twenty-nine UK and international groups wrote to the UK government, calling for an agrofuel moratorium and demanding a suspension of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, and opposition to new EU biofuel targets - both the proposed 10% biofuel target in the Renewable Energy Directive, and the inclusion of biofuels in the draft new Fuel Quality Directive. Around 200 organisations from North and South have signed a call for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures, and there are separate calls for a U.S. agrofuel moratorium and for an African agrofuel moratorium, as well as growing number of declarations from the Southern groups that are deeply concerned about the impacts which biofuel policies in Europe, including in the UK, are having on their communities, food sovereignty and environment.

Contact:
Almuth Ernsting, Biofuelwatch, +44-1224-324797 (UK, any time)
Orin Langelle, Global Forest Coalition, +1.802.578.6980 (U.S., any time)

*************************************
3. Other Suggested Reading:

Biofuels and The Internationalization of Genocide
by Fidel Castro
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/mier4/14refexf.html

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
by Steven Argue
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

US Marines occupy Haitian capital amid charges Aristide was kidnapped
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/hait-m02.shtml

***************
Subscribe free to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Colombia: Massacres by US Backed Death Sqad Government Exposed, Again

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:14:52 GMT

Translation By: Colombia Human Rights Committee (Washington)

March 27, 2008

Arrest warrants issued for 15 members of the military for San José de Apartadó massacre

Photo: Jesús Abad Colorado _ Archive / EL TIEMPO

Eight persons died in the massacre.

Photo: Jesús Abad Colorado _ Archive / ELTIEMPO

For the Office of the Attorney General (the "Fiscalía") it is clear that the action at San José de Apartadó sought to impose fear and terror in the civilians of that community.

The decision was provoked by the testimony of Jorge Luis Salgado, a former paramilitary who accused the soldiers of assassinating, in association with the AUC, the three children and eight adults.

"The children were under the bed. The girl was very nice, 5 or 6 years old, and the little boy was also a curious little one.... We proposed to the commanders to leave them in a neighboring home, but they said that they were a threat, that they would become guerrillas in the future.... 'Cobra' grabbed the girl by the hair and ran the machete through her throat," Salgado, a native of Carepa (Antioquia), told the authorities last January 30.

The massacre in the peace community occurred on February 21, 2005.

That day, the mutilated and decapitated bodies were left in the middle of the jungle and in have-covered graves.

All the victims were members of a group that declared itself neutral in the Colombian armed conflict, and who had been zealously requesting special protection.

Though at first testimony indicated that the persons responsible for these deeds were members of the 17th Army Brigade and men under the command of Diego Murillo, 'Don Berna,' this is the first time that someone who was in the ranks of the executioners has told the story.

"None of us knew where we were arriving at, we only knew that we had to go to the hamlet La Resbalosa and go through the area accompanied by the Army," stated the former paramilitary.

Three second lieutenants involved

His testimony just precipitated several important decisions in this emblematic case that has already come before international courts. .

Twelve days ago, the Fiscalía send a communication to the commander of the Army, Gen. Mario Montoya, in which it asks him to order the appropriate persons to arrest 15 active-duty members of that armed body who in 2005 were assigned to the area where the facts unfolded.

In the letter, the Fiscalía notes that initially the members of the Army will give sworn statements.

But one of the investigators assured EL TIEMPO that their arrest was ordered "because there are sufficient indicia to presume their responsibility in the events in Apartadó."

The list that Gen. Montoya received includes three second lieutenants, four sergeants, and eight corporals.

Already in November 2007, Army Capt. Guillermo Armando Gordillo Sánchez was arrested in connection with these same facts.

The officer, mentioned several times in the record, opted to remain silent throughout the sworn statement taken from him a few months ago.

And although his defense counsel has alleged his complete innocence, the Fiscalía opted to indict him of homicide of a protected person, conspiracy to engage in criminal conduct, and terrorism, as co-perpetrator.

The radio operator of Héroes de Tolová, Adriano José Cano Arteaga, told the Fiscalía that Gordillo's group had gone out to patrol with the paramilitaries on several occasions.

'Cobra' Fell

His testimony and that of Jorge Luis Salgado David made it possible, ten days ago, for a specialized prosecutor to order the arrest of the two former paramilitary chiefs accused of active participation in the massacre.

They are Joel José Vargas Flórez and José Clímaco Falco, alias 'Cobra,' the man who allegedly beheaded five-year-old Natalia.

And while the Fiscalía defines the legal status of the Army members implicated, attorneys for the victims' next-of-kin are seeking access to the testimony of the paramilitaries on the heart-rending events of three years ago.

Salgado David, for example, recalls that the father of the beheaded girl begged on his knees for the children's lives.

In addition, he said that the girl thought she was going on an outing and prepared a change of clothes for her little brother for the trip.

"She waved goodbye with her little hand," the former paramilitary recalled.

And he added that the violence of the attack involved such extreme cruelty that when he came across the corpse of one man, allegedly a guerrilla, he almost vomited.

"He was split, destroyed at the stomach.... You could see his intestines and a white thing. I had just eaten pork, and I felt like vomiting."

Witness protection

Today, paradoxically, Jorge Salgado David, is asking for protection.

One group of demobilized paramilitaries has tried to kill him at least twice because he is refusing to go into the `Águilas Negras,' or `Black Eagles,' the emerging paramilitary group with tentacles throughout the country.

Fortunately, the authorities are already pursuing the men who want to kill him.

San José: A peace community

The massacre that occurred in 2005 in San José de Apartadó, and the situation of accusations and stigmatization that stemmed from this incident in this peace community is one of the cases that NGOs have brought before international courts to accuse the Colombian State of not working to defense human rights.

Indeed, since 2002, this community of Urabá, in the department of Antioquia, had provisional measures issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

The international organization has demanded that the Colombian government adopt measures to safeguard the life and integrity of the members of the peace community.

Today, more than three years after the facts, this case and that of another 170 assassinations committed since 1997 in San José de Apartadó, is before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington .

The case should then go before the Inter-American Court , based in Costa Rica , which will then have to decide the matter.

In addition, reports on some of these crimes have been sent to the International Criminal Court, the European Parliament, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, and other international organizations.

The members of the Army for whom arrest warrants were issued

In the letter sent to Gen. Mario Montoya, the Fiscalía asks for the immediate arrest of second lieutenants Alejandro Jaramillo Giraldo, Jorge Humberto Milanés Vega, and Édgar García Estupiñán.

Also included are second sergeants Ángel María Padilla Petro, Henry Guasmayán Ortega, Darío José Brango Agamez, and Óscar Jaime González, and corporals Sabaraín Cruz Reina, Ricardo Bastidas Candia, Héctor Londoño Ramírez, Luis Gutiérrez Echeverría, Jesús David Cardona Casas, Yuber Carranza Rodríguez, Ramón Mican Guativa, and José Carmona.

Extra-officially it was learned that five have already been arrested.

Already in November 2007 Capt. Guillermo Armando Gordillo Sánchez had been arrested in connection with these same facts.

He was the commander of the Bolívar Company, part of the Vélez de Carepa Battalion (Antioquia), who carried out Operation 'Fénix' during the days on which the massacre occurred.

For the investigative agency, "his presence at the time and place is clear and undeniable."

Therefore, he was denied pre-trial release, and has been behind bars since last November.

Several witnesses have testified against him, indicating that the officer agreed to carry out joint patrols with the paramilitaries from the unit known as Bloque 'Héroes de Tolová', which demobilized as part of the peace process with the Government.

One of the witnesses is Adriano José Cano, who was the radio operator of that paramilitary faction, who told the Fiscalía that after the massacre, the captain reproached the paramilitaries for what they had done.

"He told them that it was a major blunder," he said, adding that the members of the military did nothing to prevent the crime or to pursue those responsible.

The now former paramilitary said that the members of the AUC were the Army's guides, but when they reached the campesinos' homes "they entered the houses, intimidated, tortured, and killed" using machetes and firearms.

Cases in which members of the military forces or National Police have been involved

JAMUNDÍ

Last February 18 Col. Byron Carvajal, former commander of High Mountain Battalion No. 3 (Batallón de Alta Montaña No. 3), and 14 of his men were convicted by a judge in Cali for the murder of 10 police officers and one informant in the rural part of Jamundí (Valle del Cauca).

The sentence will be handed down on April 21, but it is thought that it will not be less than 25 years. In the colonel's case, he having apparently planned the attack, a penalty of 40 to 60 years is not out of the question.

RETAKING OF THE PALACIO DE JUSTICIA

The Fiscalía ordered the arrest of (ret.) Col. Alfonso Plazas Vega, in mid-July 2007, in relation to the disappearance of Carlos Rodríguez and Cristina Guarín, who were employees in the cafeteria of the Palacio de Justicia, and Irma Franco, a member of the M_19 guerrilla organization.

As part of the proceeding into these two disappearances, (retired) sergeants Antonio Jiménez and Ferney Causalla were arrested; at the time that had been part of Army intelligence (B2 del Ejército), which participated in retaking the Palacio.

MAPIRIPÁN MASSACRE

Col. Lino Sánchez was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the massacre, which took place from July 15 to 20, 1997, in the municipality of Mapiripán , Meta , which resulted in the deaths of more than 49 persons. The same sentence was imposed, as indirect co-perpetrators, on sergeants Juan Carlos Gamarra Polo and José Miller Urueña Díaz,

In 2003, the Fiscalía indicted Gen. Jaime Alberto Uscátegui, but he was acquitted in November 2007 by a judge in Bogotá.

u.investigativa@eltiempo.com.co

Killed in the massacre were Luis Guerra, his wife Beyanira Areiza, and their son Deyner Guerra. In addition, Alfonso Bolívar, his wife Sandra Graciano, their children Natalia and Santiago , and Alejandro Pérez. Jesús Abad Colorado _ Archive / EL TIEMPO

For the Fiscalía it is clear that the action in San José de Apartadó sought to impose fear and terror among the civilians in that community. Jesús Abad Colorado _ Archive / ELTIEMPO

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

VISION of FREEDOM ~ 1993-2012

truthgathering — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:00:20 GMT

http://worldgathering.net/vision.html
~~~~~~~~~

Vision of Freedom ~ 1993-2012

The Rainbow Dream Vision of Hope
Intertribal Medicine Societies of Turtle island
The Twenty Count: 1993-2012

Make copies of the Rainbow prophecy, and give or send them to people anywhere on the planet. Then let them be guided by their hearts to do the same until all planetary citizens are brought to life in the Rainbow dream, so that we may dream and work together for true peace. Love, Thunder Woman

Introduction by Aleran
Throughout the ages humanity has sought out the prophecies of the spiritually gifted to instil a clear hope and vision into life. During this time many prophecies come to us trying to lead us in many different directions.
Some prophecy points to disaster, hopelessness and the annihilation of mankind. But other prophecies create a vision of joyful transformation through quantum leaps into love and light.
As things stand now, the human race is dreaming a hell.
But as individuals and as a collective humanity it is our potential to dream of paradise and to create the kingdom of heaven on our Mother Earth.
Could it be that the pain in our hearts caused by the hell we have created will spur us on into visions and creations of a world formed in love?
It is my prayer and dream, along with a multitude of others who have taught me to dream the Rainbow dream, that each and every one of you learn to dream both while awake and sleeping, the dream of unity and love through divine transformation.
This prophecy on the following pages is a dream and vision that is a potential reality for mankind. It is not an ultimatum. But it is ours to behold and to create if we only dare to dream it together.

The Rainbow Dream Vision of Turtle Island
Prophecies of The Native Americans
1993-2012

PART ONE ~
The distribution and giving back to humanity of the Twenty Count.
In the Turtle Island lore we say it is the time of finding one’s path with heart.
The time of seeking perfection, growth and development.
Most importantly the time of trust and innocence, when mythologies of the world are finally revealing secrets.

PART TWO ~
The critical time. The time of the animal. The time of Tuwalananie, the dark force.
The reason for this is that seeds of light have been planted and we are starting to grow and the teachings are starting to come out and all those ones who have taught partial truths, who have taught deliberate lies in history, are going to be threatened by the awakening of the Rainbow people because the Rainbow people exist in every country, in every nation, in every land.
The Dark Forces will be threatened and they will use their power and their power exists in technology. We are going to see new technology appearing which will be a tremendous threat to the survival of humanity.
We must exert our influence by gathering together and sharing our ideas and plans for alternative power and for world peace. If we put a double amount of energy with what we are for, we can change it. We can change it.

PART THREE ~
The time of human to human communication.
The time the human family finally starts to become human.
There will be more information brought out into open format than has ever been seen on this planet.
We will re-establish contact in a very knowledgeable way with our ancestors from the stars.
So mark that down because it will happen. The first contact will be with the Pleiades and will be totally acknowledged and will be known to all the world powers. The second contact will be with Sirius.

PART FOUR ~
When truth seekers begin to open the veil of the crack between the worlds, we will see our memory circles.
Many of the leaders who are trying to keep us locked in the past, will not function today, will fall.
Many teachers and wise people will be seen for who they are and they will be the farmers, the labourers and the gas station attendants because the tagashala will be fully awakened.
People will begin to link up with other people in gathering together circles.
Many of these will be the so-called 'common people' and not the teachers you see up there now.

PART FIVE ~
The various winged serpent wheels will begin to turn, to dance once again and when they do the rainbow lights will be seen in dreams all over the world and these rainbow light dreams will help awaken the rest of humanity.
We will sit in a new circle of law.
All civil and social laws will have to be in conformity with natural laws or the people will not accept them and they will have the enlightenment necessary to reject those laws.
Science will once again become metaphysics. They will discover four laws that will help them jump to universal law and transcend the time-space continuum which is the limitation of the age and once again we will begin to take our power and to work with rules and laws that are cosmic laws.

PART SIX ~
We will once again see the way to continue a new dream.
We will be given the road map back to the stars and we will see the star people come out of the illusion of their two-legged form and into their actual great sleeper-dreamer form.
A powerful time approaches humanity and its really hard for me to talk about it.
I am a great dreamer but I don’t know if I dream that large.
We will see a real shift in planetary consciousness.
Many of the enemies of the humans will begin to drop away.
We will totally gain the light of the great light wheel.
There will be one humanity, one planet composed of all the different ways of dancing in complete harmony in the great gathering together circle.
All the seeds will be planted.
The Earth will have its true reality formed.
It will join the sisterhood of planets, the daughters of Copperwoman and it will create within itself all forms of all things in harmony with the everything.
We will see a whole new way of perfection.
There will be plants on this grandmother earth that will give life and sustenance as never before seen.
Starvation on the earth, all those things will be gone. There will be total balance and harmony.

PART SEVEN ~
The new race of humans will begin to design their new reality of life on this planet as they intended it to be when they first came here from the stars.
We will begin to establish this planet and use the collective consciousness to hold the power of this space in harmony with the Great Circle of Twelve and all the planets. There is a whole lot I don’t even know. There is more that I am not supposed to talk about yet.
The dream will be actualised and this planet will hold its space in the great council of planets and become a part of the universal enlightened sisterhood and brotherhood of humanity and keepers of the light circles. It's happened on many planets and it's expected to happen on a lot of other planets.
There will be a moment when the population will be 'the' Population, and something great will happen.
This planet will have its design of energy movement guided by all of humanity living here.

The Great Spirit will leave its seed and the egg of everything here on this planet and it will create itself 20 times over at the speed of light and this prophecy ends as I have been given it by the Grandmothers that I share with you now.

~~~~~~~~~

Vision of Freedom ~ 1993-2012

We can change it. Put a double amount
of energy with what we are for.

Make copies of the Rainbow prophecy, and give or send them to people anywhere on the planet. Then let them be guided by their hearts to do the same until all planetary citizens are brought to life in the Rainbow dream, so that we may dream and work together for true peace. Love, Thunder Woman

http://worldgathering.net/vision.html

~~~~~~~~~

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Free "Free Cascadia" Bumperstickers!

brandon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:45:19 GMT

For those of you not aware, Cascadia is the unique coastal-mountain bioregion between San francisco and the Alaskan panhandle in which the dominant culture is one of respect and honor for the environment and a strong tradition of democracy and social justice. The borders of Cascadia vary, but by some estimates stretch from 42° to 60° north latitude. It's western border consists of the Pacific Coast and a portion of the American state of Alaska. On the east, it borders the American states of Idaho and the Canadian province of Alberta. Cascadia is divided into three prefectures: British Columbia, Oregon and Washington.

To raise awareness of the bio-region, the Cascadian Independence Project has just come out with a batch of 'Free Cascadia' bumperstickers. Orders of up to 5 bumper stickers over the internet are going to be free or by donation. So if you're interested in the concept of Cascadia, just send an address to cascadianow@gmail.com, and we can have them in the mail in the next couple of days.

If you would like to see a picture of them you can go to http://www.cascadianow.org/mediastickers.html

For those who have not previously heard of us, the Cascadian Independence Project is a grass-roots political movement dedicated to building awareness and support for local democracy, global community, and the freedom and eventual independence of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

The CIP is also looking for members to form CIP chapters in their communities, schools or cities. If you're interested and would like to volunteer or form your own chapter, please email us at cascadianow@gmail.com!

For more information, please check out the main website at http://www.cascadianow.org

Thanks!

--Brandon

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

It took a freedom of information act to expose the truth.

Leslee — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:37:16 GMT

What do you think should be done?

It took a freedom of information act to expose the truth. The drug makers have been hiding the negitive studies.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox01272008.html

Now a new Study: Antidepressants Work No Better Than Placebos for the vast majority of depressed people.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045

The drug makers have been out right lying about the efficacy of antidepressants.They have been caught red handed.

For the majority of people, the drugs are no better then snake oil.

If the only problem was that, the drug is a placebo for the vast majority people who have been given it, I would not care.

But it is far from the only problem!

The Physicians' Desk Reference lists the following adverse reactions (side effects) to antidepressants among a host of other physical and neuropsychiatric effects: manic reaction (mania, e.g. kleptomania, pyromania, dipsomania), emotional lability (or instability), abnormal thinking, alcohol abuse, hallucinations, hostility, lack of emotion, paranoid reaction, amnesia, confusion, agitation, delirum, delusions, hysteria, psychosis, sleep disorders, abnormal dreams, and discontinuation (withdrawal) syndrome. Adverse reactions are especially likely when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose or when switching from one SSRI to another SSRI. Adverse reactions are often diagnosed as bipolar disorder when the symptoms could be entirely iatrogenic (treatment induced). Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can also cause severe neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, usually over a period of a year or more, under the supervision of a qualified and experienced specialist.

In addition to the adverse reactions listed in the Physicians' Desk Reference, the FDA published a Public Health Advisory on March 22, 2004 which states (in part): "Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric."

The vast majority of school and other recent massacres have involved people going on or coming off these drugs.

Many otherwise loving parents have killed their own children wile going on or coming off these drugs.

This website is a collection of 2100+ news stories with the full media article available,
http://www.ssristories.com

I have personally witnessed some who who became scary psychotic and violent wile in withdrawal. Someone who is normally highly, intelligent gentle, kind and loving. This is a person I dearly love.

For some people the often horrendous withdrawal effects last for years after quitting.

Withdrawal effects such as Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempts, Homicidal thoughts or urges, Chest pain, racing heart, Auditory hallucinations, Visual hallucinations, Disequilibrium, Serious Headache, Numbness, burning, Electric zap-like sensations in the brain, Electric shock-like sensations in the body, Abnormal visual sensations, Spasms in the eyes, Loud ringing or other noises in the ears, Abnormal smells or tastes, Drooling, Slurred speech, Blurred vision, Muscle cramps, stiffness, twitches and much more. Most people describe it as hell.

Frequency of withdrawal reactions
Antidepressant______halflife_______Frequency of withdrawal reactions

Effexor____________5 hours_____________78%
Paxil_____________21 hours_____________66%
Zoloft____________26 hours_____________60%
Prozac___________4-6 days_____________14%

People can become completely incapacitated by SSRI withdrawal.
Reference: “The Antidepressant Solution” by Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.

Suicide, homicide, nightmare side effects all for a drug that is little more then snake oil for the majority of people.

FDA Testimonials - Suicide, Violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdkFasjSJ_g&feature=related

One moms personal story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQW23XCmOCw

In Memoriam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isPtIloi_0E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0lK4Na6VY&feature=related

What do you think should be done?

Should the drug industry be held responsible for their betrayal of the American people?

http://community.webshots.com/user/effexoractivist
This is my art site with lots of posters on the subject.

You can learn lots more about corruption in the drug industry here.
http://theeffexoractivist.org/

Thank you for reading this far.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Working Women Organization of Pakistan

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:14:26 GMT

Working Women Organization of Pakistan
APPEAL

We Want Peace

This year, March 8th, International Women's Day. takes place in a world where the flames of war are rising all over the world:

We have heard the statements threatening the Chavez government of Venezuela, of war, because it does not accept the orders of imperialism.

We have all seen the terrible pictures of Palestinian women and children running under the fire of missiles and bombs provided by U.S. imperialism and fired by the armed forces of the Israeli state.

Those terrible scenes are the same as those of people of Afghanistan whose villages have been burned and reduced to rubble by the U.S. air force because they were charged with "hiding terrorists."

Military occupation of Afghanistan has now been going on for 6 years and it only brings along with it never-ending destruction and war. That war is now spreading into Pakistan.

To spread the flame of war, imperialism is attempting to break up our countries to sow the seeds of hatred and fear between people who want to live together in peace and making use of differences of language, religion and gender. We, the women are those who suffer first and most from the situation created by imperialism and which is prevailing in all our countries.

On the occasion of the 8th of March, it is time to launch an Appeal of Women against War for Peace, for peaceful and friendly relations between all the peoples and the nations of our area. We want peace.

It is a woman's appeal, because women have always stood in the first line of the struggle against wars.

We women are the first victims of so-called "ethnic cleansing' of massacres under cover of religion.

We women are opposed to wars, to the waste of human lives sacrificed to imperialist greed: these lives are those of their sons and daughters, of their fathers, their brothers and their husbands.

Let's unite because we want peace, we want to live peacefully, to live in conditions where our children are fed and can be educated, in conditions where we are no longer facing violence and harm on a daily basis because we are women.

We women know that the domestic civil repression is intrinsically linked to the violence of war.

We are aware that the situation of women in our countries exists in the larger context of the global history of our continent, of colonisation and its consequences: partition, displacement, forced migrations and expulsions, all elements which imperialism uses today.

And we know that wars can only worsen that situation.

We need peace, we know it can be safeguarded only by the united action of all the peoples of our sub-continent.

That is why we are resisting against the moves of imperialism to gain strategic influence in our area to control our natural resources, not the least of which is oil.

That is why we fight against the plans of the IMF and the World Bank which aggravate the poverty and misery in each of our countries and create the conditions which allow war, conflicts and barbarism to develop. In fact, terror roams the world in many guises and is perpetrated under various banners, but the root of evil, of war and misery is imperialist domination, a system ready to crush millions of lives for the sake of profit.

As working class activists from all the sub-continent stated at the end of the Mumbai conference for a "fraternal alliance of the peoples and the organisations of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, for peace and unity of the people.":

"War, occupation, military presence are used to aggravate in each and every country the conditions of the working class, to attack its rights, to intensify its exploitation.

"Workers of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, have the same interests. ...

"Imperialism today is everywhere fostering conflicts on so-called ethnic or religious basis. But in the class struggle, the workers are united. Those who have organised the partition, to weaken the people at the time of independence, today intend to aggravate chaos and division."

That holds true for women. Women are in the first line of the victims of that system.

We call upon women in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka, in Nepal, irrespective of their creed, of their language, of their geographical location to unite, to say together: We want peace, we want democracy, we want equality.

We can be at the vanguard of the struggle of the people of our sub-continent so that instead of wars, conflicts, we build together a friendly and peaceful alliance of all the oppressed and exploited who share the same interests.

We, women, will continue to fight in defence of our rights.

We calls upon all women militants of the world to act jointly with men inside trade unions, to resist the capitalist globalisation, the imperialist wars and the destruction of the environment and to demand trade union and democratic freedoms.

We women, on the occasion of March 8th 2008, International Women's Day, state our determination to fight against war, against all attempts to divide us, on the basis of "ethnicity", religion or language. We stand against war for the unity of our people, for democracy and for equal rights.

Rubina Jamil,
Working Women Organisation

----------

I wish to endorse the appeal

"South Asian Women Against War, for Peace, for Unity of all the People of our Sub-continent, for Democracy, for Equality of Rights.

Name:

Organization Name:

Address:

Town:

Country:

Email:

Tel:

Cell Phone:

Fax:

WWO
93 A Nawab Town,
Raiwind Road,
Lahore, Pakistan
Tel: 5311319-5313906 Fax: 92-42-5314365
Email: rubinawwo@nexlinx.net.pk

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Berkeley City College Open Mic Against Budget Cuts

Stephanie — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:50:00 GMT

Anti Budget cuts rally and open mic in the basement of Berkeley City College

Topic: "What my education means to me and if I were to lose it."

Wednesday March 12th 12:00 - 1:00 PM

Books not Bombs!!!
Education not War!!!!

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Conspiracy History compilation DVDs torrents

History — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:09:30 GMT

**************************************************

Greetings to all my relations.

This is the last step of our project History Watch. If History is
defined and known by the texts, we can now add to this definition the
recorded events of the filmed archives. Animated images are harder to
deny than printed words. Our objective is to spread out freely some of
the little broadcast, even hidden informations about our collective
History.

We put online a collection of 391 documentaries and other selected and
recut videos, to offer to a wide public the best of the infos
available on the net in english and in french. If you are interested,
you have the time, the right equipment and connection, all you have to
do is open the joint document and decompress it if needed (but normaly
your system should do it automaticaly). You'll find therein nine links
that will open the torrents for the nine DVDs we compiled (around 4.6
Gig each, for a total of a little over 41 G, being over 100 hours of
videos).

Otherwise, you can go directly to btjunkie.com and search for these titles.

11 Septembre 2001 - 9-11
Bush family & friends
Capitalist & Communist regimes
Capitalist conspiracy
Mind Kontrol - Secret Programs
New World Order - Secret Societies
Secret services - cover up - covert ops
Secret weapons - UFO
Terrorism Theories propaganda

Torrents are a system of peer to peer data transfer. The more people
download a torrent, the faster it spreads and the longer it stays on
the net. If you don't have a bittorrent software, we suggest that you
download uTorrent on utorrent.com. If you want to participate in
facilitating the diffusion of these infos about our collective
History, download these torrents on as many computers as possible,
whether it is in cybercafes. It takes one or two minutes to open up
the links and the downloading will keep proceeding on its own.

Please spread this out, take part in this action for social education
on a planetary scale. Thanks.

For more info: watch.history@gmail.com History Watch

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ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:11:02 GMT

[Liberation News is in agreement with the following article of the Internationalist Group and both have also actively advocated these kinds of industrial actions.]

For Workers Strikes Against the War!

ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, "One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq."

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor's power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war. Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war parties of U.S. imperialism - Democrats and Republicans - and none of the capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force - that of the international working class.

The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. The ILWU should be commended for courageously taking the first step, and it is up to working people everywhere to back them up. Wherever support is strong enough, on May 1 there should be mass walkouts, sick-outs, labor marches, plant-gate meetings, lunch-time rallies, teach-ins. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

Now is the time for bold class action. Opposition to the war is even greater in the U.S. working class than in the population as a whole, more than two-thirds of which wants to stop the war but is stymied by the capitalist political system. In his letter to Sweeney, the ILWU president asked "if other AFL-CIO affiliates are planning to participate in similar events." Labor militants should make sure the answer to that question is a resounding "yes!"

There should be no illusions that this will be easy. No doubt the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bosses will try to get the courts to rule the stop-work action illegal. The ILWU leadership could get cold feet, since this motion was passed because of overwhelming support from the delegates despite attempts to stop it or, failing that, to water it down or limit the action. And the U.S. government could try to ban it on the grounds of "national security," just as Bush & Co. slapped a Taft-Hartley injunction on the docks during contract negotiations in the fall of 2002, saying that any work stoppage was a threat to the "war effort," and threatened to occupy the ports with troops!

The answer to every attempt to sabotage or undercut this first labor action against this war, and against Washington's broader "war on terror" which is intended to terrorize the world into submission must be to redouble efforts to bring out workers' power independent of the capitalist parties and politicians. If the ILWU work stoppage is successful, it will only be a small, but very important, beginning that must be generalized and deepened. It will take industrial-strength labor action to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war on immigrants, oppressed minorities, poor and working people "at home."

ILWU in the Forefront of Labor Action Against the War

Workers strike action against imperialist war isn't new - it just hasn't happened here for a long, long time. During World War I there were huge mass strikes in Germany against the battlefield carnage, culminating in the downfall of the kaiser in November 1918. A year earlier in Russia, working-class opposition to the war led to the overthrow of the tsar and the October Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call today for transport workers to "hot cargo" (refuse to handle) war shipments. In the early 1920s, Communist-led French dock workers did exactly that, boycotting ships carrying war materiel to suppress a colonial rebellion in the Rif region of Morocco, as they
also did during France's war in Indochina in the 1950s.

In the U.S., the ILWU struck in 1948 amid Cold War hysteria and in defiance of the "slave labor" Taft-Hartley Act to defend its union hiring hall against the bosses and government screaming about "reds" in the union leadership. In 1953, at the height of McCarthyite witch-hunting, the ILWU called a four-day general strike in Hawaii of sugar, pineapple and dock workers over the jailing of seven union members for being communists. During the Vietnam War, socialist historian Isaac Deutscher said that he would trade all the peace marches for a single dock strike. The ILWU was the first U.S. union to oppose the Vietnam war, but during war and especially during the 1971 strike union leader Harry Bridges refused to stop the movement of military cargo. (Ship owners made use of this by falsely labeling cargo as "military" to evade picket lines and undermine the strike.) This betrayal went hand in hand with a "mechanization and modernization" contract that slashed union jobs.

As the U.S.-led imperialist invasion of Iraq was looming, in January 2003 train drivers in Scotland refused to move a freight train carrying munitions to a NATO military base. The next month, Italian railroad unionists and antiwar activists blocked NATO war trains by occupying the rails. In the United States, ILWU dock workers were a target of "anti-terrorist" government repression, as police fired supposedly "less than lethal" munitions point blank at an antiwar protest on the Oakland, California docks, injuring six longshore workers and arresting 25 people (who eventually won their legal case against the police). And every year since the war started, the San Francisco/Oakland ILWU Local 10 has voted for motions for labor action against the war. Usually they were voted down at caucuses and conventions of the ILWU, but not this time.

Last May, Local 10 longshoremen and Local 34 ships clerks refused to cross picket lines set up by the Oakland Teachers Association and antiwar activists, defying arbitrators' orders by refusing to work ships of the notorious antiunion outfit, Stevedoring Services of America (see "Oakland Dock Workers Honor Picket, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper," The Internationalist No. 26, July 2007). In the aftermath of that action, the union issued a call for a Labor Conference to Stop the War that would "plan workplace rallies, labor
mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war." The Call to Action stated:

"ILWU Local 10 has repeatedly warned that the so-called 'war on terror' is really a war on working people and democratic rights. Around the country, hundreds of unions and labor councils have passed motions condemning the war, but that has not stopped the war. We need to use labor's muscle to stop the war by mobilizing union power in the streets, at the plant gates and on the docks to force the immediate and total withdrawal of all U. S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq."

As the conference date approached, the union was the target of several police attacks, including a vicious cop assault on two black dock workers from San Francisco working in the port of Sacramento. Some 250 demonstrators from every ILWU local in Northern California rallied in their defense outside the courthouse. Their trial to be set march 18 at a hearing will encounter even larger demonstrations.

The Internationalist Group and its union supporters helped build and attended the October 20 conference, along with some 150 labor and socialist activists from the Bay Area, elsewhere in California and across the country. At the meeting, a particular focus was resistance to the Transportation Workers Identification Card (TWIC), which threatens minority workers and the union hiring hall, and which the Democratic Party in particular has been pushing in order to carry out a purge of dock workers in the name of the "war on terror."
Not long after that conference, a federal judge ordered Local 10 elections canceled and replaced by a Labor Department-run vote, on the eve of 2008 contract bargaining. Federal agents even invaded the union hall to enforce their order. This action is a threat to the independence of all unions.

This set the stage for the recent longshore-warehouse caucus, which voted a motion for a 24-hour "No Peace, No Work Holiday" against the war. The resolution was introduced in Local 10 by Jack Heyman, who also presented the motion for the 24 April 1999 coast-wide port shutdown demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and renowned radical journalist who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for the last quarter century. Although the union tops maneuvered to prevent Heyman from being elected as a delegate to the Coast Caucus, the motion passed in Local 10. At the Caucus, the delegate from Local 34 referred to the October Labor Conference to Stop the War as the origin of the motion.

At the close of the Caucus on February 8, there was a vigorous debate on the resolution. The union tops tried to stop it, to no avail. They kept asking, "are you sure you want to do this action." The delegates overwhelmingly said "yes." Even conservative trade unionists, including veterans of the Vietnam War, were getting up saying the government is lying to us, we've had it with this war, we've got to put a stop to it now. So instead the bureaucrats tried to gut the motion, which was cut down from 24 hours to 8, and changed into a "stop-work" meeting (covered by a contract clause) instead of a straight-out shutdown, thinking that this would lessen opposition from the employers. In the end there was a voice vote and only three delegates out of 100 voted against.

The efforts to undercut the motion continue, as is to be expected from a leadership which, like the rest of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, seeks "labor peace" with the bosses. In his letter to Sweeney, ILWU International president tried to present the action as an effort to "express support for the troops by bringing them home safely," although the motion voted by the delegates says nothing of the sort. Playing the "support our troops" game is an effort to swear loyalty to the broader aims of U.S. imperialism. It aids the warmongers, when what's needed is independent working-class action against the system that produces endless imperialist war. Yet despite the efforts to water it down and distort it, the May 1 action voted for by the ILWU delegates is a call to use labor's muscle to put an end to the war.

Mobilize Labor's Power to Defeat the Bosses' War!

For the West Coast dock workers union to shut down the ports against the war means a big step forward in the class struggle. The Internationalist Group has uniquely fought for workers strikes against the war, when all the popular-front "peace" coalitions dismissed this and even some shamefaced ex-Trotskyists refused to call for it, saying it had "no resonance" among the workers (see our October 20007 Special Supplement to The Internationalist, "Why We Fight For Workers Strikes Against the War [and the opportunists Don't]"). With signs, banners and propaganda we have sought to drive home the central lesson that it is necessary to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war "at home" by mobilizing the power of the workers movement independent of and against the capitalist parties.

That means fighting the war mobilization down the line. First and foremost, this means actively joining the struggle for immigrant rights as the government turns undocumented working people into "the enemy within." Class-conscious workers should demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Last year, San Francisco Local 10 voted to stop work and join marches for immigrant rights on May 1, but this was opposed by the employers PMA and sabotaged at the last minute by the union tops. Shamefully, Local 13 in Los Angeles, a majority Mexican American port, made no protest when police attacked immigrant rights protesters that same day. Today, as the ICE immigration police stage Gestapo-style raids across the country, organized labor should take the lead in organizing rapid response networks to come into the streets to block the raids. Despite the campaign by the capitalist media and politicians to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria, there is widespread disgust among American working people toward the jackbooted storm troopers who are terrorizing immigrant communities.

At the same time, the unions should use the power to put a halt to the attacks on civil liberties which are part of the home front of the imperialist war. Driver's licenses with biometric data, TWIC identification cards with "background checks," warrantless spying and phone tapping, setting up special military tribunals for "trials" in which defendants are denied the right of habeas corpus, to know the "evidence" or even the charges against them - all these are part of a drive that is in high gear pushing the United States toward a full-fledged police state. There have been scores, perhaps hundreds of resolutions by unions and city, county and state labor bodies against the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, showing that labor activists are well aware of the danger. But just as is the case with the countless union antiwar resolutions, there has been no labor action. It is commonplace in the labor movement to bemoan the lack of real action when Reagan broke the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers' strike, paving the way for massive union-busting, takeaways and racist attacks all down the line. Let's not let the labor bureaucrats bury the vital struggles of today.

Now is the time to turn words into deeds, to speak to the capitalist rulers in the only language they understand. The imperialist war parties must be defeated by a class mobilization of the working people at the head of all the oppressed. The ILWU motion to stop work on May Day to put a stop to the war can provide working people everywhere with the opening to turn from impotent protest to a struggle for power. For that the key is to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for a workers government, for socialist revolution here and around the world, that will put an end once and for all to the system of endless war, poverty and racism.

This is an Article of the Internationalist Group:
www.internationalist.org

and distributed by Liberation News, Subscribe Free!
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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Turning of the Tide - WGFT

truthgathering — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:18:03 GMT

http://www.worldgathering.net/news24.html

Turning of the tide …
By Matthew,
Warrior-Poet from the Isle of Man, UK

We say we have it tough
But we always have enough
We say we are trying but the children are still dying
We read the news - got to get our daily blues... ohhhh

But we are ready
Ready for tomorrow
We got each other
From me you can borrow
They say you can never change a leopards spots
But they can’t see how we rearrange the dots

We are the power in everyone
We are the dance of the moon and the sun
We are the hope that will never hide
We are the turning of the tide

We will look to the stars and we will see the light
WE are powerful because we know what is right
We are ready
Ready for tomorrow
Sinking the ships of jealousy and sorrow

We are the power in everyone
We are the celestial dance of the moon and sun
We are the hope that refuses to hide
We are the turning of the tide

In your eyes a vision
In my heart a fire
We will unite our powers
To expose the Liar

We will not swallow any more excuses
We will not be party to your war on humanity
We have heard all your delusions
We are sated with your profanity...Liar

We are the power in everyone
We are the celestial dance of the moon and sun
We are the hope that refuses to hide
We are the turning of the tide

http://www.worldgathering.net/news24.html

---------

WORLD GATHERING FOR TRUTH
http://www.worldgathering.net

Subscribe to WGFT Newsletter at Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/worldgathering

Guide and index to all resources at WGFT website:
http://www.worldgathering.net/menu.html

WORLD-ACTION: http://www.worldgathering.net/world

STOP CHEMTRAILS: http://www.worldgathering.net/stop

INSPIRING TIMES: http://www.worldgathering.net/times

WORDS WAKEN WORLD: http://www.worldgathering.net/words

WINDS OF TRUTH: http://www.worldgathering.net/winds

CELTIC ISLAND: http://www.worldgathering.net/celtic

WORLD-ACTION 2: http://www.worldgathering.net/world2

Slideshow Videos:
http://www.worldgathering.net/menu.html#video

Sounds and Music:
http://www.worldgathering.net/menu.html#audio

Spacecraft in Scotland:
http://www.worldgathering.net/scotland

"We must do what we conceive to be the right thing and not
bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we will be
successful. Because if we don’t do the right thing, we will be
doing the wrong thing and we will just be a part of the disease
and not a part of the cure." - E F Schumacher

Subscribe to WGFT Newsletter at Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/worldgathering

The Rainbow Dream Vision: This prophecy is a dream
and vision that is a potential reality for mankind. It is not
an ultimatum. But it is ours to behold and to create
if we only dare to dream it together.

Central American Mayan Elder: "Human beings must
come together in support of life. At present, each person
and group is going his or her own way. There is hope
if people can come together and unite."

World Gathering For Truth
http://www.worldgathering.net

Please send to friends and contacts and groups

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Dr. Tim Leary, Elvy Musikka and Los Marijuanos take Time 4 Hemp!

Casper Leitch — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:56:26 GMT

Three great free downloads can be found at http://www.Time4Hemp.com

Time 4 Hemp TODAY - Elvy Musikka is one of only four living Federal IND patients who is receiving medical marijuana from the United States Federal Government. She was granted access to legal marijuana because of eye problems that include glaucoma. After hearing the remarkable interview we did with Deborah Busemeyer, the Communications Director for the New Mexico Department of Health, Elvy made it a point to take some Time 4 Hemp.

Music artists featured in this segment are:
Elvy Musikka
The Individuals
Lynnette Shaw
Angeline
John Denver

Time 4 Hemp MUSIC - Los Marijuanos are the new breed of Mexican Pro-Pot-Poets with 8 years under their belt they have been half way around the world. Two time (13th and 14th Annual) High Times Cannabis Cup performers in Amsterdam, Also 2 year co-headliner for the great Seatle Hempfest performing next to Kottonmouth Kings, Sir MixALot, Daz & Kurupt and Badazz from the Dog Pound and others, 5 year leaders in the Million Marijuana March in downtown Chicago, IL plus dozens of hemp fests featured in multiple magazines which include: High Times, The Source, Murder Dog, Ill Tip to name a few. Performing always for the cause, Los Marijuanos have also been featured on the Latin Throne DVD. With their strong R&B hooks sung by PonyBoy and the stories of real life situations of the Barrio and to end the drug wars and for the legalization of Marijuana this group cannot be silenced. Lots of great music from the band is included in this segment.

Time 4 Hemp CLASSICS - Dr. Tim Leary, pop icon that taught a generation to 'Drop Out, Tune In and Turn Off' took Time 4 Hemp in 1991 for one of his very last ever interviews before his death. In this interview, Dr. Leary is in rare form and very animated.

Please pass this information on to everyone you feel would enjoy hearing any of thses interviews.

Keep Strong!
Casper Leitch
Host:/Creator: Time 4 Hemp
http://www.Time4Hemp.com

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

"Tribe" Backs Anti-Palestinian Racists

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:48:50 GMT

Message from "Free Palestine End Zionism" moderator:

This is being sent to you because you were a member of my tribe, Free Palestine End Zionism. I would like you to know that I was notified today by a representative of tribe.net that my tribe was "anti-semitic" and that they removed it!

I am sending this so you will know why the tribe does not exist any more and so you will bear witness to the evident censorship and lack of the freedom of speech on tribe.net, plus the fabricated excuse to silence my tribe.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

A Truth Soldier

Daniel J — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:04:02 GMT

A Truth Soldier

by Daniel J Towsey
http://danieltowsey.livejournal.com/11047.html

A truth soldier takes on the most important and thankless mission that any human being will ever embark upon.

A truth soldier realizes that the mission must go on to guarantee our freedoms and the survival of our planet.

A truth soldiers opponent will appear as imaginary to most conditioned and unarmed peoples. they will think you a fool.

A truth soldier will face unimaginable dangers. you could be captured at anytime and put on redition flights to any of many secret dungeon prisons where you are guaranteed to face the most excrusiating tortures. if and when death comes it will be a very merciful end.

A truth soldier may die a very lonely death. no one will be there to grieve your death. no one will put a flag on your casket. for a truth soldier wears no uniform and belongs to no nation. few will ever notice that you have lost your earthly body.

A truth soldier operates a mission in a leaderless army. the mission of a truth soldier will make you a very strong human. fortunately the honing of your weapon will continually recouperate your strength.

A truth soldier has to have a very strong, and will toned moral fiber.
the training is the most difficult that any human will ever embark upon, for it requirers one to shed all previous conditioning and look inwardly at all your delussions of reality that has been put there by the deceivers.the truth soldier has to continually sharpen and hone its skills.

A truth soldier will be armed with the most powereful weapon ever known to man. that weapon is the knowledge of the hidden truths. you are warned that this is a very serious responsiblity. for when you drop your truth bombs, you will blow peoples minds. (some people maybe too weak to survive a full power truth bomb due to them having been repeatedly attacked by the deceivers lies. for these people, you will have to use a different weapon. You will have to use your tiny seeds of truth weapons.These weapons can lie dormant for a long time before they germinate).the reaction will be very unpredictable. for when you blow their minds they will temporary be mindless and you can never predict what their newly liberated mind will do.they may ridicule you or they may violently attack you. but eventually as their minds fill with the hidden knowledge. they will feel the most overwhelming relief.you will then have made them perfect recruits for the revolutionary truth army. ask them if they will now go on their own mission and arm others with the hidden truths.

A truth soldier will face unimagineable dangers that can and will come from any direction.

A truth soldier will have to go deep into enemy territory.

A truth soldiers weapon at times will feel like a huge tiresome and unbearable burden, and the soldier will often be tempted to drop his weapon. but remember without it. civilization is doomed to go into a new dark ages.

A truth soldier will have to face the most deceptive, and cunning enemy. your enemy has unlimited resources as they control the money. the enemy could be in any disguise. the enemy could be anyone. the enemy forces could have recruited or deceived anyone. it could be your mother, it could be your father, brother. the neighborhood cop on the beat. it could be your mailman. it could be that friendly old lady on the park bench. It may even be the judge sitting on the seat of justice. maybe your priest has also been deceived. it may even be your lover.

most good people are totally unaware that they have been deceived and this will make your mission much harder.

A truth soldier has to go out and recruit and arm others. so they too can go out on their own leaderless mission.

A truth soldier is part of THE TRUTH REVOLUTION. you become a revolutionary truth soldier.

A truth soldier can get more amunition by taking advantage of modern technology. there are generals in this truth revolution. located all over the world. they can be reached at anytime from almost anywhere on earth. they operate from many locations, such as
http://www.rense.com
http://globalresearch.ca
http://informationclearinhouse.info
http://www.infowars.com
http://www.newswithviews.com
http://www.aljazeera.com
http://www.mathaba.net
http://www.eruknet.com
http://www.alternet.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20040325064727/www.cloakanddagger.ca/
http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/conspiraciesclub
and thousands of other locations. these sites are available twenty four hours a day and are owned by truth generals and staffed by truth soldiers. they are there to help you on your mission. [warning, avoid all corporate medias. be they print,televison or even hollywood ones.]

be sure to always download your amo and save copies of all hidden truths you discover online. for one day the controllers will remove all these truth resources off the internet. there is a war on for your mind and freedom. we can not be free without truth. also remember truth is always very simple and deceptions are always very complicated.

A truth soldier in any revolutionary army usually never gets any compansation. the only compensation is overwhelming self-respect for a job will done.

remember one does not have to be a member of any religion to believe in natural goodness.

only the brave live by truth, all others are just cowards. it takes true bravery to speak the truth.

we have been told that the war on terror will last over a hundred years. just remember who is being terrorized. it is always the innocent people who only seek to be free and happy that are terrorized.

so may god or goodness be with you! (which ever you prefer) and soldier on.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

People over Presidents

trancedan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:12:06 GMT

Please take a tiny moment on this, the day on which we are asked to celebrate the white men who have ruled our country, to watch the latest project by the wonderful, radical badasses, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove: the pilot for their amazing new television documentary series of A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History of the United States, recently filmed in Boston.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZjJnkIam7M

Performers at the live performances included:

Howard Zinn
Martín Espada
Christina Kirk
Danny Glover
Darryl McDaniels (DMC)
David Strathairn
Harris Yullin
Jasmine Guy
John Legend
Josh Brolin
Kathleen Chalfant
Kerry Washington
Marisa Tomei
Michael Ealy
Michael O'Malley
Q'orianka Kilcher
Reg E. Cathey
Staceyann Chin
Viggo Mortensen

Stay tuned to http://howardzinn.org/ for more information about when it will air.

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Please join your local free meetup e-mail service group

Daniel J — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:04:34 GMT

Please join your local Meetup at http://9-11.meetup.com/ so that you can be notified if there are any local activists meetings scheduled or you can organise one..this an e-mail service..it's free ..this meetup is for any kind of meetups not just 911... check it out..can be very useful for organizing your groups

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Polar bears face certain extinction and yet...

Jabberwocky — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:46:20 GMT

the federal administration saw fit to auction off an enormous tract of Alaskan territory to big name oil companies for oil drilling (www.adn.com/front/story/307588.html).

If the malignant greed of the government ignores the many voices of protest and disregards the imminent peril of wildlife, what can be done? As polar ice-caps diminish, bear cubs drown. More drilling for oil in their habitat greatly increases potential for hazardous oil spills, no guarantees to protect wildlife and the rapid demise of one of the world's fierce and majestic animals.

I wonder what parents will tell their children a few years hence when asked, "What did you do to help the polar bears?" Will we be able to say we resolved to drive our cars less, we used public transport, we actively worked to advance more eco-friendly fuel options, we refused to buy from environmental terrorists?

Our failure to be respectful stewards of this most precious and beautiful earth will not be easily forgiven by our offspring. And if they indeed survive, they inherit a desolate, ravaged planet, testimony only to our arrogance and self-absorption.

Doing nothing is criminal and complicit in the mindless voraciousness and disrespect for the sanctity of life that characterizes the current U.S. leadership.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:26:04 GMT

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

By STEVEN ARGUE

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species.

Despite the severity of the problem, and despite the United States being the biggest contributor to global warming in the world, the U.S. government and corporate leaders continue to do worse than nothing, through blocking and sabotaging all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present. This is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington.

On the biggest question facing humanity, human caused global warming, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are ignoring the urgent proposals of global warming experts and instead put forward conservative proposals of carbon credit trading for big corporations and proposals for so-called “cleaner” fuels for cars. Carbon credit trading, giving big corporations the “right” to buy and sell the “right” to pollute, will undermine the ability to pass other legislation that can better curb carbon pollution. And the “cleaner” bio-fuels being proposed make no substantial difference because it takes energy involving carbon emissions to grow the plants used to make bio-fuels. In addition, rainforests that would help remove global warming causing carbon from the atmosphere are being cleared to grow bio-fuels. To make matters worse, converting food-stuffs and croplands to bio-fuels increases world food prices, causing increased world hunger.

What is really needed, as opposed to the pro-oil industry measures of Obama and Clinton, is an immediate emergency program to begin the process of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 through converting to green technologies such as solar, energy conservation, and eliminating the combustion engine by going electric and cleaning up the grid. Such a program would also create jobs and could be paid for through cutting the military budget. To develop this program it will be important to nationalize the energy industries under the democratic control of society in order to run them for human and environmental needs, and to eliminate private energy’s corrupting influence on politics, where they promote policies of war and pollution. Socialists offer these real solutions. Meanwhile, the Democrats and Republicans have made human caused global warming a reality by promoting the policies that have caused it, even though the problem was known 50 years ago. Once again in this election, the Democrats have offered no real solutions to this problem that we are running out of time to address.

Just as the energy industries are promoting the destruction of the planet through carbon emissions, they, along with the powerful weapons industries, promote the mass murder of war as well.

In September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out."

Similarly Hillary Clinton Said, “I agree with Barack” ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. Citing fear of violence and civil war is the oldest trick in the dirty book of imperialist oppression. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

Not only do Obama and Clinton make no promise to get out of Iraq, both have both voted for war appropriations. This puts them both in the position of having directly supported the war.

In addition, Clinton voted to invade Iraq. Obama was not yet in the Senate, so he didn’t vote on that resolution. Yet on the verge of the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq Barack Obama repeated Bush’s lies at an anti-war rally stating, “He [Saddam Hussein] has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.” (Obama, 10/2002 Speech, Federal Plaza)

Last year Hillary Clinton stated she has no remorse for her murderous decision of voting to invade Iraq saying, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." (Hillary Clinton, “No regret on Iraq Vote”, CNN.Com)

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush "did not fairly represent intelligence". Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren't their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead of war, we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for the Democrats a Republicans Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to pretend to distance themselves from the same Bush policies that they actually support.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While the number of deaths was partly due to the capitalist nature of Iraqi economy, and a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over a million people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980's the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise, the CIA helped Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba'athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

"In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein's capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons, socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

"While defending Iraq against imperialist attack, and supporting their right to defend themselves, socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal..."

"U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women's liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

"The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise, they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead." -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women's rights and women's rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992. The invasion has also set off a civil war that, combined with U.S. bombings and other murder, has killed over a million Iraqis, and forced millions more to flee their homes as refugees.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn't completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq's resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and nearly half-a-trillion dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans to die.

Yet for the ruling class, their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton make abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

"Let us not confuse the leadership's failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks." Hillary Clinton

Likewise, Barack Obama has made similar complaints, saying that Bush should have sent more troops into Iraq.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, socialists see nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war and global warming through becoming better organized; building the mass movement in the streets; striking with political demands against arms producers and polluters; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks as has been done on a few occasions along the west coast; becoming ungovernable; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise, we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist these wars. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz who have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for the nationalization of the energy industry, building the socialist movement, voting socialist, and ultimately ending imperialism and environmental destruction through a socialist revolution holding high the principles of an egalitarian socialist economy used for human and environmental needs rather than profit, an economy controlled by the people through full democratic rights and universal suffrage.

Also see:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/21/18473855.php

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Tomorrow in Santa Clara

dandysparkle — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:08:29 GMT

I'm going on a visit. To speak to a Senator, if possible. (I am advocating progressive changes in women's health regarding breast cancer.)

In an article written by Alicia Lanier, "Free Health Screenings at Feb. 9 for Women's Health Forum in Santa Clara Sponsored by Senator Alquist" it states that: "Senator Elaine Alquist, California Senate District 13, is holding a free Women’s Health Forum, Thriving with Change, in Santa Clara from 9 a.m. to 1:30 on Saturday, February 9, 2008. This is a great opportunity for women to obtain several free health screenings, including bone density, blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, body mass index (BMI), and breast cancer prevention screening."

"You’ll also learn about health care programs and services provided by the state as well as health care issues being considered by the California Legislature. Keynote speaker will be former State Senator Jackie Speier. The event will be at the Santa Clara Senior Center, 1303 Fremont Street, in Santa Clara. For more information and to sign up (space is limited), call Senator Alquist’s office at 408-286-8318."

And yours truly just called the number above. I was told to "just walk on in". So please, come join me! I was also told that they will be taking down contact information for future events. (I love mailing lists! It takes so much digging out of trying to find out what is going on and making changes...)

Here is the link to the original post: Free Health Screenings at Feb. 9 for Women's Health Forum in Santa Clara Sponsored by Senator Alquist

hometownsiliconvalley.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/free-health-screenings-at-feb-9-womens-health-forum-in-santa-clara-sponsored-by-senator-alquist/

And the link to Senator Alquist's site:

dist13.casen.govoffice.com/

Senator Elaine Alquist: She is the the State Senator representing the Heart of Silicon Valley. The 13th senate district covers much of Santa Clara County including the cities of San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Mountain View, and Gilroy.

I hope you'll join me...
And ask questions about her position regarding breast cancer
And ask for her support on co-sponsoring two very important bills that are currently being written.
Or write a letter and e-mail it to her at her website listed above.

* Senator Gill Cedillo, from Los Angeles, is sponsoring a bill that proposes that the age for the "Every Woman Counts" program in California be lowered from 40 years of age to 38 years of age thereby expanding much needed coverage for women at "high risk".
* Senator Fiona Ma, from San Francisco, is sponsoring a bill that is requesting that an additional 12 million dollars be added to the budget for the "Every Woman Counts" program in California.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

THE IDEA OF A BLACK PRESIDENT by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:25:26 GMT

THE IDEA OF A BLACK PRESIDENT
[col. writ. 12/18/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

For much of the US populace, the very idea of a Black president is one so new, so novel, that it forces many people to think of it as if it is barely possible; as if it is the stuff of fiction, not fact.

Fiction has indeed been the realm of this idea, as in movies, and television series, actors have played the part, but that, of course, is on TV.

Of course, time will tell if that is more than imagination, but for millions of people who share this vast land space we call North America, the idea is neither new nor ground-breaking.

That's because there are some 100 million people living in Mexico, and that country had a Black president (albeit briefly) --some 173 years ago.

It was during their war for independence from Spain, when a warrior emerged, a Black Indian named Vicente Guerrero.

In his first battle, he was commissioned a Captain. As the independence war raged on, many of the leading revolutionaries were either killed, or captured. Guerrero fought on, leading some 2,000 men into the Sierra Madre mountains to continue the fight.

By 1821, the Mexicans were prevailing over the Spanish, and Guerrero was hailed as an incorruptible independence fighter. In 1829 he became President of Mexico, and as scholar William Loren Katz writes in his 1986 book, Black Indians:

He began a program of far-reaching reforms, abolishing the death penalty, and starting construction of schools and libraries for the poor. He ended slavery in Mexico. Yet, because of his skin color, lack of education, and country manner, he was held in contempt by the upper classes in Mexico City. This president who had, according to {US. historian M.H.} Bancroft, " a gentleness and magnetism that inspired love among his adherents." was still " a triple-blooded outsider." Black historian J. A. Rogers summarized Guerrero's striking accomplishments by calling him 'the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of Mexico."[p.48]

Guerrero, who in his youth was an illiterate mule driver, once bitten by the bug of Mexican independence, rose to the highest office in the land.

He learned to read when he was about 40, and helped craft the Mexican Constitution, of which he wrote the following provision: "All inhabitants whether white, African, or Indian, are qualified to hold office." He wrote this in 1824, over 30 years before the US Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, which announced, emphatically, that"...a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." and that black people weren't, and could never be citizens of the United States.

In that era of revolution and social transformation, a Black man became president of the second largest country in North America.

Today, 178 years later, we still wonder if such a thing is possible.

What does that say about the United States?

--(c) '07 maj

{Source: Katz, William Loren, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 1986 [Simon Pulse/pb ed.,2005], p.42}

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, framed and in prison, with what could be the final decision on his legal appeals possibly coming down soon. That decision could give Mumia his freedom, a new trial, life in prison, or execution. It is time to turn up the heat against this injustice.

Free Mumia!

For more on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436405.php

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Marc Emery, Prince of Pot, takes Time 4 Hemp!

Casper Leitch — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:25:38 GMT

Marc Emery is called the 'Prince of Pot' and claims to have sold more marijuana seeds than anyone in the world. To date, no one has disputed that claim. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, he is the founder of Cannabis Culture magazien, and considered by the U.S. government to be the biggest drug kingpin in history.

Just days before embarking on his 16-city 'Farewell Tour Across Canada' (and a few short weeks before entering prision for a 10-year stay), Marc was nice enough to sit down and take Time 4 Hemp.

Featured Music Artists:

The Individuals
Muck Sticky
Negative Index
Bob Marley
John Lennon

If you get a few minutes of free time, check out my new MySpace Time 4 Hemp Group Site at:
http://groups.myspace.com/ATime4Hemp

Please be kind enough to share this information with everyone who you know would enjoy these free downloads.

Keep Strong!

Casper Leitch
Creator/Host: Time 4 Hemp
http://www.Time4Hemp.com

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

DEMONSTRATIONS TO BREAK THE SILENCE ON GAZA!

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:30:46 GMT

For Immediate Release
January 23, 2008

UPDATED LISTING OF DEMONSTRATIONS TO BREAK THE SILENCE ON GAZA!

The following is a partial listing of emergency protests taking place over the next few days in the US, Europe and Australia. If you are planning your own protest for Gaza, please write to info@al-awda.org so we can post information about your action on our website http://al-awda.org .

Anaheim, California: Saturday, January 26, 1 PM 512 S. Brookhurst St. Between Orange Ave. & Broadway

Champaign, University of Illinois at Urbana: Tuesday January 22, 11 AM at the Quad

Charlotte, North Carolina: Saturday January 26, 4 PM Forum, Charlotte Energy Solutions, 337 Baldwin Ave; Organized by Charlotte Action

Chicago, Illinois: Tuesday January 29, 5 PM at the Lakeshore Theater, 3175 North Broadway (at benefit for the Friends of the 'Israeli Defense Force'). Initiated by ISM. Call 773-463-0311 for more information.

Cleveland, Ohio: January 26, 2 PM at Cleveland's Market Square at W. 25th & Lorain Avenue, across from the West Side Market - March to West 25th and Franklin

Costa Mesa, California: Friday, January 25, 5-7 PM, vigil at Bristol & Anton

Edinburgh, Scotland: Wednesday January 23, 5.30 PM at the foot of the Mound, Princes Street.

Glasgow, Scotland: Friday January 25, 5.30 PM George Square.

London, England: Thursday January 24, 6 PM and Saturday January 26, 4 PM Opposite 10 Downing Street, Whitehall.

Melbourne, Australia: Details to be posted.

Montreal, Canada: Wednesday January 23, 5 PM, Phillips Square, Saint Catherine Street opposite The Bay department store (Metro McGill) and Friday January 25, 2:00 PM
De Maisonneuve Boulevard corner of MacKay Street, Montreal (Metro Guy-Concordia) .

New York, New York: Friday January 25, 3 PM, and Saturday Janusary 26 1 PM - both at the 'Israeli' Embassy, 43rd St. and 2nd Ave.

Paris, France: Wednesday January 23, 5:30 PM at the Palais de l'Elysee.

Phoenix, Arizona: January 26, 6:30 PM Downtown Tempe, at the corner of Mill Ave and University Drive.

San Diego, California: Friday January 25, 3:00 - 5:30 PM downtown corner of Broadway and Front Street.

San Francisco, California: Friday, January 25, 4-6 PM, Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St. (near California).

Seattle Washington: Friday January 25 4 PM, Westlake Park, 4th & Pine streets.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota: Saturday January 26, 12 Noon at 12th & Phillips

St. Paul, Minesota: Friday January 25, 4:15-5:30 P.M., Corner of Summit and Snelling Aves

Toronto, Canada: Friday January 25, 5 PM Israeli Consulate at 180 Bloor St. West

Washington DC: Friday January 25, 4 PM at the Israeli Embassy, 3514 International Dr. N.W.

BREAK THE SILENCE ON GAZA!
DON'T DELAY! TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, calls on its chapters, supporting organizations and individuals to organize to break the silence about the ongoing Israeli war crimes being committed against Palestinians in Gaza. Organize street actions and protests, and community meetings and delegations to religious leaders and educators. Call and write the media and your congressional representatives.

People of the world watch in horror as the racist state of Israel, with the support and encouragement of the US government, engages in a genocidal project to eliminate the indigenous Arab people of Palestine.

The world community has denounced the government of 'Israel' for using its military for the purpose of collectively punishing the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, a clear war crime and violation of the 4th Geneva Conventions. The only power plant in Gaza was shut down today leaving the 1.5 million inhabitants without electricity, water, or any functional medical facilities.

Palestinians continue to endure starvation, aerial bombings, US CIA interventions, and Israeli army brutality. This murderous endeavor has caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians and the already fragile economy of Gaza has been decimated.

NO FOOD, NO WATER, NO BREAD!

We appeal to all people living in the US:

SPEAK OUT TO DEMAND ONCE AND FOR ALL AN END TO THE SIEGE OF GAZA AND THE OCCUPATION OF ALL OF PALESTINE!

ORGANIZE STREET ACTIONS AND PROTESTS, CALL AND WRITE THE MEDIA AND YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES.

ORGANIZE COMMUNITY MEETINGS AND DELEGATIONS TO RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND EDUCATORS.

DONATE TO HELP THE PEOPLE IN GAZA!

For information to contact your congressional representatives, go to
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home

For writing to the media, go to http://newslink.org for contact information.

To make a donation to help the people in the Gaza Strip go to http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and simply follow the instructions. Please indicate that your donation is for the GAZA EMERGENCY FUND.

BREAK THE SILENCE ON GAZA!
DON'T DELAY! TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW:http://al-awda.org

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:54:58 GMT

Native Americans have been in the United States from the beginning, yet according to health and employment statistics, they, like other people of color, still have not achieved equality. For example, between 1998 and 2000 Native American infants in the United States were 1.7 times more likely to die than white infants in their first year of life (Tomashek et al.).

The Lakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota, who supported the culturally and politically nationalist American Indian Movement, faced brutal counter-insurgency tactics complete with FBI-armed and -trained death squads that murdered 61 political activists on the reservation between 1973 and 1976. As part of that terror war against America’s first nations, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI and remains in prison to this day.

*******************************

Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear

By STEVEN ARGUE

Republican candidate Ron Paul, exposed as having voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that gave Blacks the right to vote; exposed for knowingly accepting a donation from former KKK Grand Dragon and Nazi Stormfront radio host Don Black; and exposed for having put out a racist-sexist-homophobic newsletter in his name for decades that opposed Martin Luther King and desegregation; now makes the claim, “I am the most anti-racist because I don’t see people in collective groups” (CNN). Interestingly enough, Nazi Stormfront members Don Black and David Duke make the same claims of not being racist (Stormfront). To them, the real racists are those who speak out against the inequalities suffered by people of color.

Racism and xenophobia take many forms, both subtle and overt. While overt racism and national chauvinism are still very much a problem in America, one of the most insidious forms of racism is promoted in the form of denying that these problems even exist. Ron Paul and Stormfront are on the fringes, yet this form of racism has become common place in the American corporate media and the mainstream politics of the Democrat and Republican Parties.

One case in point is Kotkin and Tseng’s Washington Post June 8, 2003 article, “For Young America, Old Ethnic Labels No Longer Apply”. It contains a bad argument based on a fundamentally false premise. That premise is the idea that because immigrants are becoming assimilated into the mainstream of U.S. culture, ethnic groups will no longer exist in the future. Based on this false premise the authors go on to make a number of unsound arguments about changes to education and business policies.

The idea that separate ethnicities will disappear due to the blending of immigrant groups into the mainstream misses two key aspects of American life. One is continued immigration and the other is continued racism. Neither of these fundamental aspects of American society are even remotely considered in the essay.

In a world where immigrants continue to flee the economic exploitation and political repression of U.S. imperialist hegemony in most of the third world, and as long as those immigrants continue to be accepted as a cheaper source of labor within the confines of U.S. borders by U.S. capitalists, immigration into the United States will not end. Thus, the authors’ assertion that the linguistic preferences of second and third generation immigrants for English “would seem to challenge the continued viability of programs such as bilingual education” is utterly absurd. Bilingual education helps ease immigrant children into a learning process that is made much more difficult by English-only education.

Another aspect of American culture not considered in the Washington Post essay is the deep and pernicious racism of this society. People of color are offered fewer opportunities in this society on many levels, including the opportunity to assimilate.

Blacks have been here for hundreds of years and they still, by and large, have not assimilated. They suffer over double the infant mortality of whites and by every other health and economic indicator are worse-off than whites. For Blacks in the United States between 1995 and 2002, the infant mortality rate was 13.9, more than double the rate of 5.9 for whites in the same time period (Center for Disease Control). Life expectancy of Blacks is 5 years less than whites, with 2005 statistics showing whites living on average to 78.3 years of-age and Blacks only living 73.2 years (CNN.com). Blacks also suffer double the unemployment of whites. Consistent with long-term ratios, 2002 statistics gave a white unemployment rate of 5.2 percent and a Black unemployment rate of 10.7 percent (Robinson).

These types of data are reflected in other populations of color in the Unites States as well. For instance, Native Americans have been in the United States from the beginning, yet according to health and employment statistics, they still have not assimilated either. For example, between 1998 and 2000 Native American infants in the United States were 1.7 times more likely to die than white infants in their first year of life (Tomashek et al.).

These sad realities, all too often ignored by the mainstream press, fly in the face of the Washington Post’s bold declaration of, “Welcome to post ethnic America.” It has an absurd bellicose ring to it, like George Bush declaring victory in Iraq in 2003.
It is from the fewer opportunities that many ethnic groups face that the cultural nationalism of oppressed groups arises. Yet these Washington Post authors, in ignoring these inequalities, along with pretending that new immigrants will not keep coming to the United States, see “cultural nationalists as a disease that infests most Chicano studies departments.” As opposed to seeing such manifestations as a healthy reaction to the racist, imperialist, and exploitative U.S. society, the authors instead blame the victims of this society that stand up for their culture and their rights. It is from such imaginary premises as the idea of ethnic divisions no longer playing a role in society, that the authors come to racist conclusions against those people of ethnic and racial groups that stand up for social justice for their groups.

Unfortunately, the Washington Post is not alone in seeing manifestations of cultural and political nationalism as a disease. It has long been U.S. government policy to treat people of color that stand up to American racism as a cancer.

The Lakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota, who supported the culturally and politically nationalist American Indian Movement, faced brutal counter-insurgency tactics complete with FBI-armed and -trained death squads that murdered 61 political activists on the reservation between 1973 and 1976 (Churchill). As part of that terror war against America’s first nations, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI and remains in prison to this day.

Blacks have faced similar political repression in the United States, also orchestrated by the FBI. In the 1960’s and 70’s the U.S. government liquidated the Black Panther Party through the murders of 39 members, including the police shooting of Fred Hampton in his sleep, and through political frame-ups such as that of Geronimo (Ji Jagga) Pratt who was finally exonerated (i.e. found innocent) after 30 years in prison. Other framed Black Panthers still sit in prison and Black Panther Assata Shakur lives in exile, granted political asylum by Cuba, but with a one million dollar bounty put on her head by the U.S. government.

Immigrants who speak out are also caught in the government’s cross-hairs. Worst off in terms of political rights are Near and Middle Eastern immigrants, including U.S. citizens, who, in the eyes of the authorities, become too vocal about racism and U.S. imperialism. They are now labeled “enemy combatants” without cause and can disappear into America’s torture chambers or be outsourced for torture and murder by being shipped back to their native lands. Some have never been heard from again, with international human rights organizations denied documentation; while others reemerge after prolonged mistreatment such as Maher Arar, a leader of a mainstream Arab American advocacy group who was shipped to Syria by the U.S. government for torture (Klein). A clear message has been sent to Arab-Americans: watch your tongue or you’ll be the next Maher Arar.

Like the Washington Post, the U.S. government sees no need for these ethnic groups to stand up for themselves, and when they do they sometimes treat such manifestations as pest “infestations”, and the government sends in their FBI and local law-enforcement exterminators.

While the Washington Post article attacks Chicano studies departments, locally in Santa Cruz we have a similar example of racism in the media with the Santa Cruz Sentinel’s attacks on Latino Santa Cruz City Councilperson Tony Madrigal. The focus of these attacks are the fact that Tony Madrigal stood up for people of color, at least in a small way, by voting against increased police measures, including against triple fines, downtown on Halloween. Here is what Tony Madrigal said:

"I was really bothered by the fact that I witnessed a bunch of officers pat down a group of Latino youth that were standing on the sidewalk by, I think it was Community Television. They were standing by there. They weren’t doing anything. They were just watching everybody go by.

"They patted them all down, searched them, and then left them alone.

"I asked the guys 'Are you bothered by this? Are you okay?' They didn't want to do anything about it, but they did make a good point.

"They said "Look. They just patted us down but they are walking right past another group of kids who are making more noise than us. They don't look like us" implying that they were Latino.

"I just feel to a certain degree that there might be some racial profiling going on. And those issues do concern me. I don't think that’s what we're supposed to be doing on Halloween. I do understand there are all kinds of procedures the police department has to be going through and everything.

"I just think there is a different way to go about making downtown safe for Halloween." (Johnson)

In response, the Santa Cruz Sentinel declared in their September 16, 2007 editorial, “As We See It, Tony Madrigal’s Immature Remarks,” “Madrigal once again showed that he hasn’t grown into the office when he accused the Santa Cruz police of racial profiling.” Other eyewitnesses, including Mark Halfmoon, saw this same incident of racial profiling as well as other incidents that same night. Yet the editorial went so far as to suggest Tony Madrigal resign.

That same Sentinel editorial went on to claim that racial profiling does not exist, stating, “In fact, the city of Santa Cruz has done studies – with academic rigor – to examine arrest reports in order to find evidence of profiling. The data shows otherwise.” No further information is given on these studies, but the point is clear enough, Tony and other eyewitnesses have no right to believe their own eyes; the white power structure has done studies on itself and has declared this form of racism does not exist.

Likewise, the Sentinel, never friendly to reports of police abuse, criticizes Tony Madrigal for not reporting the incident earlier, stating: “It was irresponsible of him not to check out his information through the proper channels.” What are the proper channels? Presently the Citizen’s Police Review Board has been dissolved, partly at the urging of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. That leaves police Internal Affairs, notorious for exonerating their fellow officers, to investigate. The proper channels that the Sentinel has referred Tony to are in fact useless channels and, as Tony pointed out, the victims weren’t interested in pursuing the case. As an elected official, what is a more proper channel for Tony Madrigal to use than voting against expanded police powers and explaining his vote?

Inside of racist America, a mass incarceration of the poor, especially the poor of color, has taken place, while at the same time the multi-racial working class and poor are subjected to a lack of healthcare and dramatic drop in our standard of living. The inner cities of America have, by and large, been abandoned by the same capitalists that got rich off of the jobs that they have now exported, just as the victims of hurricane Katrina were left to die by this same racist system.

Yet the capitalists continue to profit off of this misery and “justify” it through racism. The capitalists profit from the mass incarceration of the poor through the prison industrial complex where they get almost free labor and they get additional money from the increasingly privatized prisons. A good percentage of those people being rounded up for these modern day plantations are people of color, while America’s racist police are now modern day slave catchers.

Likewise, the U.S. government practices racist policies against Near and Far Eastern immigrants as part of a wider policy of war, death, and profit, “justified” by racism. Want an example? Just look at Bush on Iraq. He repeatedly states that people from that part of the world “did” September 11. Yet when a reporter asked, “What did Iraq have to do with September 11?” Bush responded, “nothing.” Bush keeps repeating what seems like an obvious mistake to people that aren’t racists, but to the racists Bush’s argument makes perfect sense, people from that part of the world did it and any dead towel-heads will do.

Looking at the mainstream media in America, however, one would think that the question of racism in America has been solved. The truly shocking issues of racism are routinely glossed over, ignored, or denied. These Washington Post and Santa Cruz Sentinel articles are good cases in point. They argue that there is no racism, and promote hostility against those standing up against racism. When the Washington Post pretends that racial and ethnic equality have been achieved, one must question if they are living on the same planet, or just lying to achieve some other goal.

The Washington Post and Santa Cruz Sentinel are corporate newspapers. Like all of the mainstream media in this country they are corporate owned, and in addition, sell advertising to other corporations. As such, these papers are beholden to corporate interests, and do their duty spreading corporate propaganda on behalf of the ruling American capitalist class. That capitalist system was racist from birth in profiting from slavery and the mass murder of Native Americans, and profits from racism now through war, prisons, and paying less for the labor of immigrants and people of color.

While pretending to hold no bias, the bias of the Washington Post and Santa Cruz Sentinel are so pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, and pro-racist that their main tactic of debate on these issues is to pretend the words that describe them don’t even exist. The most insidious racists in journalism are those who either ignore the problem or insist that problems of institutional racism do not exist.

It took a mass movement outside of the capitalist power structure to win the rights that people of color have achieved so far. Yet there is still a long way to go until we can declare victory and full equality. Closing our eyes will not make racial and ethnic divisions disappear. It will only be through recognizing the prevalent nature of problems such as racism and American nationalist chauvinism that we will be able to achieve equality and justice, not by glossing over these problems and pretending they don’t exist.

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
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Works Cited:

They don’t send in e-mail well, but can be seen at: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/21/18473855.php

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:26:24 GMT

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/13/18472076.php

Today, in an attempt to smear me, posts have gone up all over the internet accusing me of being an anti-Semite. Pieces of the following essay are posted with other words inserted that are not my own. In addition, accusations have been made that I have attempted to delete the following essay from the public record. To contradict this smear tactic, and to prove that opposing Zionism is not anti-Semitic, I am reposting the entire essay in full.

I wrote the following essay early in 2001 as part of a discussion on the violence and repression taking place in Israel at the time. Yet, the essay is still entirely relevant, because it takes a historical look at the roots of the conflict, and discusses how the Zionist movement has been harmful to both Arabs and Jews alike.

How Israel Promotes Anti-Semitism (Part 1)

In this mailing: Pro-zionist Letter on Israel from Becky Johnson and Response by Steve Argue.

Letter to Editor,

You have to go back and read your history books. Palestine was the name the British gave to the mandate they took over (in typical British imperial fashion) from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Palestinians at the time included everyone who lived there, including the Jews. Palestine ceased to exist when Israel was formed in 1948. The plan
from the UN was to have the state of Palestine right next to Israel. But all the Arab neighbors (and the Arab population within the borders of the new state of Israel) rejected this two state solution and responded by out and out war waged on the Israelis.

The Palestinians (Arabs who live or lived within the boundaries of Israel) didn't even start to call themselves that until 1968--- twenty years after the establishment of Israel. Basically the concept of Palestine is a manufactured one to drum up support for these Arabs and to decrease support for Israel by the claim that Israel is on THEIR land.

Remember, the Arabs and muslims [sic] who did not flee in 1948, but stayed in Israel have full citizenship, have freedom to practice their religion, own property, vote, have representation in the Knesset, and compose 18% of the population.

There is no Palestine. And there never was except as a British invention.

---Becky Johnson

Steven Argue responds:

Actually, history is one of my strong points. You state that I need to consult my history books, yet you make statements that are inarguably historically incorrect. Palestine was in existence as a recognized territory of the Ottoman Empire long before British control and even before the beginnings of Jewish colonization by the Zionist movement.

These inhabitants of the region also had Arab nationalist sentiments that opposed the control of the Ottoman Empire before the creation of the Zionist State and have since opposed many of the U.S., French, and British imposed kings, crown princes, emirs, sheiks, etc. that Zionists like to claim represent the aspirations of the Arab people.

Your attempt to deny a people of even the name of their homeland is consistent with an ideology that denies an entire people of the right to their homeland. The fact that bloody repression and horrible discrimination has driven the majority of Palestinians from large parts of their homeland without the right of return is not enough. The Zionist movement wants to wipe away the rightful name of the land they have conquered by re-writing history and denying there ever was a Palestine.

From its beginnings in the eighteen hundreds the Zionist movement had little concern for the Arab inhabitants of the Palestinian land they would settle. Instead, they appealed to imperialist powers as potential allies against the Arab people in setting up their Zionist state. For example, Zionist leader T. Herzl stated around 1897: "If his majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could undertake to regulate Turkey's finances. For Europe, we would constitute a bulwark against Asia down there; we would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism. As a neutral state, we would remain in constant touch with all of Europe, which would guarantee our existence" (Rodinson, "Israel a Colonial Settler State?").

By being “neutral”, Herzl is obviously referring to the Zionist dealings with powers of Europe, and not to the colonial "barbarians" already in and around the land he would settle and conquer.

An Arab leader in Jerusalem named Nassif Bey al-Khalidi who tried unsuccessfully to work out an agreement between Arabs and the Zionist movement warned the Zionists with the following statement, "Be very careful, Messieurs Zionists, governments disappear, but peoples remain. The Jewish immigrants came to Palestine believing it to be a desolate, sparsely inhabited country. They were too busy with their own business and too ignorant of Arabic to notice what was going on around them. Since it was the Turks who ruled Palestine, they turned all their attention toward the Turks. This did not make them popular with the Arabs" (Neville Mandel, "Chapters of Arab-Jewish Diplomacy 1918-1922").

The Jewish immigrants never became integrated in any way with the native Arab population. This was true economically, politically, socially, and linguistically. These Jewish immigrants were so separate from the Palestinian people that they were only Palestinian to the extent that they were physically living in Palestine.

It took the weakening of the Sultan during the First World War for Europe (specifically England) to move in and grant the colonial framework for Jewish colonization that aimed itself at the goal of an exclusively Jewish state. This framework was set forth in a British political charter in November 1917 called the Balfour Declaration which stated, "His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

Within this framework an exclusive Jewish state was the stated goal of all but a small minority in the Zionist movement, a goal that obviously would be at the expense of the Arab people already living in Palestine. In order to placate the Palestinians, however, the Balfour declaration stated, "It should be clearly understood that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

While Britain was trying to placate the Arabs, Zionist leader Jabotinsky was very clear on Zionist intentions, stating in 1923 in his Book the "Iron Wall", "There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. All well meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization took place with the agreement of the native population."

In understanding the existence of a Palestinian people and the struggles yet to come, Jabotinsky went on to state, "They have the precise psychology we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope."

Jabotinsky's view, and the policy that would later be carried out against the Palestinians, could not be made any clearer than his following statement from the same writing: "We can not give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to the other Arabs. Therefore a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the native population. Therefore it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the Arab population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy."

In explaining the differences between Zionist factions in dealing with the Palestinians Jabotinsky stated, "Force must play its role - with strength and without indulgence. In this, in this there are no differences between our militarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets; the other prefers an Iron Wall of English bayonets."

On these issues Rabbi Judas L. Magnes, President of the Hebrew University Jerusalem wrote, "by definition a Jewish state means that Jews will govern other people, other people who live in this Jewish state…Jabotinsky knew this long ago. He was the prophet of the Jewish state...In his early writings he said: 'Has a people ever been known to give up its territory of its own volition? Likewise, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence.'"

On the morals of Jabotinsky's plans and his desire to extinguish all hopes of the Palestinian people he is as clear in the "Iron Wall" as Hitler is of his intentions in "Mein Kampf" with Jabotinsky stating: "To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer 'absolutely untrue.' This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest hope for the Arabs to impede us they will not sell these hopes - not for any sweet word nor for any tasty morsel, because this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall."

In 1940 Jabotinsky states in "The Jewish War Front": "Since we have the moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of the Arabs, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay. Herr Hitler has recently been enhancing the popularity of population transfer."

While the Arabs of Palestine were extremely tolerant of the Zionists who were moving in to take their land and their hopes, the Zionist movement was never interested in forming any sort of alliance with the Arab people. Instead, the Zionist movement from its inception was openly anti-Arab and pro-imperialist, even though those same imperial powers were the same ones who were carrying out pogroms against the Jews in the ghettos across Europe. This pro-imperialist policy included close relations with the pogromist leaders of anti-Semitic Czarist Russia who murdered tens of thousands of Jews, and later Zionist support and deals that aided the fascist death camps of Nazi Germany.

Jews, in fact, are victims of Zionism along side Arabs. From the beginning of Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 the Zionist movement lent their support to the Nazis, support which lasted until at least 1944 when they aided Hitler's "final solution" in Hungary killing 800,000 Jews. On the surface, the idea of Zionist relations with the Nazis may sound illogical and seem made up. Those relations, however, are well documented.

Hitler seized power in 1933 with a clear fascistic program that called for the annihilation of all socialists, communists, labor leaders, and Jews. Despite this fact, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent the Nazi Party a memorandum on June 21, 1933 stating: "…a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life … must also take place in the Jewish national group. On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state, which has established itself on the principle of race, we wish to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible…." (Brenner, Zionism, pg. 48)

The policy of supporting Hitler was later upheld at the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933, where a motion to take action against Hitler was defeated 240 to 43. Thus, the Jewish boycott of the German economy at a time of economic weakness and vulnerability was broken with the World Zionist Organization's Anglo Palestine Bank resuming trade. In fact, the World Zionist Organization became the principal distributors of Nazi goods in Northern Europe and the Middle East.

Feivel Polkes was a member of Zionist leader Jabotinsky's Haganah militia. He was sent by Jabotinsky to Berlin to inform Nazi leader Adolf Eichman of his intention to spy for the S.S. in exchange for the release of the money of German Jews for use on the Zionist project. Zionist Feivel told Nazi Eichman, "Jewish Nationalist Circles are very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews would reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs" (Brenner, "Zionism" pg. 99).

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, felt so fond of the Zionist movement and their close working relations that he wrote a 12 part report in Der Angriff (The Assault) praising the Zionist movement, and ordered a medallion struck with a swastika on one side and the Zionist Star of David on the other.

Collaboration included an agreement in Hungary between Zionist agent Dr. Rudolph Kastner and Nazi leader Adolph Eichman. Under the 1944 agreement the Nazis would murder 800,000 Hungarian Jews without Zionist interference and with complete silence from the Zionist movement. In exchange, 600 prominent Jews would be freed from Hungary. The Nazis then opened up a Rescue Department in Hungary headed by Kastner. These facts were exposed by a survivor named Malchiel Greenwald who was subsequently sued by the Israeli government, sued by the same leaders that had fashioned the deal made by Kastner in the first place.

Kastner's collaboration with the Nazis was confirmed with the Israeli court stating, "The sacrifice of the majority of the Jews, in order to rescue the prominents was the basic element in the agreement between Kastner and the Nazis. This agreement fixed the division of the nation into two unequal camps, a small fragment of prominents, whom the Nazis promised Kastner to save, on the one hand, and the majority of Hungarian Jews whom the Nazis designated for death, on the other hand." (Judgment given on June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case
124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem; cited in Ralph Schoenman’s “Hidden History of Zionism”)

The Zionists subsequently ignored a plan drawn up by the resistance that could have saved many, if not most, of Hungary's Jews. The Zionist silence and lack of action against Nazi atrocities in fact characterizes their stance throughout the entire holocaust. A plan, complete with maps, was drawn up that would blow-up railroad tracks to the death camps and crematoria and airdropped ammunition to the 80,000 Jews in Auschwitz. Part of the plan also included the parachuting of saboteurs to blow up the Auschwitz facility that was murdering 13,000 people a day. Had the Zionist movement not been so intent on fighting the Arabs, rather than the real anti-Semite butchers of Europe, they could have gathered the resources to carry out such operations. Likewise, Great Britain and the United States could have carried out the proposed measures as well, but chose not to save the Jews, and felt no pressure from the silent Zionist movement to do so.

This caused Rabbi Weismandel, who had drawn up the plans against Auschwitz, to ask of the Zionists in July 1944, "this special message to inform you that yesterday the Germans began deportations of Jews from Hungary. … The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas. This is the schedule, of Auschwitz from yesterday to the end: Twelve thousand Jews - men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones, are to be suffocated daily. And you, our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you ministers of all the Kingdoms, how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder. Silent while thousands upon thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, are murdered? And silent now, while tens of thousands are still being murdered or waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry out to you for help as they bewail your cruelty. Brutal, you are and murderers, too, you are, because of the cold bloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour. You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane?" (Shoenman, "The Hidden History of Zionism?")

The Zionists also opposed the immigration of Jews to other countries where they could escape extermination. Explaining their policy of pressuring Great Britain and the United States not to adopt immigration policies that would have saved the lives of Jews, Zionist leader Ben Gurion stated in 1938, "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I would opt for the second option" (Brenner, "Zionism", pg. 149).

The ability of the Zionist movement to sacrifice the lives of millions of Jews for the settling of Palestine had a consistent inner logic. That logic speaks volumes. While some of the first victims of these Zionist madmen were the Jewish people, the Palestinians were next. And today, the continued Zionist mistreatment of the Palestinian people is one of the biggest threats to the lives of Jewish people because some of the Arab victims of Zionism now do not differentiate between the crimes of Zionism and the Jewish people. In addition, the Israeli government aided in the formation of the anti-Semitic organization Hamas, and today uses their suicide bombings against civilians as a way to gain sympathy and support in the Zionist war against the Palestinian people (more on this later). Objectively, the Zionist capitalist state is, in fact, the common enemy of both Jews and Arabs.

In the 1940s Jews were only one third of the population of Palestine. The Arab majority had not yet been driven from their land. The British, in considering their entire imperial interests in the Middle East and their need for good relations with Arabs had backtracked from their original support of a Jewish state in Palestine. Thus the Zionist minority carried out a war of independence against Britain in order to set up the Jewish state. The Palestinian people, the majority of the population, were not consulted by the Zionists on what kind of future they would like to have for their homeland and had little involvement in the war, although a few did side with British forces.

After independence from the Britain in 1948, the Zionist state began a massive expropriation of Palestinian land that has not ended. Becky Johnson's claim that, "the Arabs and Muslims who did not flee in 1948, but stayed in Israel have full citizenship, have freedom to practice their religion, own property, vote, have representation in the Knesset, and compose 18% of the population" is so utterly untrue as to defy common sense. Besides defying the facts, which we shall establish, I ask why most of an entire people would voluntarily flee the land in which they had built flourishing towns, a rich agriculture, and a vibrant cultural life with nowhere else to go? The short answer is that they did not flee voluntarily. They had met the "Jewish bayonets" of Zionist Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall". To deny this fact comes in on the same level as those who deny the Holocaust of Europe.

The humiliating conditions of the Palestinian people were recently observed by former anti-Apartheid fighter Archbishop Desmond Tutu who wrote:

"I have been very deeply distressed by my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young police officers prevented us from moving about.

"On my visit to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

"I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: 'Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.'

"My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?"

Although the Israeli government claims that Palestinians have the right to own property, this is a lie. Ever since 1948, Palestinians in Israel do not have the right to own land, because their land is often confiscated by force for Hebrew speaking settlement and agriculture. Water rights have been systematically cut off and diverted away from Palestinian lands and given to stolen Hebrew owned lands. Palestinian laborers are then denied by law the right to work the Hebrew owned agricultural lands, although they are sometimes illegally employed as cheap labor with no labor rights.

Palestinians do not have the right to freely travel. Reminiscent of chattel slavery, Palestinian families are often separated by Israeli officials who commonly do not grant necessary permits for Palestinians to enter neighborhoods or towns where wives, husbands, or children live. In contrast, the Hebrew speaking population has full rights to travel.

Palestinians often do not have the right to keep their own homes, which are often confiscated or bulldozed. The bulldozing of houses is a common punishment of families whose children are accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Recently, in Jenin, houses were bulldozed with people inside, an act that besides killing people, also made an estimated 4,000 people homeless.

Palestinians do not have the right to freedom of speech and regularly face arrest, torture, and even death for their political views. Even Hebrew speakers who support rights for Palestinians, or an end to Israeli wars, have, at times, had their press shut down by the Israeli government, or had their demonstrations attacked and beaten by Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians do not have the same right to an education as Hebrew speaking people, based on the fact that higher education is paid for through the forced military inscription of Hebrew speakers, while Palestinians are generally excluded from the military. While most Palestinians can’t serve, so-called “Israeli Arabs” have the choice of serving, but it would, in fact, make no sense for Palestinians to serve their military, since humiliation, brutality, and outright terror against Palestinians is a part of every day duty for an Israeli soldier. Likewise, few blacks served in the Apartheid military of South Africa. In Israel, this is used to deny Palestinians their right to education.

Those Palestinians who are then driven out of what was once Palestine usually are not allowed to return, while Jews who have never set foot in Israel are granted automatic citizenship, with the exception of two Jewish supporters of Palestinians named Ralph Shoenman and Mya Shone, who have the honor of not being allowed into Israel because of their excellent writings. Those Palestinians who are forced from Israel are often bombed by Israel in their refugee camps or massacred in other ways. In the 1982 case of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, Palestinians were rounded up and systematically slaughtered in the thousands by Israeli troops and their Phalangist Militia allies.

As survivor Mrs. Sersawi testified in a Belgium appeals court on the Israeli governments war crimes:

"The Lebanese forces militia [Phalangists] had taken us from our homes and marched us up to the entrance of the camp where a large hole had been dug in the earth. The men were told to get into it. Then the militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women and children climbed over bodies to get to this spot, but we were truly shocked by seeing this man killed in front of us and there was a roar of shouting and screams from the women. That's when we heard the Israelis on a loudspeaker shouting, 'give us your men.' We thought, 'thank God, they will save us.'

"We were told to walk up the road to the Kuwaiti Embassy, the women and children in front, the men behind. We had been separated. There were Phalangist Militiamen and Israeli soldiers walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan (her husband with whom she was 3 months pregnant) and Faraj (her brother-in-law). It was like a parade. There were several hundred of us. When we got to Cite Sportif, the Israelis put us women in a big concrete room and the men were taken to another side of the stadium. There were a lot of men from the camp and I could no longer see my husband. The Israelis went around saying 'Sit, sit.' It was 11 AM. An hour later we were told to leave. But we stood outside amid the Israeli soldiers, waiting for our men.

"Some men came out, none of them younger than 40, and they told us to be patient, that hundreds of men were still inside. Then about 4 PM an Israeli officer came out. He was wearing dark glasses and said in Arabic: 'What are you waiting for?' He said there was nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn't see inside. And there were jeeps and tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there as it got dark and the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were very nervous. But when the Israelis had moved away, we went inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I had been only three years married. I never saw my husband again."

Sabra and Shatila are only one of the massacres of people done by the Israeli government in the past 54 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Today, all of the Palestinian towns of historic Palestine are either occupied by Israeli troops who are killing people, or surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks who are poised to attack. While Israeli troops are claiming that they are only killing combatants, Human Rights Watch has documented the following crimes in Jenin alone: murders of civilians including children, the old, and the disabled; summary executions; the bulldozing of houses with people in them; and the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.

The cities of Ramallah and Jenin have been laid to waste by the Zionists just as the Nazis smashed the towns of Guarnica and Lidice in the name of collective punishment. Likewise, the heroic resistance of Palestinian fighters in the face of superior military force is reminiscent of the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto and Vilna.

The Israeli offensive will not stop those willing to do suicide missions against civilians, attacks that are futile attempts to combat the genocide Palestinians face. The Israeli offensive does the opposite, in deepening the conditions that created suicide bombers in the first place. The anger created is by escalated Israeli murder is actually more likely to increase the number of tragic attacks on Hebrew speaking civilians. At the same time, Israel has not targeted the main base of the suicide bombers, Gaza, where Hamas is heavily organized. In fact, the murderous Israeli repression really isn't meant to stop attacks on Hebrew speaking civilians because these bombings by Hamas actually play right into the Zionist government's aims and objectives in dividing Arab and Hebrew speaking peoples, diverting international sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and potentially pushing for a “final solution” against the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian Authority, who the Israeli government consistently blame for the attacks by Hamas.

Hamas is an anti-Semitic fundamentalist religious organization that killed 150 Israeli civilians through suicide bombings between 1994 and 1998 alone. From its beginnings as the Mujama in the 1970s to this day, Hamas does not face the same kind of repression as any other Palestinian group. In addition, Hamas reportedly receives $28 million dollars a year from another key U.S. ally in the region, Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. and the Saudi Arabian monarchy work together closely to systematically loot Saudi Arabia's oil resources for the profits of U.S. oil monopolies, while the vast majority of the Saudi people live in poverty. In addition, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Hamas worked together closely in the U.S. war drive to destroy the left progressive PDPA government that held power in Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992. This was a war where the U.S. government and Saudi Arabia gave billions of dollars of military aid to Osama Bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists of the Mujahedin who were waging a holy war against the advances in women's rights, including women's literacy, that were occurring under the PDPA government. Tactics of the Mujahedin included throwing acid in the faces of women liberated from the veil and murdering women for teaching little girls how to read and write. Fearing a Mujahedin government right on its border, and defending the PDPA government from U.S. aggression, the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan in 1979. Although these Soviet troops were invited by the Afghan PDPA, U.S. propaganda called this a “Soviet invasion”.

An estimated 100,000 of the Islamic fundamentalists who fought in Afghanistan were recruited by the CIA outside of Afghanistan. Hamas participated in this activity. As John Cooley from ABC news pointed out on March 13th, 1996 in the International Herald Tribune:

"A key Hamas organizer was Abdallah Azzam. He was a tough, brilliant and charismatic Palestinian from Jordan. He supervised training for the CIA's Afghan guerrillas in Peshawar, Pakistan, where a car bomb killed him in 1989. In the earlier 1980s he toured the United States, recruiting Arab-Americans for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan."

Just as the United States used Hamas against the Afghani people and the leftist PDPA government, Israel has used the religious fundamentalists of Hamas as a club against the socialist and secular nationalist movements in Palestine that Hamas has violently opposed. It is those secular and socialist movements that Israel has seen as more of a threat in terms of winning the masses of people, including Hebrew speakers, over to positions of sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinians. Hamas's suicide bombers against civilians instead serve Zionist interests in driving a larger wedge between Palestinians and Hebrew speakers, people who will need to unite against their common oppressor and killer, the Israeli Zionist government.

Early Israeli support for Hamas included in 1978 the granting of Mujama charitable status in Gaza while other organizations, especially political organizations as Mujama was, could not get such status. In 1979, Israeli collusion with the Mujama movement set up the Islamic University of Gaza, whose anti-PLO and anti-socialist slogan was: "How can uncovered women and men with Beatle haircuts liberate our holy places?" Students who did not tow the Islamic line were disciplined through brutal beatings and sometimes had acid thrown in their faces. In addition, Mujama mobs were allowed to violently attack and burn down PLO controlled institutions at a time when other street demonstrations were not allowed or tightly controlled by the Israeli authorities.

In 1979 the Mujama movement burned the Palestinian Red Crescent Society's (PRC) building to the ground. In response, the PRC issued the following statement, "The tacit approval of the authorities, if not their actual connivance in what happened, was displayed in their attitude of non-interference. While they usually display great alertness to combating even peaceful demonstrations of young students within schools, here they stood indifferently watching a violently destructive demonstration march to its objectives."

In 1988 Hamas was formed out of Mujama. While PLO supporters were organizing mass demonstrations in the streets, Hamas was instead focusing on shooting Israeli soldiers. Despite this fact, Hamas had top-level meetings with the Israeli government while that same government would not even meet with the PLO. Milton Edwards in "Islamic Politics In Palestine" noted the relationship:

"The relationship between Hamas and the Israeli authorities was, however, at the strongest during the second year of the Intifada. The Israelis had been quick to extend legitimacy status to Hamas in an attempt to marginalize the PLO. Leaders of Hamas were regularly filmed at meetings with top-level Israeli officials and the message the Israelis were sending out was that they regarded Hamas as the type of people with whom they could work…

"In addition the Israelis continued turning a blind eye to large amounts of money coming into the country destined for Hamas coffers, while at the same time stopping the flow of PLO funds in support of the
Intifada."

In 1994, Hamas began its indiscriminate attacks on Hebrew speaking people through suicide bombings. Those suicide bombings had been stepped up by Hamas in the beginnings of the Intifada 2 uprising in September 2000, but then ended due to an agreement between Arafat's Palestinian Authority and Hamas. While this agreement was in effect world attention became focused on the gunning down of Palestinian children by Israeli sharp shooters on the West Bank. For the Zionist government this was becoming a public relations disaster.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon needed a new provocation he could use as propaganda to escalate the war against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). To create this provocation he took action to end the truce between the P.A. and Hamas on ending the suicide bombings of civilians. On November 23rd Israeli security forces assassinated Hamas leader Mahmud Abu Hunud. On November 25th, 2001 right-wing Israeli journalist Alex Fishman accurately observed in the "Yediot Achronot", "Whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line."

Of course no one but Sharon could have given the green light for such an important operation. Sharon's provocation against the Hamas anti-Semites had its intended affect. Within days Hamas resumed attacks against Israeli civilians. In March a Hamas bomber killed 25 civilians in the Passover attack that was then used by Sharon as his excuse to attack the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority while leaving the Hamas stronghold of Gaza untouched.

The U.S. government's massive military support to the Zionist State and, to a lesser extent to the repressive Saudi Arabian monarchy, is responsible for the bloodshed in Palestine. The racist state of Israel currently receives 300,000 dollars per hour in U.S. military and economic aid. The F-16 bombers and Apache and Cobra helicopters used in the latest attacks are just some of the weapons used to kill Palestinians that are made in the United States.

Socialists stand for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and all of the crowned princes, sheiks, emirs, and Islamic fanatics of the Middle East. We understand that these U.S. policies are the policies of both the Democrat and Republican Parties. Imperialist policy isn't the result of some misunderstanding by these parties of the wealthy. Instead, the repressive and genocidal policies of U.S. imperialism flow from the drive for profits by the rapacious U.S. capitalists that rule America and much of the world. From this understanding, socialists know that the only way we will get a just foreign policy, fair treatment of workers and the poor, and sound ecological policies, is through a socialist revolution in the United States.

---Steve Argue, for Liberation News

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posted in *Activists* - 2 replies

Vote to support a free Community Baby Clinic!

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:47:23 GMT

Please cast your vote to support my project of facilitating a free monthly WaterBaby CranioSacral Therapy Clinic in a therapeutic warm salt-water pool in my community!

http://www.ideablob.com/ideas/1225-WaterBaby-CranioSacral-Therapy-

This grant will be able to fund my training in AquaCranial and rental of a therapeutic pool for a years' worth of free community clinics for babies, pregnant women, and new parents.

Please support this project - every vote counts!

Thanks!

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

How We Can Really End the War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:02:32 GMT

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 1 reply

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:29:19 GMT

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in *Activists* - 9 replies

Hi Please come Join The conspiraciesclub

Daniel J — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:40:50 GMT

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/conspiraciesclub/
This site is loaded with truth articles. There is links to all sorts of other truth sites.

You will also find links to truth videos, documentaries, on line tv and radio. And alot more..

If you join you can keep up to date on important issues because this is an e-mail service..

You can post important articles and can also respond to others articles.. the huge collection of resources in the files are from many years of research I have been doing...

We have to stop The North American Union and Deep Intergration..

Have you noticed that it has been being implimented piece by piece for a very long time now?

The whole picture is quiet big and scary. It's all part of the bankers master plan of a New World Order...

Join "The Truth Revolution" ..It's easy too, you just have to be very brave to go where few will go to find the truth..Once you learn the truth. You can become a truth soldier and go out there and fight against the evil forces by spreading the truth.

Mankinds future depends on it...for we can not be free without truth. This is why we need more free thinkers to join the truth army.

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Adbusters goes to Supreme Court in Canada

brooke118 — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:39:36 GMT

Jammers and creatives,

Today is our big moment in court. Ever since the first issue of Adbusters was published seventeen years ago we've been fighting to break the corporate monopoly on access to the airwaves. After countless delays, and over $100,000 spent on legal fees, we've arrived at a critical juncture in the case. At issue is our freedom of speech on the most powerful social communications medium of our time, television.

Below is a copy of our press release as well as a sneak preview of an article that will appear in the upcoming issue of Adbusters (on newsstands February 18th). Please give us your support by getting the word out there.

If our lawsuit is successful in Canada, we'll try to raise the funds necessary to launch a suit in the United States as well. What's at stake here is a critical new human right for our information age, the right to communicate.

The Adbusters Team

PRESS RELEASE: THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE

On Monday, January 7th, the British Columbia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on whether or not Adbusters' lawsuit against Global Television, the CBC, and the CRTC, should go forward. If the Adbusters lawsuit clears this hurdle, media rights advocates will celebrate an important victory in the battle against censorship.

For more than a decade, Adbusters, a magazine and media foundation, has been trying to pay major commercial broadcasters to air its public-service TV spots, but these attempts have been routinely blocked by network executives, often with little or no explanation. In 2004, Adbusters finally turned to the courts. It filed a lawsuit against the government of Canada and some of the country's biggest media barons, arguing that the public has a constitutionally protected freedom of expression over the public airwaves.

At issue is the right of all Canadian citizens to have (as stipulated by the Canadian Broadcasting Act) "a reasonable opportunity...to be exposed to the expression of differing views on matters of public concern."

"This case will decide if Canadians have the right to walk into their local TV stations and buy thirty seconds of airtime for a message they want to air," says Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters.

Ryan Dalziel of Bull, Housser & Tupper LLP, who is representing Adbusters, explains the special nature of this suit.

"This is not," he says, "a bare-knuckle family law dispute, nor is it a Bay Street-style war of attrition between commercial entities. It is public interest litigation, brought by a not-for-profit organization with no chance of any monetary return."

Adbusters is hoping Canadians will pay close attention to a landmark case that pits ordinary citizens and consumers against powerful special interests. The outcome will determine the future role of television in Canada.

EDITOR'S NOTES

For more information about Adbusters and the global media democracy movement visit www.mediacarta.org and www.adbusters.org.

[1] Canadian Media facts: * Four corporations (CanWest, Quebecor, Torstar and Gesca) control 72 per cent of the country's daily newspaper circulation.
* Five major media acquisitions in Canada have occurred or are currently in the making in the past two years: CHUM was purchased by CTVglobemedia for $1.4 billion, which then sold five CityTV stations to Rogers for $375 million; CanWest purchased Alliance Atlantis for $2.3 billion; Astral Media bought Standard Broadcasting for $1.2 billion; and Black Press and Quebecor are vying for the Osprey Media newspaper chain in a deal that will be worth more than $400 million.

[2] Facts about Media Democracy:

* More than 30,000 people have signed the Media Carta <www.mediacarta.org> to voice their concerns about the way information is distributed in our society. * In the past year a growing number of grassroots media activist groups have been formed in Canada to express their dissatisfaction with the continued consolidation of the country's media: <www.democraticmedia.ca> <www.mediareform.ca> <www.mediademocracy.ca>

THE MEDIA'S NEW AESTHETIC: WHY TV IS ABOUT TO HAVE A MAJOR MOOD SWING.
by Clayton Dach

The last few years have been hard on poor old television.

Viewership has fallen across the board as core audiences -- guys aged 18 to 34 in particular - are abandoning the device that raised them, opting instead for game controllers and the internet. Meanwhile, those who have remained loyal to TV are failing to remain similarly loyal to the advertising that makes it profitable, increasingly choosing to get their tube fix via commercial-annihilating digital video recorders, advertising-light DVDs, and (horror of horrors) pirate downloads.

With viewers putting up blinders to the ad-program-ad rhythm of for-profit television, the desirability of conventional 30-second commercial spot is tanking. For the first time in decades, a number of key markets have witnessed decreases in the amount spent on traditional ads, as marketers demand the ever-elusive bigger bang with in-program product placements and full-on brand integration within storylines. The result: as much as 15 full minutes of every hour of programming in North America is now dedicated to thinly veiled product placements, with shows like American Idol topping out at over 4,000 placements per season -- all of this in addition to the average of 14 to 22 minutes out of 60 still set aside for traditional spots.

Given televisions' incredible shrinking credibility, especially in the case of broadcast journalism, it is little wonder that we have suffered through the ceaseless debate over whether we live under the thumb of a "liberal media" or a "conservative media." Luckily, we can safely disregard the question of television's political affiliation, since we are rapidly approaching a sort of McLuhan-esque implosion which will render the answer irrelevant. It's that moment when the specifics of the rock 'em sock 'em, talking-head debates may be school massacres or missing pageant queens, but the message itself always remains the same. That message is television, an ingenious device for the capturing of eyeballs. Increasingly, this device is being pressed into the service of a singular purpose. While this purpose could hardly be called a philosophy in the proper sense, as a system of narrow values it does require the exclusion of dissonant ideas to efficiently function.

Adbusters began, in large part, as a product of outrage over just how destructive, self-serving, and at times downright insane the deliberate exclusions of this system have become. We've learned, for example, that the keepers of the airwaves will permit you to expose the perils of cardiovascular disease; you may not, however, tell the truth about a major advertiser's fat-laden products. Similarly, you are allowed to tell kids to get more exercise, but you can't tell them to turn off their TVs in order to do so. You may encourage women to ignore the images produced by the beauty industry and to feel good about their own bodies, no matter the shape or size -- but only if you're selling soap in the process. And, most gallingly, you can pay lip service to the urgency of tackling climate change, and yet you can't challenge people to buy less stuff as a way to actually go for it.

But it's possible that you don't care. Maybe you gave up on television a long time ago. Maybe you don't even own a TV set anymore. For your personal peace of mind, that was probably a good move; with an estimated 112 million television households in the United States alone, however, we ignore the stirrings of TV at our own peril. The last couple of decades have seen unprecedented levels of consolidation in the realm of mass media. Today, the movers and shakers of TV are the very same people and corporate entities who control the majority of newspapers, of radio stations, of book publishing, of outdoor advertising, of music distribution, of film production, and of your favorite social networking sites. The dirty tricks and the sleights of hand that are used to keep urgent, dissonant messages off the air aren't in any way specific to that TV. They are the natural consequences of corporate rule, and they will be brought to bear whenever we are too distracted to stand in the way.

Not by accident, more and more people are doing just that -- stepping up to join the ongoing battle against a media system that has left civil society out in the cold and in the dark, a media system that has been busily propagating itself at the expense of our social, cultural, political and environmental health. It's a battle that Adbusters has proudly taken up with its ongoing lawsuit against CanWest, Canada's biggest media conglomerate.

What's at stake in this struggle is not just access, but the creation of a whole new media aesthetic: a messier one, more spontaneous and unpredictable, one that fosters participation and social relevance, a genuine engine for the positive change. If Adbusters' lawsuit is a success, one of the first manifestations of this aesthetic will be a strange new mood - exciting, challenging, even slightly dangerous -- every time you switch on the box in your living room, where previously there was only a moribund device completely sewn-up by private, for-profit interests. This strange new mood will prove once and for all that television (just like newspapers, magazines and radio before it, and just like the internet after it) has the capacity to perform services other than selling us on the idea of buying, services of vital importance to the health of our species and its democracies. And like with all exciting, challenging, and slightly dangerous new moods, we're betting it will prove to be pretty damned infectious.

Get this from a friend? Want to join the Culture Jammers Network? Visit: <adbusters.org/network>

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

Lakota Sovereignty

Eriol — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:27:33 GMT

If ya wanna follow along with the Lakota bid for sovereignty, here's the direct link: http://republicoflakotah.com/

posted in *Activists* - 0 replies

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