Ralph Nader: The November 5th Movement

Dandelion Salad

Dutchoven08

November 12, 2008

2008 Presidential nominee Ralph Nader calls it as he sees it on MSNBC.

Join the continued fight for accountability in our nation’s government.

Join the November 5th movement at:
http://www.november5.org/

Ralph Nader: The November 5th Movement

The price of resisting the occupation in Israel: “leftists aren’t allowed…”

Dandelion Salad

by Rebecca Vilkomerson
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
Nov 17, 2008

We’ve asked Rebecca Vilkomerson, a veteran JVP activist now living with her family in Israel, to give us regular updates about anti-occupation activism in Israel. Rebecca is also on staff with the Israeli environmental and social justice NGO Bustan, which works with Bedouin and Jewish communities in the Negev. Listen to what Rebecca has to say, from a place where “leftists aren’t allowed.”

Several weeks ago, while on a solidarity visit with Ta’ayush in the South Hebron hills region of the West Bank, we were stopped by a makeshift Israeli Army roadblock and told that we could not pass into a closed military zone. Having all traveled that road many times before with no problem, and watching settlers whiz by us, we asked to see the military order. Before producing it, the soldier said, “I am very happy for any Jew to visit the Land of Israel, but leftists aren’t allowed.”

[...]

via The price of resisting the occupation in Israel: “leftists aren’t allowed…”

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Finding the words to say it By William Bowles

Occupation 101 (video; watch while available; over 18 only)

Hillary Clinton to accept Barack Obama’s offer of secretary of state job + Hitchens: An Embarrassment

Dandelion Salad

Update:

Obama plans to name Clinton to State 20 Nov 2008 President-elect Barack Obama is “on track” to name Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his secretary of state shortly after Thanksgiving, two senior Obama aides said. Financial disclosure issues have been worked out, aides said. The officials said they expect her to accept. Clinton aides had no comment. h/t: CLG

***

by Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Monday November 17 2008 21.48 GMT

President-elect Barack Obama reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

[...]

As part of the coalition-building, Obama today also reached out to his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, to discuss how they could work together to roll back some of the most controversial policies of the Bush years. Putting aside the bitter words thrown about with abandon by both sides during the election campaign, McCain flew to meet Obama at his headquarters in the Kluczynski Federal Building, in downtown Chicago.

[...]

via Hillary Clinton to accept Barack Obama’s offer of secretary of state job | World news | guardian.co.uk

h/t: CLG

***

Hillary Clinton as choice for Secretary of State is an Embarrassment! Chris Hitchens

VOTERSTHINKdotORG

http://cspanjunkie.org/
November 17, 2008 MSNBC HARDBALL

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Hillary Clinton emerges as U.S. State dept candidate

Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team

Methinks they do protest too much By William Bowles

The Obama Conundrum: Progress and Protest in the Face of Reality by John Caelan

Obama-Barack

Troops home…Eventually?! by Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan for Congress

by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Cindy Sheehan for Congress

Nov 17, 2008

George Bush is the most hated president in American history. Number Two, Harry S. Truman, left office with a 64% disapproval rating and George Bush’s is now a very dismal, yet richly deserved 76%. I can’t remember a time when Americans have been so united in anything since we were actually a compassionate country after the tragedy on 9-11.

Barack Obama and the Democrats rode this wave of hatred for nearly all things Republican on November 4th. The reason for the Democratic victories could not have been because the Democrats give a viable alternative to the Republicans, because most of the time, they do not. In the contest for the highest office in the land, the Republicans threw a bone to their old and decrepit dog, McCain and offered us an even weaker (but younger) choice for his running mate. The deck was stacked for Obama and this was a year that practically anyone could have beaten McCain/Palin (in fact, polls showed that Hillary would have beaten McCain even worse).

I confess, I have become cynical about the political process since I witnessed little (if any) progress towards peace and economic justice after the Democrats regained some power in 2006. I have little hope that Emperor-Elect Obama will voluntarily give up any imperial power or reduce the size of the US Empire as he has already promised to increase US presence in Afghanistan and Super-Duper-Size our military to levels never seen before and can only be used for spreading corporate-imperialism. I hope I am wrong but I am not going to drink the blue flavored Kool-Aid anymore than I would drink the Red flavored Kool-Aid and give Obama a free pass because he chooses to put a (D) behind his name instead of the dreaded (R).

I am willing to give an Obama regime the chance to prove me wrong but I do not think that the movements that put him in power should relax. Obama has proven to be resistant to constituent pressure as he voted to give telecom companies and BushCo immunity from prosecution for smashing the 4th Amendment to bits and pieces as he voted to and pressured other people to vote for the bankster bailouts which has proven to be disastrous. How can anyone who has been alive the last 8 years, but especially a Constitutional attorney/professor vote to give billions (really trillions) of dollars to a corrupt administration that has proven to be criminally inept and callous in every way?

In my refusal to be coma-tized by Obama, whom I have met several times and think he is very smart and very likable (like some people think about George), I have been confronted by friends and strangers alike who do not want facts pointed out to them, just like Republican war hawks and troop “supporters” do not want the facts that Dick and George dodged Vietnam and reduced Veteran’s benefits pointed out to them.

Recently, I was on a cable access show here in San Francisco and I was talking about the FISA abomination and pointed out the “pesky” fact that Obama voted for it and a very nice woman who had already voted for me in early voting called and said: “I don’t believe that Obama would vote to take away our rights!” I told her that it was a fact that I did not pull out of thin air and she said: “Then he must have had a good reason.” Where have our critical thinking skills gone? It is human nature to be partisan for your political party, but to give up your brains and your rights to either party is just plain wrong.

After election day, I received an email from a person who said that he “liked” me and would have voted for me, if I didn’t lie about Obama and his funding. He said: “the reason that he has so much money is that WE GAVE IT TO HIM!” I haven’t heard from him since I sent him this link that shows how much corporate money Obama also took.

The most gut wrenching emails I have received are from friends who have literally been in the ditches with me saying things like: “Obama has to send more troops to Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden, that’s a no brainer.” Well, I guess I have no brains, because in the first place, has it been established that bin Laden is even in Afghanistan and secondly, do we need two combat brigades in Afghanistan to catch one very tall man with failing kidneys? Afghanistan is now our second longest military misadventure and was the downfall of the USSR’s empire. Iraq, Afghanistan and our warfare state may be the downfall of ours if Obama continues the Bush trajectory and his war OF terror. Do not get me wrong, I believe our empire should crumble, but if we do it voluntarily, we may retain some dignity. Additionally, when the empire crumbles, it will crumble on We the People and the ones who have been making immoral profits are already scampering away to places like Dubai (Halliburton after it has soaked US taxpayers for over 20 billion) to preserve their ill-gotten gains.

I was at the No on 8 Protest at City Hall yesterday when a participant and I got into a discussion about civil rights. He said that we reclaimed them on November 4th when Obama (who does not support same gender marriage) was elected. I said, “How so, Obama voted to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT ACT.” The young man brilliantly retorted with: “No, he didn’t.” I replied with: “He most certainly did and what did you think of him voting for the FISA Modernization Act?” At which point, the man turned around and walked away. That’s the rabid Republican way and the new rabid Obama-ite way. If a fact doesn’t conform to your worldview, then walk away from it and the un-truth fairy will hopefully scrub it from your mind with a wave of her magic wand.

Obama’s statements on Iraq are exactly the same as Bush’s. He will bring the troops home in a responsible manner when the Generals on the ground tell him it is safe to do so. However, the Iraqi Cabinet has now agreed to the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) that keeps US troops in Iraq until 2011. I do not think the Parliament or the people of Iraq will agree to this SOFA, as one Bagdad resident put it: “We don’t want an agreement with America. We don’t want an agreement with Israel… We fully and totally reject this security pact.” The Iraqi people will not lie down and accept this as US citizens have. It is unconscionable to think that our forces will be under Iraqi authority, but to also think that we will be infecting that unfortunate nation for another three years after we never should have gone in there in the first place.

The anti-war movement must stick to its “Troops home immediately” mantra and not be lulled into complacency by slick marketing and empty rhetoric. We never accepted the “Troops home eventually” crap and we must not accept it now.

Red, Blue, Green or Purple, we should not allow ourselves to be rocked back to sleep and re-abdicate our responsibilities to our Republic or to humanity. We are going to go through some very rocky economic times before we come out the other end.

Are we going to come out the other end as victims or victors?

see

Methinks they do protest too much By William Bowles

The Obama Conundrum: Progress and Protest in the Face of Reality by John Caelan

Iraq cabinet approves troop agreement with U.S.

Obama-Barack

Abramoff said he had agreement with White House aide just a month after Bush took office

Dandelion Salad

by Larisa Alexandrovna
Raw Story
Monday November 17, 2008

Email noting relationship with White House came just a month after Bush took office

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff told his colleagues at his former law firm that he had an “agreement” regarding communications with a former assistant to then-Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, perhaps the most substantial documented tie between Abramoff and the White House to date.

In the email, dated Feb. 27, 2001, Abramoff reprimands a colleague who asked him to use Susan Ralston – Special Assistant to the President George W. Bush and then-Bush senior adviser Karl Rove – to arrange a meeting with the President for one of his clients.

In response, Abramoff writes that Ralston and he have an “agreement with her as to what we are going to ask her and when.”

[...]

via The Raw Story | Abramoff said he had agreement with White House aide just a month after Bush took office

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Judge sentences former lobbyist Abramoff to four years

Abramoff/DeLay/Ney

Documents say feds can track cell phones’ locations without telecoms’ help

Dandelion Salad

by John Byrne
Raw Story
Monday November 17, 2008

Federal law enforcement may be able to track cellular phones users’ locations without the help of the telecommunications companies themselves, according to a report Sunday.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that existing technology allows law enforcement to bypass wireless companies in locating individual cell phone users.

[...]

via The Raw Story | Documents say feds can track cell phones’ locations without telecoms’ help

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Obama, Gitmo, and Rendition

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
Nov. 17, 2008

Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team

John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials under George Tenet, are leading Barack Obama’s review of intelligence agencies and helping make recommendations to the new administration. Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and Miscik was involved with the politicized intelligence alleging weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war on Iraq. We speak with former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. [includes rush transcript]

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via Democracy Now! | Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team

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Obama, Gitmo, and Rendition

IWantDemocracyNow

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Methinks they do protest too much By William Bowles

The Obama Conundrum: Progress and Protest in the Face of Reality by John Caelan

Bush will NEVER be able to set foot outside the U.S.! Jeremy Scahill & Naomi Klein

Countdown: Special Comment on Prop 8 + Gitmo + ACLU

Michael Ratner on Obama and civil liberties

Obama-Barack

Naomi Klein on the Bailout Profiteers and the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene

Dandelion Salad

On current

Democracy Now!
Nov. 17, 2008

Naomi Klein on the Bailout Profiteers and the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene

“The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington’s handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal,” says Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine. [includes rush transcript]

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via Democracy Now! | Naomi Klein on the Bailout Profiteers and the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene

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Klein: Bailout is a Multi-trillion dollar CRIME SCENE!!

IWantDemocracyNow

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Bush will NEVER be able to set foot outside the U.S.! Jeremy Scahill & Naomi Klein

Wall Street’s Bailout is a Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene — Why Aren’t the Dems Doing Something About It? By Naomi Klein

G20 summit ‘punts’ till April

What If We Let The Banks Fail? by Josh Sidman

The G20 Won’t Change This Financial Crime Scene by Richard C. Cook

Bush cheers “free enterprise” as US capitalism goes bust

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse

Klein-Naomi

Methinks they do protest too much By William Bowles

By William Bowles
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
17 November 2008

I’m coming across quite a few essays by lefties bemoaning the fact that Barack Obama has somehow ‘let us down’. For example there’s a piece by Dave Lindorff ‘Obama’s First Big Mistake on the Job – Rescuing Joe Lieberman’

Mistake? There is no mistake. The gist of the piece is about the “treacherous” Joe Lieberman, former Dem, who when he lost the race for nomination as Democratic Senator for Connecticut, turned around and ran as an ‘independent’ (with the support of many Democrats and Republicans) and got elected. Okay, the guy is as Lindorff says, “…a wretched example of a man without principle—a back-stabbing slimeball of a politician whose only allegi[a]nce, apparently, besides to himself, is to Israel”, something else I object to in Lindorff’s piece is his qualification of his reference to Lieberman’s Zionist ‘credentials’,

“Now I don’t want anyone to think I’m some rabid anti-semite. My wife and kids are Jewish, we have good friends who are Israeli, and no, I don’t think the Jews run the media or the country. I do, however, think that Joe Lieberman thinks more about what, in his warped and shriveled worldview, is good for Israel, than about what is good for America.”

Come on Dave, ‘some of my best friends are Jews’? There’s no need to apologize for attacking Zionism, you’ll be branded as an anti-semite no matter how much you protest that you ain’t. Get used to it.

No, my major objection to the piece is the implication that somehow Obama has ‘let down’ us progressives. This is the man whose first appointment was Rahm Emmanuel (see ‘Ali Abunimah: Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post’) and since then Obama appears to have invited Madeleine Albright onboard. Remember her infamous statement about the deaths of half a million children who died as a result of the 12-year long sanctions of Iraq prior to the invasion, “We think the price is worth it.”[1]

Why do we persist in maintaining illusions about Barack Obama? Because he’s black? If I remember correctly isn’t Colin Powell black and wait, so is Condoleeza Rice. Clearly ‘blackness’ is very much a state of mind at least when it comes to measuring the worth of a politician.

Okay, Obama is streets ahead of GW Bush, but when you start this low, it doesn’t take much to raise the bar. But in any case, that isn’t the point, or rather, the point of selecting Obama in the first place was precisely because he is black and not because he is an alleged progressive, or come that, an alleged anything except a ‘nice guy’.

To the contrary, it was a carefully calculated act to make a ‘break with the past’ and what better way to do it than with a black man, given the role of racism under capitalism.

How could it be anything else, given the nature of the racist, white power structure that rules the United States that selected Barack Obama?

In fact selecting Barack Obama is a perfect example of the ideology of racism in action for its function is, in part, to ‘disarm’ opposition to US policies. Witness the millions of black and hispanic folks who voted for him.

It should be clear to all that Obama could never have become the candidate, let alone the president without having been ‘cleared’ as it were, by the Democratic power brokers. Never mind his association with Bill Ayers or whoever, inevitably such ‘associations’ are part and parcel of becoming a politician and are easily dealt with by the candidate disassociating himself from such individuals (put it down to youthful and inexperienced enthusiasm).

I think the best measure of the value of Barack Obama to capitalism was the huge—and audible across the planet—sigh of relief breathed by virtually every corporate/state media outlet, let alone the politicians, when he got elected. It amounted to a ‘stay of execution’, that is until the economic collapse came along and screwed it up.

And here too, we see Obama’s real colour, green.

“There is no indication that Obama will break his ties to his Wall Street sponsors, who largely funded his election campaign.

“Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bill Gates’ Microsoft are among his main campaign contributors.

“Warren Buffett, among the the world’s richest individuals, not only supported Barack Obama’s election campaign, he is a member of his transition team, which plays a key role deciding the composition of Obama’s cabinet.”[2]

The lesson here is that one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds, no matter what colour it is.

Notes

1. Quoted in Mark Curtis’ ‘Web of Deceit-Britain’s real role in the world’, p.38

2. ‘Michel Chossudovsky: Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? Will an Obama Administration Reverse the Tide?’

For more on Obama’s seamless continuation of the Cheney/Bush programme see, ‘Why Obama Will Continue Star Wars’, Time Magazine, 16 November, 2008.

Postscript:

Danny Schecter of Media Channel informs me that Obama actually campaigned for Lieberman!

Obama Endorses Lieberman for Senate

By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2006

Posted on Sat Apr 01, 2006

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DS added the video

CNN: Lieberman Likely To Keep Chairmanship

heathr456

Dana Bash reporting on The Situation Room that Lieberman is likely to keep his Chairmanship and be stripped of heading a sub-committee instead.

more about “CNN: Lieberman Likely To Keep Chairma…“, posted with vodpod

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Finding the words to say it By William Bowles

The Obama Conundrum: Progress and Protest in the Face of Reality by John Caelan

Ali Abunimah: Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post

Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? by Michel Chossudovsky

Obama-Barack

Bowles-William

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse

Buy Nothing Day

Dandelion Salad

Just a reminder to not go shopping the day after Thanksgiving in the US, Nov 28 and/or Sat Nov 29 (International Buy Nothing Day).  ~ DS

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

more about “Buy Nothing Day“, posted with vodpod

.

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A Thanksgiving Day Fast For Peace By Gary Corseri

A Thanksgiving Day Fast For Peace By Gary Corseri

By Gary Corseri
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Nov. 17, 2008

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

“Our lives flow from our beliefs, and our beliefs are conditioned by our daily actions.  As we act, so we build our character and so we become.”

***

“Because of the industrialization of food production, we eat artificially colored, flavored, refined, processed, irradiated, engineered, and chemical-laden products that confirm we will eat virtually anything and everything.”

RAF exercise over Iceland is cancelled

compiled by Cem Ertür
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
17 November 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5158568.ece

excerpt from ‘RAF exercise over Iceland is cancelled‘

by Hildur Helga Sigurdardottir, Times, 15 November 2008

Nato has decided to cancel RAF air patrols over Iceland that had been due to take place next month.

The Icelandic Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, and the Foreign Minister, Ingibjörg Sólrún GÍsladóttir, insist that the decision has nothing to do with the political and monetary conflict with London.

There can be little doubt, however, that the cancellation of a routine military exercise is related to the current public mood in Iceland and the country’s dire financial situation, as Iceland bears some of the cost of those Nato exercises.

The issue of British fighter planes patrolling Icelandic air space next month has been hotly debated. Last Thursday Össur Skarphéðinsson, then acting Foreign Minister, said that having British fighter jets circling above Iceland in the coming weeks would feel like “kissing the rod of those who are beating you”.

[...]

G20 summit ‘punts’ till April

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews

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Sent to DS from Joel:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2008
10:00 a.m.
CONTACT: The Real News Network
Taruna Godric, 416-916-5202 ext. 414
E-mail: smcommunications@therealnews.com
Website: http://www.therealnews.com

G20 summit ‘punts’ till April

G20 leaders have a nice dinner, but do not deal with how to make financial institutions serve the public

At the conclusion of the G20 summit this weekend one got the sense that all major attempts to resolve world financial market crises were outright avoided or at the very least pushed aside until the next meeting which is scheduled to take place in April. The Real News Network spoke to Prof. Leo Panitch, and economist, Doug Henwood about what was proposed at the meeting and what was accomplished.

Doug Henwood felt that “nothing serious could be done with the U.S. in transition”, noting that many of the nations were “undergoing large public stimulus programs (which) they didn’t really add to.”  According to Henwood “no institutional changes to promote any kind of international cooperation, either for economic stabilization and recovery or for regulation in the future” were made and that they have punted these issues for the next meeting.

The attempts to repair the current financial crisis in the U.S. appear to be futile, ultimately returning power to the banks, which was the catalyst for the markets current vulnerable state.  Leo Panitch feels that we need to take action now with the financial system on their back heels, “Money and credits ought to be subject to democratic control and accountability.”

Henwood sees the only solution is “nationalizing failing institutions and aggressively regulating surviving ones.”  He says this is “absolutely essential.”

For complete coverage for this story visit our website: http://therealnews.com

see

The G20 Won’t Change This Financial Crime Scene by Richard C. Cook

Bush cheers “free enterprise” as US capitalism goes bust

The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse