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

Dandelion Salad

by Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Washington, Oct 28, 2009

Kucinich: Will We Stand for the People or the Insurance Companies?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the health care debate in America:

“Providing health care to all Americans is the moral responsibility of our government, consistent with the Preamble in the Constitution. Yet we are being told that it is not possible to have the kind of single payer health system which every industrialized democracy in the world has.

Rachel Maddow: CIA Funding Afghanistan’s Number One Drug Lord!

Dandelion Salad

Start Loving-wage Love or die on Oct 28, 2009

Rachel Maddow-U.S. working at cross purposes to CIA in Afghanistan

The Denial Machine (2007)

Dandelion Salad

CBC

In the past few years, a hurricane has engulfed the debate about global warming. This scientific issue has become a rhetorical firestorm with science pitted against spin and inflammatory words on both sides. This documentary shows how fossil fuel corporations have kept the global warming debate alive long after most scientists believed that global warming was real and had potentially catastrophic consequences. It shows that companies such as Exxon Mobil are working with top public relations firms and using many of the same tactics and personnel as those employed by Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds to dispute the cigarette-cancer link in the 1990s. Exxon Mobil sought out those willing to question the science behind climate change, providing funding for some of them, their organizations and their studies.

Philip Alston: Record AfPak Drone Attacks Under Obama May Violate International Law

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
Oct. 28, 2009

UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston: Record AfPak Drone Attacks Under Obama May Violate International Law

Investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine revealed last week that the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan has risen dramatically under President Obama. During his first nine-and-a-half months in office, Obama authorized at least forty-one CIA missile strikes in Pakistan—a rate of approximately one bombing a week. We speak to one of the most high-profile critics of the US drone program: Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Alston says the US government’s use of Predator drones may violate international law. [includes rush transcript]

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He is also a professor of law at New York University and co-chair of the law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

via UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston: Record AfPak Drone Attacks Under Obama May Violate International Law

see

Huge Explosion Just Hours After Hillary Clinton Lands In Pakistan

ABC Of West’s Global Military Network: Afghanistan, Baltics, Caucasus by Rick Rozoff

Chaos in Afghanistan as UN staff killed in Kabul attack

Afghan peace vigil waiting with the world for President Obama

Afghanistan on Dandelion Salad

Is Capitalism on the Ropes? By Mike Whitney

Dandelion Salad

By Mike Whitney
October 28, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff

1. Mike Whitney—In your new book, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know”, you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? (“The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)

US-Israeli Missile Defense War Game Signals Israeli Attack on Iran By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
October 28, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

There’s no word in the Western press, but Al Jazeera reports that the US and Israel are conducting tests of the high altitude missile defense system that the US has provided to Israel.

The anti-missile system is useless against the short range rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah. Its purpose is to protect Israel from longer range Iranian missiles.

Congressman Alan Grayson Honors the Dead

Dandelion Salad

RepAlanGrayson
October 28, 2009

This is Rep. Alan Grayson reading stories from the site http://www.NamesOfTheDead.com.

Tea Party Express II: Rise Of The Tea Bags

Dandelion Salad

TheBRADBLOG
October 28, 2009

A short film of sorts, by Brad Friedman — We went out to Griffith Park out here in L.A. on Sunday 10/25/09 to check out the kick-off day for the new “Tea Party Express II” national tour. Thought we might meet some interesting people and file a quick video report, but instead ended up making a short film of sorts. Here’s Part 1. Enjoy…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Tea Party Express II: Rise Of The Tea…“, posted with vodpod

***

Pt 2

ABC Of West’s Global Military Network: Afghanistan, Baltics, Caucasus by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
October 28, 2009

The century’s longest war continues to rage in South Asia with no sign of abating. Instead, the invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 has exploded into endless armed hostilities that have spread across the length and breadth of the nation, with U.S. and NATO military forces fighting an intensified counterinsurgency conflict in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan, now paralleled by equally brutal and even larger-scale combat operations in neighboring Pakistan.

With over 100,000 Western troops and rumors of perhaps a doubling of that number in the works, and with Washington spending billions of dollars in expanding bases to accommodate those reinforcements, the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign under the direction of U.S. and NATO military commander General Stanley McChrystal and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke portends yet greater violence, bloodshed and imperiling of regional stability.

It’s official, they not only forgot, they don’t give a damn By William Bowles

By William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
28 October 2009

The report on the explosion that blew an RAF Nimrod out of the sky over Helmand Province on 2 September, 2006 in which fourteen people died, was released today and it confirms my view of British military ‘adventures’ that I expressed in ‘Lest we forget?’. The report even names names of extremely high ranking officers as being directly culpable for their deaths.

Chaos in Afghanistan as UN staff killed in Kabul attack

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday
October 28, 2009

At least twelve people – including six United Nations staff – have been killed in an attack on a UN guest house in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Police say the situation is under control, after militants barricaded themselves inside.

Steve Williams: Organizing for the poor

Dandelion Salad

www.therealnews.com

TheRealNews

Williams: For over two decades poor people in the US have been criminalized and vilified.

Ingushetia: A second Chechnya + Human rights activist killed

Dandelion Salad

niceminnesota
October 27, 2009

The tiny Russian republic of Ingushetia has become one of the most dangerous places in the world. Endemic corruption combined with a battle between Islamic extremists and unaccountable Moscow-backed security forces has plunged the area into bloody violence. Reporter Antony Butts and director Dom Rotheroe went to find out what lay behind the conflict and to investigate claims of extrajudicial killings, torture and suppression of political dissent.

It is hard for foreign journalists to get into the area or to operate independently. The team was under surveillance by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and local security forces – forcing them to film covertly on occasion. Local human rights activists have been illegally detained and in some cases murdered and it was difficult to find interviewees prepared to talk openly. A few weeks after they left, Maksharip Aushev, a civil opposition leader they had filmed, was murdered by unknown gunmen. During filming, local fixers were warned by the security police not to cooperate with them and eventually Antony and Dom were warned to leave the country.

The various civil conflicts raging across the Russian Federation’s southern Muslim republics are putting an intolerable burden on the civilian populations caught in the middle. The war in Ingushetia is proving dirtier than most yet and, because of the difficulty of reporting, it has largely stayed off the world’s radar. This film for Al Jazeera’s People & Power lifted the lid on a catalogue of seemingly indiscriminate murder, human rights abuse, political and religious persecution, poverty, corruption and neglect.

Lawrence Wilkerson: Will the empire end with good leadership or blood?

Dandelion Salad

http://www.therealnews.com

TheRealNews

The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Pt3

This talk by Larry Wilkerson was the keynote speech given at an event sponsored by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, American University History Department, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute on Oct 21,2009 at American University in Washington DC.

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence describes itself as “a movement of former CIA colleagues and other associates of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power”.