Obama Signs Away U.S. Privacy Rights on the Eve of DNC
It’s time to boycott corporations that continue to assist the government in violating our civil liberties.
See how we did it?Big Brother Fact Sheet http://www.TakeBackWashington.com/Spy…
Cancel your plan with AT&T today. Don’t forget to tell them that you want your Early Termination Fee waived. Call toll free (800) 331-0500
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Sabine Vollmer
newsobserver.com
Aug 26, 2008
Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees.
A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning, Bayer’s chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer, the head of Bayer CropScience, after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.
The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.
The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.
h/t: mcclatchydc.com
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INN World Report: Chip Ward on the Decline of Bees
Diesel-Driven Bee Slums and Impotent Turkeys by Chip Ward (Engelhardt)
by Ralph Nader
Aug 26, 2008
The “politics of avoidance” is receiving a great deal of media attention during this period of national political conventions. Unfortunately, the newspapers and television programs do not use the phrase: “the politics of avoidance.” Together with John McCain and Barack Obama, members of the press have become used to living the “politics of avoidance” every day by not asking, talking or reporting about the essential core of what politics should be about—power!
Power! Who has it? Who doesn’t have it? Who should have less of it and who should have more of it? What does concentrated power do to the everyday life of the people as workers, patients, consumers, taxpayers, voters, shareholders and citizens?
Just use these and other power yardsticks and watch how thin and how superficial daily political reporting, even by the best of the press, can become.
In the August 25th edition of The New York Times, a long analysis by Michael Powell is titled “Tracing the Disparate Threads in Obama’s Political Philosophy.” There was no mention of corporate misbehavior—as in corporate crime, corporate corruption, corporate governance, corporate accountability, or cracking down on corporate abuses from the contractors in Iraq to the speculators on Wall Street.
Bear in mind, The New York Times and other newspapers often report about corporate crime and misdeeds. Sometimes reporters do such a good job that they win the Pulitzer and other prizes. Yet, strangely, these reporters do not carry over the reporting of their own paper to their questioning of the Presidential candidates.
Since there is no challenging of the candidates by the reporters about what the candidates would do about this continual corporate crime wave and the miniscule prosecution budgets, or the limited enforcement and regulatory efforts, the candidates can remain mum, very mum.
In Powell’s article, Obama’s economics are described as “a redistributionist liberalism but [he] is skeptical of too much government tinkering. His most influential advisors hail from the University of Chicago, a bastion of free-marketers.” This is Obama’s way of saying to corporations that he is a safe bet not to trouble them with his earlier experience as a community organizer in neighborhoods that were up against a variety of corporate predators, including redlining banks and insurance companies, supermarkets that dumped contaminated food products, landlords who rented apartments with asbestos and lead contaminations, industrial plant closings and established pay-day lending sharks.
The same day—August 25, 2008, the Wall Street Journal had an entire special section devoted to “Debating the Issues” described as ‘Health Care,’ ‘Energy & the Environment,’ ‘The Economy’ and ‘Trade.’ The Health Care headline is sub-titled: “How Involved Should the Government Be?
Once again the same paradox. The Journal prints some of the best exposes of corporate greed and power in all of mainstream journalism. Yet one strains to detect any of this power analysis when it comes to the paper’s political coverage or campaign features.
Conventional political journalism is all about palliative descriptions, the question of governmental involvement primarily as an issuer of dollars to the recipients in presumed need. It is about symptoms, rarely about causes, and even less often about the need to curb or displace corporate control.
About 75 percent of the American people believe corporations have too much control over their lives. Yet reducing such control or holding it accountable is not part of electoral or political discourse.
A majority of the American people, and fifty-nine percent of physicians in an April poll, favor single payer or full government health insurance (as in full Medicare for all) with free choice of hospital and doctor, private delivery of care, and far less administrative costs and billing fraud. The health insurance companies would be displaced.
John McCain and Barack Obama have never had to debate this majoritarian preference along with their piecemeal, concessionary heathcare plans that please these same insurance companies.
The pollsters also reflect, embody and are saturated with this politics of avoidance. They do not poll the various impacts of concentrated corporate power on the various roles people play in the workplace, marketplace, and their communities.
The New York Times/CBS News Poll of delegates to the Democratic Convention asked about the condition of the economy, health care, going into Iraq, energy, abortion and gay marriage.
Not one question was asked about the most dominant power over government, elections, politics, the federal operating budget, and our political economy.
Whoever asks the questions, whoever controls the yardsticks controls the agenda of public dialogue. The politics of avoidance is designed to avoid the politics of corporate power.
Presidents Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and leading Supreme Court Justices, Louis Brandeis and William Douglas understood and warned about the menace of unbridled corporate domination.
Today multinational corporations are more powerful then ever, especially over workers and the government. And politics is more about avoiding this central topic than ever before. Discussions about corporate power are off the table.
So much for the Preamble to our Constitution which reads, “We the People…”
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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Wake Up, America! by Dennis Kucinich (DNC speech; vid)
Revolution in the high street By William Bowles
Updated: added video
URL to this post: https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/wake-up-america-by-dennis-kucinich-dnc-speech/
by Dennis Kucinich
Aug 26, 2008
2008 Democratic National Convention Committee
It’s Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.
by Bruce Gagnon
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Bruce’s blog post
space4peace.blogspot.com
Aug. 26, 2008
The U.S. and NATO forces have been pounding the hell out of the people in Afghanistan. The bombing campaign is relentless.
Just days ago nearly 100 more innocent civilians were killed, including 50 children and 19 women, when a U.S. led air strike hit them.
It’s interesting to see that in Europe the peace movement is becoming increasingly critical of NATO’s expanding and lapdog role alongside the U.S. in Central Asia. In Canada the peace movement is extremely outspoken in opposition to their country’s role in Afghanistan. Continue reading
By Paul Craig Roberts
26/08/08 “ICH”
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark–indeed brainwashed–about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.
The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm
As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America’s veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.
If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.
Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded. Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a congressional investigation.
The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.
Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet “president” of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.
This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.
Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy” and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.
Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia. In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia’s borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders.
The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.
The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers alive. The Democrats’ choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name. Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America’s population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?
Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.
The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.
Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.
But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggressors.” Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on killing.
I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.”
What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.
For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media” and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won’t happen again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.
Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as McCain. Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole’s animosity toward Russia. The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.
Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on “the issues” by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.
Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university professorships, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by the President of France and the US Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of US economic policy.”
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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see
War on Terror Is Never Ending – Part Four: Orwell’s 1984 and the War
Marching Through Georgia? (Part 1) by Michael Faulkner
Reinventing the Evil Empire by Stephen Lendman
Honest Obama To Continue Surrounding Russia by Bruce Gagnon
We’ve Always Been At War With Russia by Cindy Sheehan
Nuclear Chicken in Poland – Putin Can’t Afford to Back Down By Mike Whitney
The Saakashvili Experiment By Ramzy Baroud
Pat Buchanan: Georgia started the war + It’s like the Cold War
Planning For Cold War And Beyond + Full spectrum dominance
The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics & the New Cold War by Michel Chossudovsky
By William Bowles
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
Aug 26, 2008
Can a revolt of ‘consumers’ spark a revolution?
“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007
by Luke Ryland
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Luke’s blog post
Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Aug 26, 2008
Luke Ryland & Joe Lauria interviewed
On Friday, I was interviewed with Joe Lauria, co-author of the UK’s Sunday Times series on Sibel’s case, by Peter B Collins.
You can download an MP3 of the interview here.
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NYT does it again: More ‘Judy Miller’ tapdancing
A front page article “In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals” in Monday’s New York Times by William Sanger and David Broad details the destruction of evidence by the US government in a case involving the nuclear black market.
The article highlights again that the New York Times continues to engage in ‘Judy Miller reporting’ by warmongering and acting as a mouthpiece for the government.
In the article, Sanger and Broad (who co-wrote a book, Germs, with Judy Miller):
1) Provide an incomplete and misleading story by conveniently withholding pertinent, established facts.
2) Spin the story towards Iran, and away from other governments, fulfilling the government’s propaganda needs again.
3) Carry out no investigation, relying on government spokespeople without checking facts, relying on documents, or agenda-free sources.
In this article, I will focus on the way that the New York Times cherrypicked details, excluding key, relevant information resulting in a misleading story which coincidentally fits the government’s agenda like a glove. In the coming days, I’ll return to some of the other problems with the article.
The NY Times article focuses on selected, cherrypicked elements of the Tinner family who were key suppliers in one ring of AQ Khan’s nuclear proliferation network, while mostly ignoring the other key players who worked with the Tinners in the ring. The New York Times again does the government’s bidding, selectively sanitizing the article, in order to hide the fact that US allies are key proliferators.
Der Spiegel, which has done great work covering this story, described the hierarchy of the network, noting that the Tinners were just one of four division managers:
“At the top of the hierarchy was a confidant of Khan’s, Sri Lankan businessman Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, who acted as a business manager of sorts, responsible for payments and contracts. He also appointed several division managers, who may not even have known of each other’s existence. They were comprised of the Swiss Tinner family of engineers, including Friedrich Tinner and his sons Urs and Marco, who were apparently responsible for centrifuge parts; Briton Peter Griffin, a specialist in the procurement of tool-making machines; and (Gotthard) Lerch, whose job, as the prosecution claims, was to obtain the pipes that connect the centrifuges. Lerch’s source for the pipes was Gerhard Wisser, a German national living in South Africa, with whom he had been doing business for decades.”
Here is a more complete list of known actors in the nuclear proliferation ring that the Tinners were involved with:
BSA Tahir
Tahir, based in Dubai, was AQ Khan’s Chief Operating Officer and right hand man. Tahir began working with Khan in 1995. In 2002, Tahir recruited Urs Tinner to help produce centrifuge parts, supplied in part by his brother and father. Tahir’s involvement in the network was documented in a Malaysian Police Report in 2004, soon after a ship called the BBC China was intercepted on the way to Libya, filled with products from AQ Khan.
Interestingly, Tahir was released from prison two months ago in Malaysia because he is no longer considered a ‘national security threat.’
Selim Alguadis, Gunes Cire & Hank Slebos
Turkish busisnessmen Alguadis and Cire were also key suppliers to the Tahir-Tinner ring. Alguadis’ company, EKA, and Cire’s company ETI Elektroteknik were both caught supplying hardware for Libya’s nuclear program when the BBC China was intercepted.
Hank Slebos, a supplier to Khan’s network for decades, was also a part owner of Gunes Cire’s ETI Elektroteknik.
Despite their role supplying BSA Tahir, neither Alguadis nor Cire were ever convicted, and their companies continue to operate freely in Turkey. Slebos was sentenced to 12 months prison (8 months suspended, 4 months served) in 2005 for his role.
Turkey has a key role in the nuclear black market. In fact, IAEA investigators noted that the nuclear hardware supplied by Turkey to the AQ Khan ring – including 7000 centrifuge motors – “could be used in manufacturing enough enriched uranium to produce 7 nuclear weapons a year.”
Asher Karni and Zeki Bilmen
Karni is an Israeli businessman based in South Africa. Zeki Bilmen is a Turkish businessman and CEO of Giza Technologies, headquarted in New Jersey. Karni purchased 200 spark-gaps in the United States from Giza Technologies n 2003 and then re-exported it to Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.
Prior to 2002 Bilmen was also overheard on wiretaps translated by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.
Zeki Bilmen was never charged. Karni was released on $100,000 bail and is now now a free man.
Peter Griffin
Peter Griffin is a Dubai-based British man who was said to have a “central role” in Libya’s nuclear bomb program.
Griffin also supervised Tahir’s project to build a manufacturing facility in Libya. A four-year British investigation into Griffin which spanned a dozen countries and cost millions of dollars was “quietly dropped” earlier this year. Griffin is currently living “scot-free“.
Gerhard Wisser
Wisser was a German national, based in South Africa, who supplied the pipes required for centrifuges. According to prosecutors, he was the South African “conduit” to the Tahir-Tinner ring. He was “given 18 years — not in prison, but of nighttime house arrest in his mansion in a luxury neighborhood in Johannesburg.”
Could it be…?
Why did the New York Times cherrypick facts, while obscuring and ignoring important, pertinent facts? Could it be that they are simply lazy? Could it be that they see their role as supporting the government’s objectives, whether to protect allies such as Turkey and Dubai, or still chasing the dream of an invasion of Iran? Could it be that they want to sanitize Turkey and Turkish actors from the Tinners case in order to bolster President Bush’s recently signed Executive Order giving Turkey access to nuclear technology?
Any of these possibilities might be accurate, but all of them are far from innocent, and none of them exonerate the New York Times propaganda machine.
Summary
By only reporting selectively on the Tinner case, quoting only more-than-eager government agency press officers, and by spinning the story toward Iran, the NY Times once again cements its reputation as a mouthpiece for the US government, even when it relates to important matters of true national security, that involves not only the US, but the entire world.
Whatever the reason for the Times to provide the government’s portrait of the Tinner case, David Sanger and William Broad will remain in the Judy Miller Hall of Fame.
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Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver + Divide and Conquer
Protesters, cops clash near mall + Plot to Kill Obama: Shoot From High Vantage Point
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Mosaic needs your help! Donate here: http://linktv.org/contribute
“Mission Liberty Accomplished: Boats Arrive into Gaza,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“Making a Killing on Phones in Israeli Jails,” New TV, Lebanon
“Another Wave of Palestinian Prisoners Freed,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“All Eyes on the DNC,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Security Returns to Diala,” Al-Iraqiya TV, Iraq
“Iraqi Government Investigates Violations by Special Forces,” Alsumaria TV, Iraq
“Violence Errupts in Kashmir,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani
Vodpod videos no longer available.
August 26, 2008
More video footage of the police abusing their power. We live in a police state. You know they didn’t spend all the money for “security” and “cages” not to use them. Here’s the first report: Protesters, cops clash near mall + Plot to Kill Obama: Shoot From High Vantage Point ~ Lo
A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious police surrounded thousands of marchers heading toward Denver’s Convention Center, using tear gas, batons and aggression.
Updated: added a couple more stories and Democracy Now’s story from this morning; Also adding videos as I find them. (see below) I’ve started a new post with more footage of the abuse of power by the police. Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver + Divide and Conquer ~ Lo
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Guess they couldn’t wait to try out their new “toys”. Continue reading
August 24, DNC Rebellion Coverage
1. Climate Camp UK
2. Larry Holmes
3. Ward Churchill
4. Fox News Smackdown
5. Dead Prez Live
6. Racist Denver Cops
7. Gitmo on the Platte
by Ralph Nader
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Marc Abizeid, 831-818-7736, marcabizeid@votenader.org, or; Chris Driscoll, 202-360-3273, chris@votenader.org
The Democratic National Convention that gathers in Denver this week to nominate Barack Obama for president will be more like a coronation than a competition. Huzzahs, speeches, bands, balloons. These affairs have long lost any suspense or spontaneity, but somewhere amid the many corporate ‘hospitality parties’ and lobbyist glad-handing, you’d expect some demonstration of political courage to shift power toward the American people.
Instead, voters will watch (or, rather, not watch) as more than $16.5 million of their tax dollars (the amount allotted by the federal government for each convention) is spent on saying very little of substance.
Rather than ideas, this convention is about power and avoidance: the power of big business and the avoidance of important but neglected issues.
Here is a short list of what you won’t hear this week, either on the convention floor or in the party’s platform. Call them the 12 taboos.
1. You won’t hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that, in just the last few years, have robbed trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders, taxpayers and consumers. Among the reforms that won’t be suggested are resources to prosecute executive crooks and laws to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have real power. Democrats will not shout for a payback of ill-gotten gains, to rein in executive pay, ending corporate personhood, or to demand corporate sunshine laws.
2. The convention will not demand that workers receive a living wage instead of an inflation ravaged minimum wage. There will be no backing for a repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which has blocked more than 40 million workers willing to form or join trade unions to improve wages and benefits above Wal-Mart or McDonald’s levels.
3. Barack Obama will not call for a withdrawal from the WTO and NAFTA. Trade agreements should stick to trade while labor, environmental, and consumer rights are advanced by separate treaties with strong enforcement mechanisms without being subordinated to the dictates of international commerce.
4. Obama will steer clear of any suggestion that our income tax system be substantially revamped. Workers should keep more of their wages while we tax the things we like least at the source, such as polluters, stock speculation, addictive industries, and energy guzzling technologies. Corporations should be required to pay their fair share; corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for 50 years and now stand at about 7.4 percent despite massive record profits.
5. There will be no call for a single-payer health care system. Sixty years after President Truman first proposed it, we still need health insurance for everyone, a program with quality and cost controls and an emphasis on prevention. Full Medicare for everyone will save thousands of lives while maintaining patient choice of doctors and hospitals within a competitive private health care delivery system.
6. There is no reason to believe that the Democrats will stand up to the commercial interests profiting from our current energy situation. We need a straightforward carbon pollution tax, not a convoluted cap-and-trade system that would invite massive manipulation. We need a major environmental health agenda that challenges these entrenched interests with new initiatives in solar energy, efficiency in motor vehicles, and other sustainable and clean energy technologies. Nor will there be any recognition that current fossil fuels are producing cancer, respiratory diseases, and geopolitical entanglements. Finally, there will be no calls for ending environmental racism that leads to contaminated water and air in our cities, to toxic dumps in poorer neighborhoods, and to high toxicities in the workplace.
7. Democrats will not demand a reduction in the bloated, redundant military budget that devours half the federal government’s operating expenditures at a time when there is no Soviet Union or other major state enemy in the world. Studies by the Government Accountability Office and internal Pentagon assessments support the judgment of many retired admirals and generals that a wasteful defense weakens our country and distorts priorities at home.
8. You won’t hear a clarion call for electoral reform. Both parties have shamelessly engaged in gerrymandering, a process that guarantees reelection of their candidates at the expense of frustrated voters. Nor will there be any suggestion that law-abiding ex-felons be allowed to vote. Other electoral reforms should include reducing ballot access barriers to candidates, same day registration, a voter verified paper record for electronic voting, run-off voting to ensure winners receive a majority vote, binding none-of-the-above choices and most important, full public financing to guarantee clean elections.
9. You will hear no calls for reform of the criminal justice system. Our nation now holds one out of four of the world’s prisoners, half of them nonviolent. While they attempt to counter Republican charges that they favor criminals over victims, Democrats will say nothing about a failed war on drugs that costs $50 billion annually. And they will not argue that addicts should be treated rather than imprisoned. Nor should observers hope for any call to repeal the “three strikes and you’re out” laws that have filled our jails.
10. Democrats will ignore the Israeli peace movement whose members have developed accords for a two-state solution with their Palestinian and American counterparts. It is time to replace the Washington puppet show with a Washington peace show for the security of the American, Palestinian, and Israeli people.
11. The Democrats will not call for the United States to begin a military and corporate total withdrawal from Iraq. Such a withdrawal would result in mainstream Iraqis no longer supporting or joining the insurgency. Internationally UN-supervised elections will allow for appropriate autonomy for the Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi’ite communities within a unified Iraq. Seriously waging peace will be far cheaper than a permanent war economy which is generating huge deficits and diverting attention, talent, and resources from the necessities of the American people.
12. Democrats will not stand up to business interests that have demanded changes that close the courtroom to wrongfully injured and cheated individuals, but not to corporations. Where is the campaign against fraud and injury upon innocent patients, consumers, and workers? We should make it easier for consumers to band together and defend themselves against harmful practices in the marketplace. To the voters I say: Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Democrats to put people before corporations. Watch as this Convention obeys the 12 taboos.
About Ralph Nader
Attorney, author, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader has been named by Time Magazine one of the “100 Most Influential Americans in the 20th Century.” For more than four decades he has exposed problems and organized millions of citizens into more than 100 public interest groups advocating solutions. He led the movement to establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and was instrumental in enacting the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and countless other pieces of important consumer legislation. Because of Ralph Nader we drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, and work in safer environments. Nader graduated from Princeton University and received an LL.B from Harvard Law School.
About Matt Gonzalez
Matt Gonzalez was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2000 representing San Francisco’s fifth council district. From 2003 to 2005, he served as Board of Supervisors President. A former public defender, Gonzalez is managing partner of Gonzalez & Leigh, a 7-attorney practice in San Francisco that represents individuals and organizations in mediation, arbitration, and administrative proceedings before state and federal regulatory bodies. Gonzalez graduated from Columbia University and received a JD from Stanford Law School.
About the Nader/Gonzalez Campaign
According to a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted from July 27-29, Ralph Nader is at 6 percent nationally (equivalent to about 10 million eligible voters), higher than his highest major poll numbers during the same time period in 2000 and approaching the 10 percent threshold required for eligibility to participate in “America’s Presidential Debate in New Orleans,” a Google-sponsored event scheduled for September 18. In the key swing state of Michigan — whose Democratic voters were partially disenfranchised by the Democratic National Committee — an EPIC-MRA poll found Nader at 8-10 percent.
For more information on the Nader/Gonzalez campaign, visit: www.votenader.org/
see
Ashley Sanders: The Dem Party is the Party of Perpetual Plan B
Ralph Nader: Corporations should be our servants, not our masters
Open the Debates Super Rally: Challenge the System
Nader Calls For Crackdown on Corporate Crime, Reversal of So-Called War on Drugs + Sean Penn
Posted with permission from Green Left Weekly
Tamara Pearson
22 August 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has promised new Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo “all the oil he needs” during a public event in Uruguay after Lugo was inaugurated on August 15.
The election of Lugo, a retired Catholic priest, on April 20 broke 61 years of domination by the right-wing Colorado Party.
Lugo won on the basis of his promises to fight poverty and corruption and has quickly become close to other Latin American left-wing governments critical of the United States.
The swearing in ceremony occurred on August 15 and the following day Chavez and Lugo travelled together to San Pedro, one of the poorest states of Paraguay, which is also a base for peasant and more radical organisations that frequently protest and occupy farms to claim land to work on.
The only Latin American governments not present at the inauguration were Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Peruvian President Alan Garcia — the presidents considered closest to the US.
Chavez’s promised oil deal involves raising the amount of barrels of oil that Venezuela sends to Paraguay to 25,000 barrels daily. The two presidents also discussed constructing a refinery in Paraguay.
The initiative formed part of a total of 12 agreements of cooperation signed with Paraguay.
Chavez saw the agreements as part of a “historic debt” to help with “the development of the Paraguayan people, their industry and agriculture”.
Lugo and Chavez also agreed to incorporate Paraguay into Telesur (Television of the South), a Venezuela-pushed initiative for a Latin American-wide TV channel.
Another agreement was the creation of a fertiliser plant jointly with Venezuela to develop the region.
They also agreed to develop the “Mission Miracle 2″ project, by creating two ophthalmology centres in Paraguay. The mission deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders and diseases.
Further, there was an agreement to implement a program of cooperation around food security and sovereignty, another to create a national agri-ecological institute, as part of the Energy Agreement of Caracas, and another about the environment.
Chavez also proposed to Lugo to start a literacy campaign, in which Venezuela is available to cooperate.
The agreements reached with Venezuela were amongst Lugo’s first actions as president.
Chavez also requested the support of Paraguay for Venezuela’s entrance into Mercosur (Common Market of the South).
Chavez called for the unity of the people of Latin America as a formula to be truly independent.
[Abridged from http://venezuelanalysis.com.]
see
Paraguay’s New President Fernando Lugo Ends 62 Years of Conservative Rule
Dandelion Salad 