Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media

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Democracy Now!
Oct. 30, 2009

Leading Political, Legal Blogger Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media

One of the leading political and legal bloggers in the country, Glenn Greenwald, joins us to talk about about the war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration’s use of state secrets, the healthcare debate, the renewed military commissions at Guantanamo, and the coverage of it all by the corporate media. Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney who writes for Salon.com and is the author of three books. [includes rush transcript]

Chomsky: Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework

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ICU Political Philosophy Society
Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way
29.10.09

The Imperial College Political Philosophy Society, in association with Palestine societies at UCL, SOAS, Goldsmiths, LSE, Imperial and Kings, proudly present one of the greatest political philosophers of all time: MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, for what could be his last trip to London.

Noam Chomsky: why far right must be challenged

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Belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Saturday, 31 October 2009

Far-right political groups could use rising poverty to attract wider support for their extremist policies, Professor Noam Chomsky warned at the festival’s annual Amnesty International lecture at Queen’s University last night.

The international commentator warned that in the US right-wing voices are trying to tap in to grievances and he urged communities around the world to mobilise against poverty and inequality in their society as a safeguard against extremism.

“In the US inequality has soared to unprecedented heights,” he said.

[…]

via Chomsky: why far right must be challenged – Reviews, Belfast Festival – Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

see

Tea Party Express II: Rise Of The Tea Bags

Noam Chomsky: West’s self-interest reduces R2P to “noble rhetoric” + Break through the Silence

Noam Chomsky Compares Right-Wing Media to Nazi Germany + Chomsky: US Supported Indian, Pakistani Nuclear Programs

Noam Chomsky: When Elites Fail, and What We Should Do About It (must-see)

Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis and Resistance to American Empire

Noam Chomsky on Dandelion Salad

Noam Chomsky: West’s self-interest reduces R2P to “noble rhetoric” + Break through the Silence

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TamilNet
[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 20:13 GMT]

During an invited lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London University, Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s well known intellectual and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, said on Sri Lanka, that although there’s “a lot of noble rhetoric about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), there is no particular Western advantage in protecting people who are being slaughtered, and are being thrown into concentration camps. Somehow these didn’t make it in the noble rhetoric,” and added Sri Lanka was a “horror story, especially towards the end.”

Chomsky added that in the way West acts, “there is no protection for any people who it doesn’t do any good [to the West] to protect, and basically Sri Lankans [Tamils] are in that unfortunate position.”

stimulator: Fighting Fascism

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stimulator
October 30, 2009

http://submedia.tv/stimulator/2009/10…
This week:

This week:
1.What?
2. Crispy Pigs
3. Hot in Roch City
4. Olympig Harassment
5. Vienna Occupation
6. Old school bank robber
7. Coal River Blast
8. 350 or 250
9. Modest Mouse
10. Torch Hypnosis

Six Uighurs Go To Palau; Seven Remain In Guantánamo by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
31October 2009

As first reported by the Associated Press, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo have just arrived on the Pacific island of Palau, where they have been given new homes. The AP’s source said that, overnight, police were guarding the house where the men will live, in the heart of the capital, Koror.

This partly solves one of President Obama’s outstanding problems at Guantánamo, as there were 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) at Guantánamo when Obama took office, and they had already been waiting for three and a half months to be released, after District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered their release into the United States in October 2008. Judge Urbina did so because the government had failed to contest the Uighurs’ habeas corpus petition (after a devastating court defeat in June 2008), because they could not be returned to China, where they were at risk of ill-treatment or worse, because no other country had been found that would take them, and because their continued detention was unconstitutional.

Representative Democracy IS NOT Democracy

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TheLeftLibertarian
October 31, 2009

Dennis Kucinich: Restore State Single Payer

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electdennis
October 30, 2009

Congressman Kucinich stated that he is fighting to get single-payer back into the health care reform bill. Several members of Congress have signed a letter to House Speaker Pelosi requesting that the Kucinich Amendment be restored to the bill.

Kosovo: Marking Ten Years Of Worldwide Wars by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
October 30, 2009

It has been said that proverbs are the wisdom of nations and one of the most common is that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.

Former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton is to arrive in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, on Sunday, November 1 according to the erstwhile head of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and self-styled prime minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaci.

The occasion of Clinton’s visit, his first since Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February of 2008 – a violation of international law and United Nations Resolution 1244 directly resulting from Clinton’s acts of a decade ago – is to attend the official unveiling of a statue dedicated to himself.

Bill Moyers Journal: James K. Galbraith + Richard Brookhiser

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Bill Moyers Journal
October 30, 2009

James K. Galbraith

Economic recovery in review. The Dow’s up, but why are Main Street Americans still reeling from last year’s economic collapse? With Americans still facing rising unemployment, foreclosures, and declining property values, renowned economist James K. Galbraith on whether we’ve averted another crisis and how to get help for the middle class.

Bill Moyers Journal: Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, the Beltway Elite and Government Secrecy

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Bill Moyers Journal

PBS
October 30, 2009

Pt 1

Afghanistan

Bill Moyers interviews political commentator and Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald. In part one of this three part web exclusive interview, Greenwald explains what it means that President Karzai’s brother — believed to be involved in the drug trade — has been receiving payments from the CIA.

Bill Moyers Journal: Bill Moyers Essay: Bring back the Draft!

Dandelion Salad

PBS
October 30, 2009

Restoring Accountability for Washington’s Wars

Public Bailout of Private Insurance – Dump health reform NOW!

Dandelion Salad

by Clark Newhall
http://www.1payer.net/
Thursday, 29 October 2009

Here is the bad news from the House of Representatives with a timeline for the most massive bailout ever — the bailout of the private for-profit insurance industries.  Looks like they have until 2018 to make all the money they can.

Based on this, I think we should tell liberal Democrats to dump health reform NOW or we will dump Democrats.  No bill at all is better than a bailout of the private insurance industry at taxpayer expense.

Prepared by the Committees
on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor October
29, 2009 1
America’s Affordable (HAR HAR HAR — THE JOKE’S ON YOU, MR TAXPAYER) Health
Choices (OH YEAH, YOU GET TO CHOOSE WHICH DANGEROUS INSURANCE PRODUCT YOU ARE FORCED TO BUY) Act
Implementation Timeline
2010
INSURANCE MARKET REFORMS
ENDS HEALTH INSURANCE
RESCISSIONS: Prohibits abusive
practices whereby health insurance companies rescind existing health insurance
policies when a person gets sick as a way of avoiding covering the costs of
enrollees’ health care needs.
NEW LIMITS ON PRE-EXISTING
CONDITION EXCLUSIONS: Prior to the
bill’s complete prohibition on pre-existing condition exclusions beginning in
2013, reduces the window that plans can look back for pre-existing conditions
from 6 months to 30 days and shortens the period that plans may exclude
coverage of certain benefits. It also prohibits insurers from limiting or
denying coverage based on acts stemming from domestic violence.

[…]

via Public Bailout of Private Insurance | News and Blogs

***

Or if you’d rather read it as a pdf file:

Affordable Health Care for America Act
http://energycommerce.house.gov
Friday, 30 October 2009

On October 29, 2009, House Democratic leaders unveiled the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962. The three panels with jurisdiction over health policy in the House have been working together as one committee to develop a single bill that fulfills President Obama’s goals of reducing health care costs, protecting and increasing consumers’ choices, and guaranteeing access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

[…]

Affordable Health Care for America Act, Summary (pdf)

[…]

via Affordable Health Care for America Act

see

Dennis Kucinich: Is the 2-Party System truly capable of representing the American people?

Dennis Kucinich: Government of the people or a government of the corporations? + Action Alert

“Baltimore Four” Arrested–Health Care for All

Healthcare Roundtable: With Exclusion of Single Payer, What Opportunities Remain for Meaningful Reform?

Nancy Pelosi Unveils Merged House Health Care Reform Bill: Thank You, Insurance Companies of America!

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703

Honduras Power Sharing Deal Signed!

Dandelion Salad

Deal Reached in Honduran Coup Crisis; Zelaya Restoration Would Depend on Vote by Honduran Congress

Democracy Now!

Kucinich: OCC Must Protect Consumer Credit Scores

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by Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Washington, Oct 30, 2009

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) sent a letter Comptroller of the Currency, Mr. John Dugan, requesting an investigation of the effect on consumer credit scores of some bank practices in advance of the enactment of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act.

Consumer credit scores, originally developed to measure a consumer’s creditworthiness, have become much more influential in a consumer’s life. Credit scores are now used in writing insurance policies and even in determining employability. Kucinich is concerned that some practices, such as charging “inactivity fees” for unused credit, have the potential to damage consumer credit scores.