Chomsky on Obama Speech + The 3rd Rail – Obama’s game-changing speech in Egypt

Updated: June 5, 2009 added the full article

Dandelion Salad

By Noam Chomsky
MWC News – A Site Without Borders
June 4, 2009

Chomsky, whose recent books include “Interventions” and “The Essential Chomsky,” sent the following to the Institute for Public Accuracy this morning: “A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads ‘Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.’ Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

“Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to ‘see this conflict only from one side or the other.’ There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.

[…]

via MWC News – A Site Without Borders – – Chomsky on Obama Speech (link no longer works)

Democrats to propose national public healthcare plan; Would revolutionize US healthcare + What is Single Payer?

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By John Byrne
Raw Story
June 4, 2009

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee — a moderate who is seen as the leading figure on Congressional proposals to create a national healthcare mandate — says that his bill is almost certain to include a public healthcare option, in a blow to the managed care industry and a possible major victory for progressives.

“I think a bill that passes the Senate will have some version of a public option,” said Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Chairman. His remarks come two days after President Barack Obama signaled in a letter that a public competitor to the private health insurance companies was a key part of his agenda.

[…]

via Raw Story » Democrats to propose national public healthcare plan; Would revolutionize US healthcare

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What is Single Payer?

HR676Contest
April 25, 2008

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Rep Kucinich: Healthcare is a Civil Right!

Bill Moyers Journal: Single Payer Health Care

Stop the Single Payer Shut-out! by Ralph Nader

from the archives:

American College of Physicians Endorses Single-Payer Health-Care System by Dennis Kucinich

Kaptur Grills Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke + State of the U.S. Economy Hearing

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CSPANJUNKIEdotORG
http://earth2obama.org/
June 03, 2009 C-SPAN

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Congressional Hearing: State of the U.S. Economy

Conspiracy Theory Theory, Revisited by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
June 4, 2009

BuzzFlash is currently featuring the book Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail by Bob Coen and Eric Nadler. The header notes: “If you think Al-Qaeda Had Anything to do with the Anthrax Attacks, Don’t Read This Book. This Was Domestic Terrorism, And Most Likely at the Highest Levels.” Of course there are and have been conspiracy theories galore in American history, from the one that the Confederate Secret Service was behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, through what really sunk the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, to what had Churchill (in WW I the British First Lord of the Admiralty) arranged to have squirreled away in the forepeak of the Lusitania (the sinking of which was a major factor drawing the United States into that war), on to both Kennedy and the King assassinations, and so on and so forth.

Barack Obama: A New Beginning (Cairo University 06.04.09)

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President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt

whitehouse
June 04, 2009

“A New Beginning”
The President gives a speech in Cairo, Egypt, outlining his personal commitment to engagement with the Muslim world, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect, and discusses how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them. June 4, 2009. (public domain)

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Transcript:

Remarks by the President at Cairo University, 6-04-09

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
Cairo,Egypt
________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 4, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

ON A NEW BEGINNING

Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt
1:10 P.M. Local

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt’s advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I’m grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. Applause.

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world — tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Leave that Poor Man Alone by Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
June 4, 2009

I, maybe more than any other progressive Texas outsider, know that not everyone in The Lone Star State is a Neanderthal, Bush-loving, redneck.

Thousands of people from all over the state came out to join me in protest near Bush’s PR Ranch in Crawford, Texas. There is always two things Texans want me to know: 1) Bush IS NOT a Texan, and 2) not everyone in Texas is a Neanderthal, Bush-loving, redneck.

Having said all that, I was treated to some very ignorant statements on a blog about a protest sponsored by the Dallas Peace House in front of the Bush’s new Dallas home this upcoming Monday that I am joining.

US Fed Chairman demands plan to cut social programs

Dandelion Salad

By Barry Grey
http://www.wsws.org
4 June 2009

Testifying Wednesday before the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke demanded that Congress and the Obama administration map out a program of austerity measures to bring down record budget deficits. Bernanke made clear that the heart of this program should be sharp cuts in social spending, including basic entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“Maintaining the confidence of the financial markets,” Bernanke said in prepared remarks to the committee, “requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance.”

The phrase “confidence of the financial markets” is a euphemism for the interests of Wall Street and major international banks and investors. In demanding the preparation of austerity measures to be imposed on the American people, Bernanke was speaking in behalf of the financial elite whose massive taxpayer subsidies have been the major cause of the explosive growth over the past year of the federal deficit and the US national debt.

p…[

via US Fed Chairman demands plan to cut social programs

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Credit crunch: time to treat employees like trash by Roland Michel Tremblay

If You Are Stressed Now, Just Wait By Paul Craig Roberts

Bond Market Blowout By Mike Whitney

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2

Anand Gopal: Report on Afghanistan

Updated: June 8, 2009; added Part 2

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews

Anand Gopal: Afghans feel like they are caught between a rock an a hard place Afghans disillusioned as US has not kept promises

Credit crunch: time to treat employees like trash by Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
4 June, 2009

Credit crunch time, once again the old management rules are back. Not only employers and employment agencies are ready to exploit you to death, but don’t expect respect and niceties, we’re all trash for the next few years if not decades. Let’s just hope that one day we can still be recycled into something that looks remotely like human beings, preferably before we end up doing something insane.

You don’t like it here? Here is the door. A thousand desperate unemployed people would kill for your job. Experience? Knowledge? Aptitudes? Attitude? What do they matter in a period of recession? You can now expect a minimum salary and to be treated like a dog would not even be treated like. There is no such thing as having a life outside work anymore, I’m not sure there ever was.