The 2008 Nader/Gonzalez Presidential candidacy was represented at the DonkaPhant film festival in Los Angeles, CA on Oct 29 08.
This event was Hosted by “The Simpsons” star, Nancy Cartwright and attended by Hollywood celebrities, Producers and Directors.
This politically minded festival was attended by over three hundred politically focused participants.
Independent film maker, Dutch Merrick was invited to attend this red-carpet affair and speak on behalf of the Independent presidential Candidate, Ralph Nader and his truly progressive run for the White House.
For more info, go to: http://votenader.org/
Day: November 2, 2008
Stolen Elections And Media Blackouts + Palast on BET + New Poll Tax
Sent to me by Jason Miller from Thomas Paine’s Corner. Thanks, Jason.
Carolyn Baker Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Simulposted with Speaking Truth to Power
(Burlington, Vermont: October 24, 2008) Shortly before a public lecture presented at Champlain College, I sat down with Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies at New York University, to ask him a number of questions regarding stolen elections-a subject Miller has researched and written about extensively. Greg Palast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bev Harris, Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis, and Lynne Landes, have provided monumental contributions to the subject of election fraud, each with their own unique styles and methods of targeting the issue. Mark Crispin Miller’s 2005 book Fooled Again, impeccably documents the stealing of the 2004 election, and Loser Take All, a 2008 collection of essays on stolen elections incorporates the research of other investigators of election fraud such as Robert Kennedy, Jr; Bob Fitrakis, and Steve Rosenfeld. Continue reading
Obama: Change You Can Believe In–Not, Part 4
by Kellia Ramares
Speaking Truth to Power
Monday, 03 November 2008
To read Part One of this series CLICK HERE
To read Part Two of this series CLICK HERE
To read Part Three of this series CLICK HERE
Visit Kellia’s “No Pitch” JOURNALISM BLOG
No Messiah here: There is plenty more that can be said about Barack Obama turning out to be a disappointment as President. It could fill a book. I am not saying that Obama is not better than John McCain. McCain’s well known anger problem is so deep that some military leaders think he should not have his finger on the button.1 But if you think Obama is the Second Coming of Lincoln, let me briefly mention a few other issues you should think about:
There is plenty more that can be said about Barack Obama turning out to be a disappointment as President. It could fill a book. I am not saying that Obama is not better than John McCain. McCain’s well known anger problem is so deep that some military leaders think he should not have his finger on the button.1 But if you think Obama is the Second Coming of Lincoln, let me briefly mention a few other issues you should think about:
Obama talks about a middle class tax cut, but how can the federal government afford it when it is spending about 12 billion dollars a month on war and when this war is estimated to cost a total of 5-7 trillion dollars, counting health care for the veterans and interest on the debt the government has rolled up to wage this war?2 Obama wants to end the war in Iraq, but he wants to do that so that we have more forces to send to Afghanistan and quite possibly Iran. And how can he afford to cut taxes when the government is spending 700 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street, a bail out both he and McCain supported? A bailout the cost of which rose to 850 billion dollars by virtue of the sweeteners and extenders (sounds like junk food) that the bill contained to convince certain “Congresscritters” (Thank you, Jim Hightower!) to vote for it.
[…]
via Carolyn Baker – OBAMA: CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN–NOT!, Part 4, By Kellia Ramares
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see
Obama: Change You Can Believe In–Not (Part 1: The Economy)
Barack Obama And Faith-Based Voting By Daniel Cioper
Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning
The Racism of McCain…and Obama…and the Media By Jeremy R. Hammond
The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb
Seeing through the Myths by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
The Economy Sucks and or Collapse
Barack Obama And Faith-Based Voting By Daniel Cioper
Posted with permission from the author, thanks, Daniel.
By Daniel Cioper
www.danielcioper.com
10/31/08
I have come to the conclusion that the movement of Barack Obama’s candidacy is faith based. Not that Barack himself bases his decisions on faith, rather it is the voters who support him who base their vote for him on faith — faith in him that, if elected, he will act in a positive way for change and truth. However, while Senator he has done almost everything to appease the status-quo in Washington. He votes to fund the war every time, he votes for the renewal of the liberty-choking Patriot Act, he voted for the bailout, the telecom-immunity and on and on and on. So it is my opinion that if you don’t agree with these votes and you vote for Obama then you are betraying your principles (and the Constitution) or engaging in faith-based voting. There is this glare in the eyes of liberals and, well… Americans these days and I think it is no less than the look of a starving rabbit when presented with a carrot. They do not see the stick that it is dangling from because of the glare on the lens but it is there. Maybe we will get to eat it, but at what cost?
I find it curious that after seven years of rampant corruption, fascist overhauls, and inane but calculated misadventures abroad we get rewarded with a sensible progressive candidate. Even though we watched the constitution erode before our eyes and the expectations we hold dear that come with it, such as privacy from government spying, and simply went about our daily hum-drum (not all, but most of us), now as a reward for all that non-people power we get true change. Isn’t democracy in America nice and comfy?
Maybe Obama is going bring us renewed prosperity. I would hope that it’s not in a bubble, but it probably would be. Maybe he will restore some of the privacy from government spying that our constitution entitles us, but he hasn’t seemed to stand for that so far (And maybe you would accept an Obama government spying on you?). Maybe he will restore our standing in the world, but how does he stand on the usurious World Bank and the corporate greed-driven NAFTA. “So,” you say, “he can only do so much.” Ah, see now we’re doing that thinking and analysis thing and that’s not what American politics is about. We feel the candidate — with glossy eyes. And as long as Obama looks good and says sensible, passionate things with a smile and motivating cadence, people are going to fall in love because love means carrot. And even though the carrot moves forward each time they move forward, they are going to try it one more time, and on and on, because it is their hearts desire that they get that carrot. Seems rather harmless? Well, I ask you, where are we hopping to with that carrot on-a-stick on our back?
My main point is that if you think Barack Obama is going to change U.S. policy from what it has been consistently for the last fifty years, then it is based on your belief or hope in him as a person. And that’s fine — you could be right, but again; his U.S. Senate record doesn’t show it, and again; you are voting by faith, not evidence.
So, go progress! But what did we/will we sacrifice by letting the most criminal administration in American history serve out it’s full term for the purpose of electing Democrats? Please spare me your attempts at changing my mind. I’d be betraying my own intelligence and life experience to support this “lesser” of evils after all I’ve seen in the run-up to this election and the jaw-dropping, all-pervasive, atrocious seven years that preceded it.
At 29 now, I wasn’t very politically conscious during the Clinton years so my politically formative years are all of the Bush administration. Go figure. But I don’t want the Clinton years either. All things are connected and as we reap so shall we sow. So the karma of this country under Clinton is the same karma under Bush. When does good bring bad and bad bring good? Well, really, it’s that we are pirates. And it’s a jolly joy when the spoils are good but there is a big price to pay when the captain (whoever/wherever he is) and his savage crew need more.
These are the thoughts and conclusions I’ve come to with an open mind. I wanted to throw them out, not to change anyone’s mind but rather to put my beliefs in print at a time when a lot of our ideas are being challenged. I don’t withhold my opinions when it matters most and I hope this gives some hope to the people who expect more from the leaders of this world. I say: Don’t vote thinking some magical transformation will take place in the person where there is no evidence — only vague promises and perceived potential. Vote for the person based on their ideas, now and always. Vote for Ralph Nader because he is one of the wisest statespersons this country has to offer. He is for getting U.S. forces and corporations out of Iraq immediately. He is for an even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, not, as Obama is, for an undivided Jerusalem for Isreal. He is for universal not-for-profit single payer health care. He is for the re-institution of Habeas Corpus and the Constitution.
See we know what we need. How do we get there if our votes betray this?
see
Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning
The Racism of McCain…and Obama…and the Media By Jeremy R. Hammond
The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb
Third Party Presidential Candidates Debate 10.30.08
Ralph Nader & The Two Party Dictatorship + Nader takes questions on C-Span
Making Excuses for Obama by Justin Raimondo
Nader on Obama: Prepare to be disappointed + Zombies Don’t Thrash
Latin American integration — an alternative to capitalist crisis?
Posted with permission from Green Left Weekly
by Eric Toussaint
translated by Federico Fuentes
Green Left
31 October 2008
The below article is based on a paper presented on October 8 by Eric Toussaint to the international Responses from the South to the World Economic Crisis seminar held in Caracas. It has been translated by Federico Fuentes and is abridged from socialist e-journal Links, Links. Toussaint is from the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt.
Other speakers on the panel included Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and planning minister Haiman El Troudi, as well as Ecuador’s minister for economic coordination, Pedro Paez, minister of economic coordination. The entire conference was broadcast live by Venezuelan state television.
The economic and financial crisis, whose epicentre is in the United States, has to be utilised by Latin American countries to build an integration favourable to the peoples and initiate a partial “de-linking” from the world capitalist market.
We need to learn the lessons of the 20th century in order to apply them.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, 12 countries in Latin America suspended for a prolonged time repayment of their foreign debt, principally to North American and Western European bankers. Some of them, such as Brazil and Mexico, imposed on their creditors a reduction of between 50% and 90% of their debt some 10 years later.
Mexico went the furthest with its economic and social reforms. During the government of Lazaro Cardenas, the petroleum industry was completely nationalised without any compensation for the North American monopolies.
Moreover, 16 million hectares of land were nationalised and in large part handed over to the indigenous population.
From the ’30s until the mid-’60s, various Latin American governments carried out very active public policies that aimed at a partially self-centred development, known later as the model of industrialisation via substitution of imports.
On the other hand, beginning in 1959, the Cuban Revolution attempted to give a socialist content to the “Bolivarian” project of Latin American integration (named after Simon Bolivar, who helped liberate South America from the Spanish and promoted South American unity).
This socialist content began to appear in Bolivia’s 1952 revolution.
Pointing the US Surveillance Apparatus at the American People by Tom Burghardt
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, November 1, 2008
Antifascist Calling
New categories of individuals under the purview of state “counterterrorism” investigations
FBI’s Analytical Lexicon Lowers the Bar
Do you “pal around with terrorists”? Are you a “radical” or express views that the government considers “extremist”?On October 28, the whistleblowing website Cryptome published the FBI Directorate of Intelligence: Counterterrorism Division’s Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon. This eye-opening “Unclassified/For Official Use Only” (U/FOUO) document purports “to standardize terms used in the FBI analytical products dealing with counterterrorism.”
But what it does instead, in keeping with the FBI’s insatiable appetite for “actionable intelligence product,” is create new categories of individuals who might fall under the purview of state “counterterrorism” investigations.
Right up front the Bureau informs us that the definitions used in the lexicon, “do not supercede those in the Department of Justice National Foreign Intelligence Program Manual (NFIPM), the Attorney General Guidelines, the National Implementation Plan for the War on Terror, or any US government statute.”
That covers a lot and ground and can hide much in the way of government mischief, particularly when new guidelines issued by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey permit broad, intrusive investigations by FBI snoops. As the Washington Post reported in early October,
The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization. (Carrie Johnson, “Guidelines Expand FBI’s Surveillance Powers,” The Washington Post, Saturday, October 4, 2008; A03)
Brian Moore, Socialist Party USA Nominee on C-Span
C-Span
Oct 31, 2008
Brian Moore, the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party USA, spoke about his presidential campaign and the Socialist Party platform. He also talked about socialism and recent charges the Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s economic and tax plans were “socialist.” He responded to telephone calls and electronic mail.
see
Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning
The Racism of McCain…and Obama…and the Media By Jeremy R. Hammond
The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb
What’s wrong with redistributing the wealth? by Alan Maass
Is Barack Obama a Socialist. or simply a centrist with integrity? By Paul A. Donovan
Socialists say Barack Obama is not
“Socialism” intrudes on the 2008 elections by Patrick Martin
Foreign Policy Nightmare Awaits The Next President
October 31, 2008 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show
Vodpod videos no longer available.
more about “Foreign Policy Nightmare Awaits The N…“, posted with vodpod
.
see
Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning
Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning
Note from Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority:
The announcement comes at 2:37 in the video. Democrats might be particularly interested since it’s something they’ve claimed they wanted Ralph to do rather than run in the previous elections.
The Racism of McCain…and Obama…and the Media By Jeremy R. Hammond
By Jeremy R. Hammond
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Foreign Policy Journal
November 2, 2008
The underlying assumption in the argument that association with Rashid Khalidi or his views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is worthy of criticism is itself, by its own standard, inherently racist.
Earlier this week, John McCain once again attacked his presidential campaign opponent Barack Obama on the basis of his association with another individual. In this case the individual was Rashid Khalidi. Mr. Khalidi’s sin? He’s a Palestinian who has been critical of Israel. Obama’s sin? Speaking at a dinner five years ago held in honor of Mr. Khalidi.
Other speakers at the dinner were critical of Israel, accusing the state of committing terrorism against the Palestinian people, leading McCain to compare the dinner gathering to “a Neo-Nazi outfit”, and thus implying that criticism of Israel’s crimes is equivalent with racism.
The Los Angeles Times reported last April on the Obama’s presence at the dinner, noting that “a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel.” Another speaker noted that “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” shared one thing with Osama bin Laden; they were both “blinded by ideology.”
Obama, who has vigorously portrayed himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, said at the dinner that his talks with Mr. Khalidi and his wife Mona had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases” and expressed hope that “for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”
The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb
A hopeful Obama supporter searches for Barack’s courage.
Dandelion Salad 