Democrats's topics - tribe.net

Swiss vote to ban minarets: hint hint Dems

Rocky — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:48:26 GMT

hint hint Dems

Swiss vote to ban minarets

http://www.freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=183:swiss-vote-to-ban-minarets&catid=36:islam

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posted in Democrats - 6 replies

AU: URGENT Action Alert

Rocky — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:06:36 GMT

AU: URGENT Action Alert

"URGENT: The Senate will vote on the Nelson-Hatch amendment TOMORROW! Please take action NOW!

A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the destructive Stupak-Pitts amendment thanks to the powerful influence of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishops demanded a new ban on abortion coverage in any insurance plan participating in the new insurance "exchange," and the Church hierarchy even threatened to use its clout in Congress to derail the entire healthcare reform package unless its particular religious view was enshrined in the legislation.

Now, the Senate is poised to vote on an identical amendment proposed by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and a number of co-sponsors. Please remind your Senators that this restrictive language is unacceptable. For those of us who believe deeply that religion and government must function separately, this is hese events are highly disturbing. As supporters of Americans United, you are well aware that the Constitution mandates a separation between church and state. Yet recently, the Catholic bishops have used their immense power to undermine constitutionally guaranteed rights.

This is unacceptable, and your Senators need to hear from you. We simply cannot allow the interests of a politically powerful religious denomination to undermine the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to Americans of all faiths and none. Your Senators will vote tomorrow -- so please share your views NOW!

Tell Your Senators to OPPOSE the Nelson-Hatch Amendment

--------------------

Keep Religious Doctrine Out of the Law

"A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the destructive Stupak-Pitts amendment thanks to the powerful influence of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishops demanded a new ban on abortion coverage in any insurance plan participating in the new insurance "exchange," and the Church hierarchy even threatened to use its clout in Congress to derail the entire healthcare reform package unless its particular religious view was enshrined in the legislation.

Now, the Senate is poised to vote on an identical amendment proposed by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and a number of co-sponsors. Please remind your Senators that this restrictive language is unacceptable. For those of us who believe deeply that religion and government must function separately, this is hese events are highly disturbing. As supporters of Americans United, you are well aware that the Constitution mandates a separation between church and state. Yet recently, the Catholic bishops have used their immense power to undermine constitutionally guaranteed rights.

This is unacceptable, and your Senators need to hear from you. We simply cannot allow the interests of a politically powerful religious denomination to undermine the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to Americans of all faiths and none. Your Senators will vote very soon -- so please share your views NOW! "

http://www.capwiz.com/au/issues/alert/?alertid=14439586

* Join the Separation of church and state tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Dobbs: The Truth About Immigration

Rocky — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:20:33 GMT

Dobbs: The Truth About Immigration

"Ethnocentric special interest groups often mischaracterize Lou's position on illegal immigration. The left routinely ignores the context of everything Lou has said about illegal immigrants. So here's the truth..."

http://www.loudobbs.com/blog?action=viewBlog&blogID=-744737085256637687

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh_Dum-_IMA

http://www.loudobbs.com

A commenter says:

"Lou Dobbs is owed an apology by Janet Murguía/La Raza & Media Matters for their Drop Dobbs SMEAR CAMPAIGN.

"Ethnocentric special interest groups often mischaracterize Lou's position on illegal immigration. The left routinely ignores the context of everything Lou has said about illegal immigrants. So here's the truth..."

It's an embarrassment how CNN fell for it. Thanks to Lou, those BORDER PATROL agents got released while no other news gave a shit.

Janet Murguía President and CEO of La Raza & Media Matters need to be EXPOSED for the liars they are. "

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

Rocky — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:54:56 GMT

This is awesome news!!!

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

"Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation. ...."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/c_street_house_no_longer_tax_exempt.php

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

* Join the "Solar Mythology ~ Astrotheology" tribe
http://tribes.tribe.net/solarmythologynastrotheology

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

55 in Congress who should give-up their gov't health care

Rocky — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:32:32 GMT

55 in Congress who should give-up their gov't health care

Especially Joe Lieberman

"On Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) called on 55 Republican adversaries of the public option to give up their government-funded health insurance. The congressman argued that it is hypocritical for Senate and House members receiving "government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare" to oppose making such coverage available to the American public.

"Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize," Weiner wrote. "They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else."

Weiner, a member of the Health Subcommittee and co-chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, has been a strong advocate of the public option. In recent weeks, he has challenged his own party, as well as President Obama to ensure that the final health bill includes an affordable public insurance plan for Americans.

A press release from Weiner's office identifies the congressional recipients of Medicare that he thinks should give up their government-funded insurance plans. The list includes Senate Finance Committee members Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), part of the Gang of Six that helped shape health care reform."

Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/anthony-weiner-gop-public_n_331444.html

"The list of congressional recipients of Medicare who also oppose the public option is below:

Rep. Ralph M. Hall
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
Rep. Sam Johnson
Rep. C.W. Bill Young
Rep. Howard Coble
Sen. Jim Bunning
Sen. Richard G. Lugar
Rep. Don Young
Sen. Charles E. Grassley
Sen. Robert F. Bennett
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
Sen. Richard C. Shelby
Rep. Jerry Lewis
Sen. James M. Inhofe
Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Henry E. Brown
Sen. Pat Roberts
Sen. George V. Voinovich
Sen. John McCain
Rep. Judy Biggert
Sen. Thad Cochran
Rep. Harold Rogers
Rep. Dan Burton
Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon
Rep. Frank R. Wolf
Sen. Christopher S. Bond
Rep. Michael N. Castle
Rep. Joe Pitts
Rep. Tom Petri
Sen. Lamar Alexander
Rep. Doc Hastings
Rep. Cliff Stearns
Rep. Sue Myrick
Rep. John Carter
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Sen. Jon Kyl
Rep. Phil Gingrey
Rep. Nathan Deal
Rep. John Linder
Rep. Kay Granger
Rep. John L. Mica
Rep. Walter B. Jones
Sen. Jim Risch
Rep. Ed Whitfield
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
Rep. Virginia Foxx
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite
Sen. Saxby Chambliss
Sen. Michael B. Enzi
Rep. Elton Gallegly
Rep. Donald Manzullo
Rep. Peter T. King
Rep. Ander Crenshaw

http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.aspx?id=1364

These 55 and Joe Lieberman should lose all their government-funded health insurance i.e. government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare!!! Let all these folks buy their own from the private insurance monopoly

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Catholics and Overpopulation

D.B. Cooper — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:40:56 GMT

Three times in my life I have discussed overpopulation with friends who are Catholic. All 3 tended more tothe liberal end of the political spectrum than to the Right. Funny thing is, all 3 used almost the exact same words to tell me that overpopulation is not a problem.

They say:

It's actually a problem of distribution of food and of politics, not overpopulation.

All the people on the planet would fit into Texas, with enough room for a suburban size lot and house for each.

etc.

I find their thinking frightening! I try to explain that we don't live in some ideal world! I'd rather provide birth control and have families have fewer children, than wait for change in distribution! (Wal-Mart has a good distribution network. Shall we wait til there is a Wal-Mart on every corner?)

Have you encountered the same thinking? How does one reason with these folks?

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Why even try living the mainstream life?

D.B. Cooper — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:40:40 GMT

Here's an idea. Rather than seeking just the right career and employer, why not live on an intentuional community? It could be a rural commune, or urban co-op house.

Take your breaks when you need them. Be your own boss. Share the running of community businesses.
Raise your children where you work; life is an integrated whole, not fragmented.

Check out this website run by Fellowship for Intentional Community.

It's my plan. I've been to a few and plan to visit more. If one doesn't suit me or work out, I'll try another, because I see the mainstream as unhealthy.

Drop me a line if you develope or share the interest!

fic.ic.org/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

American Madrasas?

D.B. Cooper — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:38:42 GMT

You know how Pakistan is full of Islamic religious schools, where students are brainwashed? Well, we may soon have 'em here. (I know that MOST Muslims in America are OK. But, it only takes a few bad eggs.)

The US Senate is about to vote on whether to renew DC's voucher system. If vouchers become more and more common across America, taxpayer dollars will flow to religious schools to the tune of hundreds of millions.

The David Koresh School of Waco, could have been had it not been for separation of church and state.
The Utah School of Dirty Old Men
Etc.

But, above all, I worry about our tax dollars funding religious extremism of the Islamic variety.

Let's get organized against it!

http://www.au.org/issues/religious-school-vouchers/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Secular Coalition Opposes Amendments to Baucus' Health Care Reform bill

Rocky — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:00:09 GMT

Secular Coalition Opposes Amendments to Baucus' Health Care Reform bill

September 22nd- The Secular Coalition for America is actively lobbying in opposition to two amendments proposed to the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform bill which will be voted on this week.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has submitted an amendment requesting that funding for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage be restored. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) has submitted an amendment to ensure that conscience protections are applied in the healthcare reform bill. Both of these amendments privilege religious values over patients' and students’ rights to ethical treatment and medically-accurate information.

The letter to the members of the Senate Finance Committee that details why the Secular Coalition opposes these amendments is below.

September 22, 2009

Hon. Senator
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Senator,

On behalf of the Secular Coalition for America and the thousands of nontheistic Americans who support our organization, I write to urge you to vote against two amendments to the Senate Finance health care reform bill that will be offered in committee this week.

Senator Orrin Hatch has submitted amendment #C10 requesting that funding for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage be restored. Senator Michael Enzi has submitted amendment #C15 to ensure that conscience protections are applied in the healthcare reform bill. Please oppose these two amendments. Both of these amendments privilege religious values over patients and students’ rights to ethical treatment and medically-accurate information.

Congress has already provided $ 1.5 billion for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs since 1996 despite the fact that there is no evidence that abstinence-only programs have been effective in stopping or even delaying teen sex. Numerous studies, including a 10-year government funded evaluation of the Title V abstinence-only program, found that these programs do not delay sexual initiation and have no beneficial impact on young people’s sexual behavior. Please oppose Hatch Amendment #C10.

The Enzi Amendment inappropriately places the religious beliefs of medical professionals above the medical needs of their patients, and undermines patients’ access to contraception, end-of-life care, HIV care, and any other care to which a health care provider may object. In addition, this amendment would allow health care providers and entities to withhold information from patients about their health care status and their treatment options in violation of informed consent and ethical standards.

Medical professionals (whether they are doctors, pharmacists, technicians, or emergency medical technicians) are employed in the field of medicine, not spirituality. They have the right to consider their own religious beliefs in determining what medical decisions they make for their own care, but their personal religion should never infringe on the right of a patient to seek products or procedures that they have a legal right to obtain. Moreover, health care workers or volunteers who have responsibilities for federally funded research or other programs should never undermine a program for which they work because they have religious objections to the program. Please oppose Enzi Amendment #C15.

Please maintain your strong church-state record by opposing these amendments.

Sincerely,

Sasha Bartolf
Legislative Director

http://www.secular.org/news/Senate_finance_healthcare090921.html

* Join the Separation of Church and State tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Please Read This

novoneiro — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:40:47 GMT

The lies and the hatred that the right wing media is fabricating in order to get the public "gined up" is astounding. The saddest part is that IT IS WORKING! Some of these viewer/listeners are now showing up at health care functions with guns. and death threats on the president are skyrocketing.
Please visit the links that I have provided and remind the right wing conservative media that they will be held accountable for telling lies (death panels, etc.) to people who do not know any better.
We need to start putting pressure on these guys.

Please go to this site and work your way down the list. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html

And please dont forget to send your thoughts to Limbaugh himself. Email: ElRushbo@eibnet.com

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The Soft Underbelly of the Right

D.B. Cooper — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:36:55 GMT

Here's an idea: This nation was, in sizable measure, founded by people who fled religious persecution in Europe. Jefferson was a Diest and it isn't accurate to say he was Christian. The Treaty of Tripoli, from the early 1800's, states that the USA is not founded upon the Christian religion. I think it was even signed by George Washington. Sooo, why do we have all these right-wing religious folks screwing with our lives?

Today we have an ambassador to The Vatican! Call me anti-Catholic if you wish, but I don't want my tax dollars going for THAT! Thank Ronald Reagan and the 1980's for that, as it NEVER would have flown decades earlier. I also don't want my taxes going to religious schools in the form of vouchers. Nor school bus subsidies, which are common in cities across America.

Then, there is birth control; international family planning, and abortion.

I see the religious Right as a pillar holding up corporate America, the Republican party, etc. The way to knock that pillar out from under it all is to push for a militant secularism. And as we do that, we can shield ourselves with something the Right dare not attack: patriotism. THEY are the subversives. THEY have sold out American values.

Lemme recommend some groups. There is the old, mainstream, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Originally it was largely Baptist and protestant and concerned with the Catholic church wanting tax dollars, etc. (remember that ambassador, who the Vatican must APPROVE). Now it is a mix of atheists, agnostics, preachers, Jews, etc. etc. I'm sure it has Pagan members. It is in DC.

Then, there is The Freedom from Religion Foundation out of Madison, WI. It does a lot of good work, too.

I hope you'll consider this tactic. Hit 'em in their soft underbelly: their violation of something uniquely American. The separation of church and state. Let's take the wind out of their sails. Let's knock that pillar out from under the Right.

Whew. That's all. Hope you consider this.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Help Protect American Jobs Petition!

Rocky — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:15:29 GMT

Help Protect American Jobs Petition!

Send Your Petition to President Obama: Put American Workers First!

Help FAIR Protect American Jobs!!

"President Obama has made a commitment to create and protect American jobs. But recently he seemed to have backtracked on some of his earlier campaign promises, and FAIR would like to remind him that further appeasement of the immigration amnesty lobby will hurt attempts to bring down unemployment and threatens our country's economic stability.

Any new investment in job creation by our government should ensure that the jobs go to American workers. One of the ways to guarantee this is to reauthorize the successful E-Verify program and make it a requirement for all government contractors and any government-sponsored public works program.

As of today, more than 100,000 businesses use E-Verify to easily validate the employment eligibility of prospective employees, ensuring that jobs are going to those that are legally authorized to work in the U.S. Click here to find out more information about the E-Verify program on our FAQ page.

Time is running out, so don't wait to make your voice heard. Help us remind President Obama about his commitment to the American worker by signing this petition. And don't forget to forward it to your friends and colleagues."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/petition/everify_petition

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Sheik Says Biofuels Are Prohibited by Islam

Rocky — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:00:39 GMT

Sheik Says Biofuels Are Prohibited by Islam

Feb 20th, 2009

"Biofuels may have hit an unexpected roadblock with a pronouncement by Sheik Mohamed al-Najimi of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy that the fuel may be prohibited by Islam. According to al-Najimi, the prophet Muhammad prohibited the buying, selling, transporting, drinking, and manufacturing of alcohol - including the ethyl alcohol present in ethanol.

If other religious leaders take al-Najimi’s opinion seriously, biofuel could be banned in Muslim countries that currently disallow alcohol. That means Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, and Sudan could potentially become biofuel-free zones.

While al-Najimi says that his recommendation should not be considered a fatwa (a legal pronouncement in Islam), he does believe that restriction of biofuels should go beyond Muslim countries to include Muslims around the world.

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/02/20/sheik-says-biofuels-are-prohibited-by-islam/#comment-49760

Muslim cleric decries biofuels as sinful
February 20, 2009

http://www.cleantech.com/news/4196/muslim-cleric-says-biofuels-are-sin

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor

Rocky — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:09:15 GMT

Sonia Sotomayor has not directly issued any rulings on abortion rights but has been involved in two cases:

1. Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush, 304 F.3d 183 Plaintiff public interest organization challenged the “Mexico City Policy,” a.k.a. the “global gag rule” and its provisions stripping U.S. aid to foreign NGOs informing about or performing abortions. Sotomayor authored the opinion which dismissed the case for lack of standing.

The anti-choice group Americans United for Life was pleased with the decision.

2. Port Washington Teachers’ Association v. Board of Education, 478 F.3d 494 (2d Cir. 2007). was the second case. Teachers challenged a school district policy which was trying to get teachers to report student pregnancies to the student’s parents. The case was dismissed for lack of standing because the policy was considered voluntary and thus no consequences could befall teachers who did not adhere to it.
http://www.choicematters.org/?p=249

Remember the gag rule on abortion - Sonia Sotomayor supported it.

The Bush Global Gag Rule: Endangering Women’s Health, Free Speech and Democracy

"On January 22, 2001, on his first business day in office (and the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion), President George W. Bush re-imposed the Global Gag Rule on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) population program. This policy restricts foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive USAID family planning funds from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services, lobby their own governments for abortion law reform, or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion. The 1973 Helms Amendment is a legislative provision that already restricts U.S. funds from being used for these activities.

78,000 women die every year from unsafe abortion, a statistic that could be virtually eliminated by the provision of appropriate health information and services and law reform efforts. Despite this, President Bush's Executive Memorandum directs USAID "to reinstate in full all of the requirements of the Mexico City Policy in effect on January 19, 1993." According to this policy, foreign organizations--often the only health-care providers in remote, rural areas--are prohibited from using their own, non-U.S. funds for:

* providing legal abortions even where a woman's physical or mental health is endangered (the only exceptions are in cases of rape, incest, or where the woman's life is endangered);
* providing advice and information regarding the availability and benefits of abortion and from providing referrals to another health clinic;
* lobbying their own governments to legalize abortion, to maintain current law and oppose restrictions, or to decriminalize abortion; and
* conducting public education campaigns regarding abortion.

In addition, even the provision of services that are "permitted"1 on paper, such as life-saving abortions and post-abortion care, are often curtailed because NGOs fear jeopardizing their funding through any association with abortion. Providers may even be reluctant to dispense emergency contraception--which acts to prevent pregnancy and is not an abortifacient --because of the Global Gag Rule......."

http://reproductiverights.org/en/document/the-bush-global-gag-rule-endangering-womens-health-free-speech-and-democracy

I have other separation of church & state issues with her too - there's just not enough info about her position on several things.

Supreme Court Nominee Should Be Closely Questioned On Church-State Views, Says Americans United

"The Senate Judiciary Committee should thoroughly question Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to determine her views on church-state separation, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

President Barack Obama today announced the nomination of Sotomayor, currently a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the high court. It appears that Sotomayor has not written widely on church-state issues, meaning the committee has an obligation to ascertain her views.

“We hope Judge Sotomayor turns out to be in the mold of retiring Justice David H. Souter – a strong champion of separation of church and state,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “The American people deserve no less.”

http://www.au.org/media/press-releases/archives/2009/05/supreme-court-nominee-should.html

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

This Week on The New American Dream

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:49:42 GMT

http://www.newamericandream.net/index.html

The New American Dream
... well ... because we're dreaming of Dick Cheney and George Bush in a big black car limousine motorcade with those little American flags on the front quarter panels on their way to prison

... we're dreaming of a USA truth commission and Cub Scout tours of the "secret" FBI and CIA

and some other stuff

This Week's Feature Interviews:

Monday - Timbre Wolf, a musician who moved from Tulsa to Hawaii

Tuesday - Al Markovitz, of Norfolk, Virginia, the Tulsa of the east coast, editor of the Blue Collar Review, "journal of working class literature"

Wednesday - Aimee England, the mayor of Tulsa — no, actually, Aimee lives in Michigan and spent over twenty years working in an independent, radical bookstore

Thursday - Lee Rayburn, radio show host, formerly of Air American Radio and also Madison, Wisconsin. [never been to Tulsa.]

Friday - Bartcop, of Bartcop.com, from where else? Tulsa.

Columns:
Steve Clemens of the Twin Cities
Lydia Sems from Atlanta

Poetry:
More from Ava Bird of Berkeley

and some other stuff

Thank you.

The Dream Team
http://www.newamericandream.net/index.html

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Dreaming the NEW American Dream

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:17:23 GMT

California poets Ava Bird & Rex Butters, and....

Santa Cruz artist Russell Brutsche - Karen Kwiatkowski of Virginia

Protests to stop immigration raids ... and more.
____________________

http://www.newamericandream.net

The New American Dream

What's New?

* Karen Kwiatkowski column
* Ava Bird poetry
* Rex Butters poetry
* Gary Mennie poetry

Columns:
Sherwood Ross — why not shut down a few prisons in the United States as well?
Mickey Z — Americans are cowards, too comfortable, will never-ever-not-in-one-million-years revolt-or-even-bother-to-stand-up — no matter what the rich folks do to them.
Lydia Sems — It's The American Dream that is the problem.

and more from Jack Saunders ...

Resistance:
* Planned civil disobedience in Minnesota to stop raids against immigrants
* Protests at Creech AFB against U.S. drone terroristic activity
*100 days of protest against Guantanamo to culminate

All this, Northern Exposure, The Big Lebowski, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights ... a certificate for free toast ... and more.

Join us.

The New American Dream
Dude.
... because ... Sister Mary Anne told us, "There are no wrong questions, if you don't know the answers."

... from the Dream Team

http://www.newamericandream.net

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Pickens Plan Action Alert

Rocky — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:15:29 GMT

Pickens Plan Action Alert

"Contact Congress about The American Renewal and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1) One version of H.R. 1 has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and now another has passed the Senate. Critical elements of the wind piece of the Pickens Plan are in one or both versions of the bill, which now goes to Conference to create a final version.

We need to make one final push on the stimulus package to ensure our pieces are included. Please fill in the following form to send your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives an email asking them to support the Pickens Plan components of the Stimulus Package. Even if you already emailed your Senators last week, please send an email again today to ensure your U.S. Representative also receives the message."

http://capwiz.com/pickensplan/issues/alert/?alertid=12648356&type=CO

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Immigration Gumballs

Rocky — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:33:07 GMT

The ILLEGAL immigration issue is a serious issue in the US that must be dealt with and I hope the Obama admin. will do the right thing and finally enforce the laws already on the books and more.

Immigration Gumballs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871651411393887069

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Air Force One converted to Algae biofuel

Rocky — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:33:56 GMT

Air Force One converted to Algae biofuel

Put your request in to President Obama to convert Air Force One Jets over to operate on algae biofuel. Anything that runs on diesel can easily be converted to run on algae based biofuels - even military equipment - all without food vs. fuel concerns.

Mr. President, concerning "real" energy policy for the US & the recent news of a new algae biofuel plant in Florida for jet-aircraft, would you please consider converting Air Force One over to run on algae biofuel? "GFI president and CEO Douglas Rodante says that "algae-based biofuel would be able to replace petroleum without alterations to engines or infrastructure..."

Enjoy this blog, video & sources -

"Algae: The Biofuel Revolution"
http://solargreenenergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/algae-biofuel-revolution.html

-----

Contact your elected officials to send your request
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Protest Obama's Faith-based Executive Order!

Rocky — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:35:29 GMT

Protest Obama's Faith-based Executive Order!

"Action Alert! Protest Obama's Faith-based Executive Order!

FFRF: Faith-based Office at White House Violates State/Church Separation

Feb. 5, 2009

Register your dismay over the faith-based executive order:
Phone the White House Comment Line at 202/456-1116
E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Statement by Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker Foundation Co-Presidents

With so many priorities on the presidential plate, it was discouraging to see President Barack Obama devote precious time to schmoozing with religionists today at the National Prayer Breakfast. To what purpose, other than to be seen wearing religion on his sleeve?

The nation is needing and awaiting sweeping action and reform, and we're being told to pray? (FFRF Takes National Prayer Breakfast Remarks to Task.)

Far more distressing is the fact that Mr. Obama used the occasion to copy a page off the George W. Bush script, and announced at that breakfast that he is issuing an executive order to create the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The national treasury is bleeding and we're being told to throw more tax dollars at religion?

Scientists, medical pioneers and suffering families are still waiting for Obama to revoke Bush's embryonic stem-cell line embargo, to undo the harm of two presidential vetoes wielded expressly to kowtow to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Well over 70% of Americans support embryonic stem-cell research; even Nancy Reagan and the Mormon Orrin Hatch endorse it!

Yet there been silence on this front from the White House since Obama's inaugural promise to "restore science to its rightful place." The creation of another White House faith-based office takes precedent over freeing stem-cell research lines?

The door was slammed shut on the Foundation and on us as individual taxpayers by the Supreme court in 2007, when we were told we did not have standing to legally challenge Bush's creation of the White House faith-based office. The Hein v. FFRF decision in effect gave the executive branch carte blanche to violate the Establishment Clause. If general appropriations are used by the White House to violate the Establishment Clause, state/church violations by the executive branch are not challengeable in today's America.

Any hope that the administration of "hope and change" would put our nation back on constitutional track was quashed by Obama's action today. His support of the program is no surprise. As a candidate, he announced his intention to rename the faith-based initiative to the faith-based council. But last July, Obama at least firmly vowed he would not let federal funds go to faith-based groups that discriminate on religion in hiring, firing or services.

Now Obama is backpedaling even on that minor reform. Obama did not rescind Bush's provision to allow faith-based groups to discriminate in their hiring practices. The new order supposedly provides a legal process for organizations to go through to ensure hiring is legal and nondiscriminatory—namely, referring such cases to the Attorney General for a determination. Imagine the mess!

In announcing the executive order, Obama said: "There is a force for good greater than government. It is an expression of faith, . . ." This pious assertion is no deviation from the Bush Administration. Obama will keep faith-based offices at all the agencies where Bush placed them.

The White House even brags that Obama's faith-based effort will be broader than Bush's. The White House faith-based office will be a "substantial programming and policy arm of the federal government," according to the White House.

Today Obama also officially named a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister to head the White's House's new faith-based office. Josh DuBois previously directed religious outreach for the Obama campaign. While it is possible BuBois' positions on social issues may deviate from those of his church, Pentecostals are generally right-wing. They are bible literalists, therefore they are almost all antigay rights and antiabortion. DuBois belongs to the same tradition that made Sarah Palin's religious views notorious. Pentecostals are the "noisy" fundamentalists who believe in the "gifts of the spirit": speaking in tongues, faith healing, prophecy, discernment of spirit (exorcism). Normally the private religious views of White House staff would be off limits. DuBois' extremist religious views have become relevant by his elevation to an office at the White House to promote faith and funding of faith-based social services.

A 25-member advisory council includes a few representatives of secular social agencies, but most are representatives of religious groups with a stake in funding religious groups, including the president of World Vision, and the president of Catholic Charities USA, etc. Before the faith-based schemes began, initially at the instigation of John Ashcroft, religious charities were granted vast sums of taxpayer monies to provide social services. All they had to do to qualify was to take their crosses down, create a secular arm and keep separate books. Obama should have returned to these simple safeguards.

Secularists, freethinkers and those of us who are the true conservatives--who wish to conserve what is greatest about our country and its godless constitution--must make a great fuss over today's blows to the Establishment Clause.

Tragic news came today--that the frail but constitutionally stalwart Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer. Justice Ginsburg has been a friend to freedom and rationality on the court. If health forces Ginsburg to resign, it is essential that the last woman on the U.S. Supreme court not only be replaced by another woman, but that Ginsburg's replacement demonstrate her same understanding and agreement of the Jeffersonian "wall of separation between church and state."

While Obama, in his National Prayer Breakfast speech, gave lip service to working with faith-based groups "without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state," it is clear he needs as much bolstering on this issue as that constitutional wall needs rebuilding.

Register your dismay over the faith-based executive order:
Phone the White House Comment Line at 202/456-1116
E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate."

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2009/obamafo.php

Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe - http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Keep Religion OUT of Politics Mobile Billboard in D.C. on Jan. 20

Rocky — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:29:58 GMT

Keep Religion OUT of Politics Mobile Billboard in D.C. on Jan. 20

"January 15, 2009 The Freedom From Religion Foundation is taking its message of keeping religion out of government to the Inauguration on Jan. 20. The nation's largest association of atheists and agnostics, also a state/church watchdog, is running a catchy quarter-page ad in The Washington Post on Jan. 20 addressed to the incoming president, urging "Mr. President, Rebuild That Wall!"

"The Freedom From Religion Foundation is taking its message of keeping religion out of government to the Inauguration on Jan. 20.

The nation's largest association of atheists and agnostics, also a state/church watchdog, is running a catchy quarter-page ad in The Washington Post on Jan. 20 addressed to the incoming president, urging "Mr. President, Rebuild That Wall!"

The ad will further urge the new president to "Dismantle Bush's disastrous 'faith-based initiative' " and "Restore the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation between church and state.' " Government, the Foundation noted, "should run on facts, not faith."

The Foundation's red-white-and-blue message of "Keep Religion OUT of Politics" will also be circulating for ten hours in the Capitol Hill area on Tuesday. (The Foundation is eager to receive photographs of supporters next to the mobile billboard to post at its website.)

" 'All the king's horses and all the king's men' can't put the faith-based initiative back together again, so let's throw it out and go back to the simple First Amendment," says Foundation co-president Dan Barker.

The Foundation and its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, on behalf of its 13,600 members, are among the co-plaintiffs in Michael Newdow's federal lawsuit, Newdow v. Roberts, challenging prayer to open and close the swearing-in and the addition of "In God We Trust" to the secular oath of office.

"The inauguration is not a religious event," notes Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. "It is not a coronation. It is a secular celebration for all of us. ‘We the people’ bow down to no sovereign, be it earthly or heavenly."

Michael Newdow will be arguing for a temporary restraining order today at 2 p.m. in a district court in the District of Columbia.

The Foundation has launched more than 40 lawsuits to preserve the constitutional separation of church and state since it was founded in 1978, and has taken (and won) more challenges of the faith-based initiative than any other civil liberties group. Its members were spurned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision last year denying standing in FFRF's challenge of Pres. Bush's authority to create a "faith-based office" in the White House."

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2009/washpoad.php

Newdow, FFRF & Coalition Sue to Halt Inaugural Prayers
December 30, 2008 The Freedom From Religion Foundation, its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor and several of its members are among the 29 co-plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit, Newdow v. Roberts, filed today by attorney Michael Newdow in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to enjoin the Presidential Inaugural Committee from sponsoring prayers at the official Inauguration. The 34-page Legal Complaint also punctures some myths, documenting that for most of our country's history, no clergy led prayers at inaugurations.

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2008/inaugurationComplaint.php

FFRF Urges Obama Not Only to Drop Warren, But All Prayer, From Inauguration
December 22, 2008 After being heaped with abuse over the past eight years, the Establishment Clause needs a 'fierce advocate' indeed in the White House. Take this unparalleled opportunity, Mr. President-Elect, to rebuild that wall of separation between church and state."

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2008/obama_warren.php

If keeping state and church separate are important to you - join the "Separation of church and state" tribe to remain up to date on the latest news, info and happenings http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

A New Year’s Greeting For The Ages:

Rocky — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:42:33 GMT

A New Year’s Greeting For The Ages: Jefferson’s Jan. 1 Letter To The Danbury Baptists Still Rings True

December 31, 2008

"I love Thomas Jefferson’s New Year’s Day greeting to the Danbury Baptists in part because it drives the Religious Right into such paroxysms of paranoia, ignorance and intemperance.

As I’m sure most of you know, President Jefferson sent a friendly missive to his Baptist admirers in Connecticut on Jan. 1, 1802. He thanked them for their support of him and of religious liberty. He also celebrated the First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions and expressed sympathy for the Baptists’ plight in a state where religious minorities still faced government hostility.

Jefferson famously observed: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

Jefferson’s “wall of separation” metaphor has proved handy over the years as a convenient means of describing the relationship between religion and government in the United States. Religious and political leaders, judges and citizen activists have often cited that protective constitutional barrier as they battle for true religious liberty, and many of us still do.

To the theocracy-minded, however, Jefferson’s wall is a never-ending source of sorrow. It stands between them and their goal of a government that imposes their religion on everyone by force of law.

Recently, Townhall pundit Christopher Merola launched two incendiary columns at the wall and those who support it. His essays are so pathetically mired in inaccuracies, smears and conspiracy theories, they would make a John Birch Society acolyte blush. He rails against Supreme Court’s 1947 Everson opinion that celebrated Jefferson’s wall and he singles out Justice Hugo Black and others who support it for vitriolic abuse.

Merola says Everson was “horribly decided” and charges that “FDR appointee Hugo Black, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, reinterpreted the meaning of the First Amendment of the Constitution.” He says Black took Jefferson’s wall metaphor “completely out of context” and “limited the religious liberty of all Americans.”

Merola claims that thanks to the Supreme Court, little girls are kept from praying in public school and he hints darkly that anti-God conspiracies kept references to religion out of the new Capitol Visitors Center.

Like all good Red-baiters, Merola traces the problem to communists and the ACLU.

“We must not,” he says, “ allow ourselves to buy into the delusion of Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a member of the Communist Party of the USA, who desired the removal of all references to God from the public square.”

Merola concludes, “Consider what has occurred in the last sixty years or so. The freedom of religion in America has been limited and even demonized in some cases, due to a lie that began with a member of the Communist Party of the USA, who influenced an FDR appointee to the Supreme Court, who was himself a member of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s totally insane! “

What’s insane, of course, is Merola’s take on American history and the protections of our Constitution.

Justice Black was indeed a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his Alabama youth. But Black’s record on the high court shows no hint of racial and religious bigotry. On the contrary, his decisions upheld the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans. (In the Everson case itself, Black called for high wall of separation, but at the same time he ruled in favor of bus transportation aid to Catholic schools. That’s hardly the work of an anti-Catholic bigot!)

As for the actions of Franklin Roosevelt and the ACLU, I’ll let their records speak for themselves. Right-wingers have made Roosevelt a villain for years, but most Americans still regard him as a great leader who brought us out of the Great Depression and saved the world from fascism in the Second World War.

Say what you will about the ACLU – I don’t agree with them all the time myself — but Americans’ rights would be less firmly established if that organization were never founded.

Put simply, there is no KKK-Communist-ACLU-FDR plot to end religious liberty in America. It’s absurd to think that the far-right KKK has ever worked in tandem with communists and Franklin Roosevelt to restrict civil liberties. Hey, Merola, you left the Masons, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, the UN and the Mafia out of your little conspiracy theory. Get out your tin foil hat, buddy, and add some new players to your imaginative and imaginary drama!

Merola, by the way, is described as “the Political Director for Political Media, Inc, a political advertising and public relations firm in Washington, DC.” Isn’t it sad that politics and public relations in the nation’s capital sometimes sink to this level?

Here’s the real scoop. From Jefferson on, thoughtful Americans have understood that true religious liberty means that government stays out of religious matters. That’s not a plot; it’s common sense – and it’s the mandate of our Constitution. The American people have, indeed, built a wall of separation between church and state, and it will take more than the ravings of Religious Right zealots such as Merola to tear it down.

Happy New Year, everybody! 2009 looks brighter on the civil liberties front than 2008, but we’ll still need your help in stalwart defending church-state separation. Stay with us!!"

By Joseph L. Conn

http://blog.au.org/2008/12/31/a-new-years-greeting-for-the-ages-jeffersons-jan-1-letter-to-the-danbury-baptists-still-rings-true/

Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe - http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Rev. Rick Warren's at Obama's inauguration

Rocky — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:31:45 GMT

I agree with Rob Boston - Rick Warren supports taking away rights from a certain class of individuals specifically because it counters his religious views. This does not represent the *"CHANGE"* Obama promised - this is more of the same religious right xian fundamentalism of the Bush administration. Rick Warren is Anti-gay, Anti-reproductive freedom, Anti-science.

It's a major disappointment to have him up there for such a historical event starting off the Obama admin. Whatever Obama was thinking he must've been stoned.

Countdown: Rob Boston on Why the Inclusion of Warren is a Bad Idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJzxw1jWFqU

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

1,300 could be arrested in immigrant's tax scam

Rocky — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:11:20 GMT

1,300 could be arrested in immigrant's tax scam

Associated Press
Sunday, November 16, 2008

"GREELEY -- An immigrant's tax scam in Weld County has launched a sweeping investigation authorities say could yield 1,300 arrests over the next year -- a crackdown some complain is a backhanded attempt to oust immigrants.

The Weld County District Attorney, Ken Buck, says authorities have traced some $2.6 million in payments by the IRS to illegal immigrants using phony Social Security numbers...."

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/nov/16/1300-could-be-arrested-in-immigrants-tax-scam/

---------------------

I like the comments below the article:

"Through out this whole article they make excuses not to go after the illegal immigrants who have committed federal felonies.

Legal citizens get thrown in jail for not having car insurance or an expired drivers license.

And people want to give illegal people who have absolutely no right to be in this country special right to comment felonies and get away completely free??

Completely out of control these criminals need to be apprehended and sent back to there own country, and they can take their families with them if they are so worried about separation."

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

New "Energy Team" to Save America?

Rocky — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:10:30 GMT

New "Energy Team" to Save America?

"Could the new "Energy Team" in Washington mean real energy policy for America for the first time in over 30 years? This "Green Dream Team" will need to be truly outstanding to confront the tasks at hand and to face probable resistance from industry and Congress."

http://solargreenenergy.blogspot.com

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

'No gods' campaign ignites Christian fire

Rocky — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:21:43 GMT

'No gods' campaign ignites Christian fire
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83202

"But now leaders of InGodWeTrustUSA.org say their members will work with state lawmakers and others to try to prevent such attacks on religion, specifically Christianity."

Hmmm, sounds familiar, like the U.N. attempting to criminalize criticism of Islam. So, will they start burning and banning atheist books and comparative religion books?

Christianity and Islam are attacks on MY religion of common sense and rationality - will they be banned.

A slippery slope, indeed."

Enjoy these videos:

"FFRF vs. Christian Crybabies of Weak Faith"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPre70IHdk

"Hundreds protest outside Wash. Capitol over atheist sign" p1 of 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiZxm1LD6Ww

"Stolen Atheist Sign Found At Radio Station"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2krniU-RzI

Join up for an FFRF membership
http://www.ffrf.org/membership/

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Obama picks La Raza's top lobbyist Cecilia Munoz?

Rocky — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:35:17 GMT

Obama picks La Raza's top lobbyist Cecilia Munoz?

The Obama transition team has named La Raza's top lobbyist, Cecilia Munoz, to a senior White House staff position?

"Washington, DC—The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) hailed today’s announcement by President-Elect Barack Obama that Cecilia Muñoz will become the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in his administration."

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=139225

Okay, now just get some in a White House position from the KKK to make it even. Does this guarantee ILLEGAL immigration will soon become okay-fine, nothing to worry about? Or does this just guarantee that huge 10 lane highway from Mexico through the US into Canada is a go?

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15497

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posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Send a letter to President-Elect Obama to STOP Religious Discrimination

Rocky — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:17:30 GMT

Send a letter to President-Elect Obama to STOP Religious Discrimination

Tell President-Elect Obama to Stop Religious Discrimination!

Take action NOW!

The election is over and transition plans are well underway. The possibility of change has arrived, and for those of us who stand up for separation of church and state, it’s not a moment too soon. For eight years, we have been fighting President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative. We’ve battled over charitable choice in Congress time and time again. From hiring discrimination to proselytizing, from the lack of accountability to the preemption of important state and local civil rights laws, the Initiative has been fraught with unconstitutional and unconscionable policies.

With a new administration taking office, we finally have an opportunity to reverse some of the damage caused by President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative. President-elect Obama has stated clearly that he will continue the government partnership with faith-based organizations in order to reach as many of our citizens as possible who need social services. But thanks to some encouraging words by the President-Elect, we have reason to believe that some of the most destructive aspects of the Faith-Based Initiative may finally end. Until policies have been implemented, however, the revisions to the Initiative remain uncertain. Needless to say, President-Elect Obama has recently been hearing from loud voices from across the political spectrum including those who wish to send federal dollars to support religious activities and to underwrite organizations that discriminate in hiring. We must be willing to work with President-Elect Obama to implement this new partnership in order to protect church-state separation.

We need you to speak up NOW to ensure that once and for all, the wrongs of the Bush Faith-Based Initiative are made right. Please click here to send a letter to President-Elect Obama encouraging him to restore civil rights and prevent possible violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This is our opportunity to work with the next administration to begin to repair the wall between church and state!

To send a letter to President elect Obama go here -
http://action.au.org/au/mailapp/

http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=fld_dear_pres_elect

And be sure to join the "Separation of Church and State" tribe - http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Auto bailout - Revenge of the Electric Car

Rocky — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:52:47 GMT

Auto bailout - Revenge of the Electric Car

Revenge of the Electric Car
http://solargreenenergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/revenge-of-electric-car.html

http://solargreenenergy.blogspot.com

There are some great video clips in the link above - check 'em out. One of which is a recent press conference demanding General Motors apologize to the American people for destroying the automaker’s EV1 plug-in electric vehicle.

As a reminder of the stubbornness of the US car industry & Congress over the last 30 years - watch the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

GAFFNEY: Treasury submits to Shariah

Rocky — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:55:59 GMT

GAFFNEY: Treasury submits to Shariah

"The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.

As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.

Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."

"Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC.

The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda. Like Harvard, Treasury seems utterly disinterested in what Shariah actually is, and portends.

Unfortunately, such submission - the literal meaning of "Islam" - is not likely to remain confined long to the Treasury or its sister agencies. Thanks to the extraordinary authority conferred on Treasury since September, backed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the department is now in a position to impose its embrace of Shariah on the U.S. financial sector. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury's purchase of - at last count - 17 banks and the ability to provide, or withhold, funds from its new slush-fund can translate into unprecedented coercive power....

... After all, the object of Shariah is the supplanting of our government and Constitution, through violent means if possible and, until then, through stealthy ones. Islamists, having secured footholds via their parallel societies, inevitably use those to extend their influence over Muslims who have no more interest in living under authoritative Islam's Shariah than the rest of us do. Inexorably, it becomes the turn of non-Muslims to accommodate themselves to ever more intrusive demands from the Islamists...

It is known as submission, or dhimmitude."

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/04/treasury-submits-to-shariah/

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posted in Democrats - 2 replies

Meet the New Christian Right

Rocky — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:18:21 GMT

Meet the New Christian Right
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/meet-the-new-christian-ri_b_141998.html

"In the aftermath of John McCain's defeat in the 2008 US presidential election, American media outlets are issuing the same sorts of predictions, on the imminent death of the American Christian right as a political movement, that mainstream media outlets have floated periodically since the 1980's.

But reorganization within the movement has outstripped almost all media and journalistic scrutiny, and within the last two decades the American Christian right has vectored outwards to become a truly global mass membership movement, an international evangelical imperative.

Two videos presented here present two related faces of the new, now international, Christian right.

One is a 10 minute documentary in which I present the "Seven Mountains" imperative to reclaim key sectors of society. Top leaders in the Seven Mountains have made distinctive, noteworthy statements.

The second video, by Michael W. Wilson (not related to this author), features footage Wilson took during Lou Engle's November 1st, 2008 rally at San Diego's Qualcomm stadium. During the really, Engle calls for Christian martyrs.

There are real connections between the subject materials of these two videos:

Lou Engle is a member, along with Mary Glazier, of C. Peter Wagner's Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders.

Mary Glazier is the leader of the prayer group Sarah Palin joined in 1989 and which became part of C. Peter Wagner's Spiritual Warfare Network.

Wagner's 'valued personal friend', Thomas Muthee, anointed and blessed Sarah Palin in an October 16, 2005 ceremony held at Palin's church of over two decades, the Wasilla, Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska.

Muthee and Glazier, both personally tied to Sarah Palin, are also top leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, under C. Peter Wagner.

Wagner's 500 apostles may preside over as many as 100 million Christians world wide.

One of C. Peter Wagner's apostles owns the Jakarta Tower, which will be among the top 10 buildings on Earth when projected to be completed in 2011.

The New Apostolic Reformation's rise in Brazil mirrors the precipitous decline in Catholic Church membership in Brazil, the fifth most populous nation on Earth.

New Apostolic Reformation ministries are developing partnership relationships with the United States Department of Homeland Security."

For a resource page with numerous articles and documentary videos on the Apostolic Reformation, please see:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/114652/6239

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1HGpY8EuXQ

The Man Behind Proposition 8
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-03/the-man-behind-proposition-8/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

22%

Enrika — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:42:00 GMT

Very, very interesting.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/5/13157/1286/456/654502

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Outfoxed & Fahrenheit 9/11 Reminder

Rocky — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:17:57 GMT

Outfoxed & Fahrenheit 9/11 Reminder

I am celebrating the closing of the Bush W. Presidency of mass destruction and the 2008 elections by watching Outfoxed & Fahrenheit 9/11.

It's just a reminder of all the B.S. we've been through during the Bush years. Even if you don't like Michael Moore's movie.

I truly feel that Bush W. will go down as the worst President in US history and rightly so. I also feel that, while I can forgive the voters who voted for him in 2000, I cannot for give them for his re-election in 2004. Those voters who re-elected him should also be held accountable for their own horrible judgment & decision. Embarrassed?

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/about/clips/

http://www.outfoxed.org/Clips.php

One thing I've never seen anyone mention in 8 years is - I wonder if the election of Bush W. is why the US was attacked on 9-11. Or did 9-11 happen because of Bush W for other reasons? Would 9-11 still have happened had Gore won in 2000?

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

No Honest MSM Critique of Obama

Rocky — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:38:46 GMT

No Honest MSM Critique of Obama

Barack Hussein Obama:
Consensus Illusions Versus Dangerous Documented History

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.

"The articles below, and the documentary weblinks, raise serious questions about the favorite candidate for US President, Barack Hussein Obama. I assembled this material only after observing what a terrible job the mainstream news media (MSM) was doing in regards to investigating the background and activities of Obama. I believe this is due to a shared radical-left and Islamist agenda on the part of this same news media and much of the academic world, something which appeared in American society increasingly after around 1960, intensifying as the USA and its allies were seriously confronted with a growing and well-funded Islamic threat.

In this discussion, I will steer clear of policy matters, like health care, economy and so on. I have my own opinions on that, but the issues presented here are more substantial, having to do with lies, dirty-tricks and deception by Obama and his cadres of supporters, and by those who are manipulating his candidacy, and his person, from behind the scenes. Personally I feel Hillary Clinton would have been the better candidate for the Democratic Party, and while like McCain-Palin, she is a flawed character, I do believe in the main there is no larger hidden agenda with any of the other candidates, as what is now documented with Obama....."

Please read the full article -

http://obrl.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-honest-msm-critique-of-obama.html

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posted in Democrats - 3 replies

get involved in separation of church and state issues

Rocky — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:24:26 GMT

With the US Presidential election just a couple weeks away - I just wanted to post a reminder to get involved in separation of church and state issues by being informed on what's going on.

One way to be informed immediately about issues as they're happening right now is by signing up for the Action Alerts by e-mail. Here are the some in no particular order that I highly recommend signing up for and considering getting a membership:

The Secular Coalition for America
http://action.secular.org/signUp.jsp

Americans United for Separation of Church and State
http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=fld_getinvolved

Freedom From Religion Foundation
http://www.ffrf.org/contact/FFRFnewsjoin.php

"... both Senators McCain and Obama have vowed to continue President Bush's White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Obama has even promised to expand it. However, this program has become a patronage mill for political allies. There is little effort to ensure that taxpayer subsidized programs do not involve proselytizing, and religious discrimination in hiring is widespread. In spite of Obama's pledge to clean up this unconstitutional mess, it's unlikely anyone can salvage a corrupt, multi-billion dollar government bureaucracy that stretches across twelve federal agencies. Further, this program not only deprives effective secular organizations of needed funds for social services, it actually privileges religious groups by giving them a special status and special access to federal dollars. The candidates should tell us why they are unwilling to shut down this corrupt, discriminatory program."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/09/secular_values_voters_and_the.html

Get involved and join the "Separation of Church and State" Tribe -
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

US layoffs mount, home foreclosures rise

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:03:18 GMT

US layoffs mount, home foreclosures rise
By Patrick O’Connor
24 October 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/jobs-o24.shtml

Indicators of a worsening social crisis in the US are mounting daily as the economic downturn takes an ever greater toll on jobs. Further layoffs were announced yesterday in the US and around the world. New data was also released showing escalating numbers of American families losing their homes through foreclosure, further driving down house prices.

A Reuters roundup of some of the US corporations which have made major layoff announcements in the last two days alone included:

• Chrysler, which announced an additional 1,825 layoffs on Thursday

• Goldman Sachs, which said it will cut 10 percent of its staff, or almost 3,300 jobs

• Pharmaceutical giant Merck, which announced it is shedding 12 percent of its workforce

• Biotechnology company Maxygen, which said it will cut nearly 30 percent of its workforce

• Money manager Janus Capital Group, which is sacking 9 percent of its workforce

• Xerox, which said yesterday it will cut 5 percent of its staff, or 3,000 positions

• Mining equipment maker Terex Corporation, which is laying off hundreds of its workers

• United Parcel Service, which announced plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs next year

• Fidelity National Financial Inc., which announced it will slash 1,000 jobs and cut pay by 10 percent

• Financial services conglomerate Popular Inc., which is cutting 600 jobs and closing more than a quarter of its branches in the US.

The US Labor Department reported that new applications for unemployment insurance increased by 15,000 to 478,000 in the week ending October 18, significantly more than was anticipated by economists. A year ago, new jobless claims stood at 333,000.

The Labor Department also found that inflation-adjusted wages for non-managerial workers declined by 1.9 percent in the twelve months up to September. This extraordinary figure indicates the extent to which the social position of the working class is being further undermined as the financial crisis and recession unfold.

The Washington Post yesterday reported that leading temp agencies are receiving far higher numbers of inquiries from job-seekers, including from people who are currently working but fear for their jobs. The article noted that many desperate workers "are also willing to make less money, even as the cost of living goes up." An example was call center jobs that paid $9 an hour last year but now pay $8.50.

Workers in the auto industry continue to bear much of the brunt of the growing assault on jobs and conditions. Chrysler announced 1,825 layoffs through the elimination of a shift at an assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio and said it would bring forward the closure date of a plant in Newark, Delaware that had been scheduled to close in December 2009.

Chrysler released figures yesterday revealing that it lost more than $1 billion in the first six months of 2008. Standard and Poor's has said that both Chrysler and GM may run out of cash in 2009 as auto sales fall to their lowest level since 1991.

Germany's Daimler AG, which has a 19.9 percent stake in Chrysler, said yesterday it was revising the book value of its stake to zero. This is down from $220 million three months ago and $1.2 billion at the end of 2007.

GM is in an equally severe crisis. A JPMorgan analyst told Reuters he expects the company to lose more than $12 billion next year. Like Chrysler, GM is slashing costs ahead of a potential merger between the two companies.

GM announced Wednesday it was considering selling AC Delco, its international parts subsidiary, a measure which will inevitably lead to further job losses. The company also said it will suspend many salaried employee benefits, including matching contributions for workers' 401(k) retirement plans.

Job losses continue to mount in the European auto industry. Sweden's Volvo AB said yesterday it would sack 850 more workers at its construction equipment unit. This follows an earlier announcement of 500 layoffs in the same unit, as well as 1,400 layoff notices issued to workers at truck factories in Sweden and Belgium.

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported yesterday that Volkswagen plans to cut most or all of its 25,000 temporary staff. A Volkswagen spokesman denied the report, insisting that no decision had yet been reached.

Polish government advisors have estimated that one third of the 1.2 million Polish workers in Britain and Ireland, i.e., 400,000 people, will either return to Poland or move to another country to try to find work. According to a number of reports, the exodus has already begun, with thousands of Polish workers relocating, either in response to being laid off or to the British pound's poor exchange rate, which has sharply reduced the value of immigrant workers' wages sent back to their families.

Workers in countries throughout Europe are also being hit with rapidly declining house prices and increased foreclosures. But nowhere is the crisis more severe than in the US.

A survey released yesterday by listing service RealtyTrac found that foreclosure filings—that is, default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions—were reported on 765,000 properties in the three months ending in September, up 71 percent from the third quarter in 2007. Six states—Nevada, California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona—accounted for more than 60 percent of all foreclosure activity. Nevada recorded the highest foreclosure rate, with one out of every 82 housing properties issued a foreclosure filing.

The RealtyTrac report concluded that the third quarter figures probably underestimate the situation. Several states have passed new laws requiring lenders to issue extended notices before filing default notices. These laws artificially suppressed September's foreclosure figures by temporarily postponing the full impact. Rising unemployment will further accelerate the catastrophe.

The company said 81,300 homes had been foreclosed in September, and a total of 851,000 had been repossessed by lenders since August of 2007.

Rod Dubitsky, managing director for asset-backed securities at Credit Suisse, told BusinessWeek he expects that more than 5 million American families will lose their homes through the year 2012. He said 1.69 million families will lose their homes in 2008.

Falling property values have also hit homeowners. Over the last period, the family home was widely regarded as the primary asset to fund people's retirement, their children's college education, and even to cover unanticipated health expenses. But yesterday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that house prices in August were 5.9 percent lower than they were a year earlier. The decline was the greatest recorded since 1991, when data was first collected.

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Black File 7001: In 1999, Lee Vin Bah became an unknowing human test animal in a U.S. Government mind-control and torture black project. Wednesday, October 08, 2008 [Revised: 10.12.2008]

Lee Vin Bah — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:00:17 GMT

Black File 7001: In 1999, Lee Vin Bah became an unknowing human test animal in a U.S. Government mind-control and torture black project.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008 [Revised: 10.12.2008] [Press Statement]

Black File 7001: McCain’s Genocidal Holocaust in America

The McCain Doctrine:
Empty dribble for those unable to distinguish horse manure from shoeshine. McCain’s inner-cracker surfaces with “That one!” aka “Those people!”, “Tar Baby!”, “Little Black Sambo!” or “Jew Boy!” McCain’s comment caused me to remember my youth in the Southern U.S. and gas stations with three bathrooms for men, women and colored. One night I went to sleep as a Jewish child and woke up the next morning to hear my family saying that the U.S. Government now considered us white. As for my race, I chose to remain “human” while at least attempting to recognize same in all people as the individual threads within the beautiful fabric of our humanity.

McCain – “I’ve been on nuclear powered ships”:
Yes, second from the bottom of his graduating class, John McCain wet starts his Skyhawk on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal in 1967, detonates a Zuni missile on the F4 Phantom parked behind his jet and causes the infamous fire aboard the ship killing 132 U.S. Navy sailors and wounding countless others. McCain’s military career has consistently recognized the admiral’s son successfully making touchdowns for the opposing team - stop John you’re running the wrong way…the goalpost is the other direction! McCain’s political career has the same “reverse maverick” modus operandi while supporting an illegal war in Iraq that should result in first degree murder charges being brought against George W. Bush and his administration, as cited within Vincent Bugliosi’s book titled, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

McCain – “My friends my record speaks of continuous service to the nation”:
Whose nation wrong way McCain – North Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Dubai, land of the Bush bin Cheney harem whores? Allegedly, McCain with a false war hero persona sided with his communist captors in North Vietnam during the war. McCain, you must DECLASSIFY YOUR SEALED MILITARY AND ASSOCIATED RECORDS to answer the charges that while a POW of the North Vietnamese, you voluntarily and without being tortured did give aid and comfort to the enemy of the United States by producing over 32 propaganda tapes denouncing America as a nation of war criminals and did treasonously provide classified military flight path routes to the NVC, which allowed them to reposition their antiaircraft weapons and kill U.S. pilots on their return trips back home. Tell the American people why you and Kerry changed the standing rules that allowed U.S. Military Commanders on the ground to immediately implement a rescue mission to recover POWs and MIAs when sighted and now require a two day delay be communicated through the Pentagon before taking action, which may as well be two years in jungle time? McCain you allegedly support crossing into Pakistan to kill the complicit Bush family’s friend and ally, Osama bin Laden, but you won’t rescue our U.S. Military POWs and MIAs after the CIA has confirmed over 15,000 sighting. Not to mention that my sources close to the U.S. Special Forces operating in that region confirm that the Whitehouse via the Pentagon telephonically gave a special operations team the following orders after identifying the target for neutralization; “do not to kill Osama bin Laden and remove your team from the area.” When the team later inquired about their combat pay, they were told the mission had been classified and technically speaking since on paper they were never in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, they are therefore not entitled to combat pay. Wonder if this was one of the same formulas used by your syndicated Republican consortium to systematically rape the financial assets of the American people – where were you 90% of the time for the past eight years? Maverick? – no I think you have been more like sedentary hot buttered goat custard.

McCain – “No one in this country supports genocide” – vomit!
Guess what “my friends”, McCain headed a Senatorial Investigation Committee to cover-up the Bush family’s continuing genocide of Americans and scapegoated their blame onto the back of a power company engineer for another Republican act of treason. My sources so very close to the U.S. Secret Service that I once declined their offer to be photographed sitting at Bush 41’s Whitehouse desk, volunteered that President and former CIA Chief, George H.W. Bush ordered the clandestine testing of a military Electromagnetic Pulse [EMP] weapon on New York City from a refitted A-6 Intruder jet-bomber with a golden canopy that “Killed American Citizens.” New Yorkers died that day, just like on 911. On the date of that EMP weapons attack ordered by Republican George H.W. Bush, American citizens died from an inability to obtain emergency services following massive regional power outages caused by the covert use the U.S. Military against our nation’s people while on U.S. soil. Following 911, it’s too bad that Rudy Giuliani affected such a rapid clean-up of the crime scene area to destroy any evidence; especial with what I suspect would have been found after the botched demolition operation on WTC Building No.: 7 that suddenly decided to drop into its own footprint without being touched. The Bush oligarchy historically recognizes an ongoing lineage of treason to perpetuate their global continuing criminal enterprise and the largest theft of government funds in the history of the known world.

President and former CIA Chief, George H.W. Bush replaced CIA Chief William Colby who died during a suspected assassination on August 27, 1996, before he could testify in the 1953 staged suicide/murder of U.S. Army scientist Dr. Frank Olson [CIA MK-ULTRA] from the same top secret laboratories in Fort Detrick, MD that recently recognized another alleged suicide in one Dr. Bruce E. Ivans [911 Postal Anthrax produced from within the same facility].

Black File 7001: The Genocidal Holocaust in America
U.S. Genocidal Black Projects in torture and mind-control have continued in development since the CIA’s importation of 1600 Nazi SS war criminals to America during “Operation Paperclip” where they continued their inhuman atrocities on human test animals within the MK-ULTRA Program. Those monstrous practices were first begun at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. These genocidal black projects are covertly funded by billions of dollars from American taxpayers and are rarely scrutinized beneath their program titles by the congressional intelligence committees and their elected members with top secret crypto clearances. Typically these black projects and their methodologies are shrouded beneath federal programs with misnomer titles; kept under wraps at top secret military installations; are concealed within academic research grants; tested during the surrounding events of natural disasters; monitored within the public education system; entrenched within technological devices and surveillance equipment; and are hidden from public scrutiny around the world within prisons, hospitals and centers of academic learning that occasionally double as a blacksite facilities to varying degrees. These formulas for torture are applied against every thread of our existence and the total fabric of humanity by the controlling few against the many whom I feel will increasingly find their revolutionary voice for a restorative democracy that recognizes the human being in all people. Exposing these U.S. black projects causes’ whistleblowers like me to become Targeted Individuals [TIs] who are cauterized through “slow kill” and “silent kill” methods that psychologically wall-off mind-control victims with layers of suicide programming or are rapidly silenced by assassination. Self-inflicted harm is the cornerstone of the four principle components within the CIA torture matrix. This means that the “deep state” proponents of genocidal black projects in torture and mind-control within the U.S. Government infrastructure use covert operatives or jackal agents to harm or murder innocent American citizens. The only reason why these criminal agents and enemies of humanity have not murdered me to date is because I write and publish. The jackals and other criminal actors known to me have been warned along with their handlers that unannounced appearances will be considered a mortal threat. My contacts in the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been notified.

The Federal Witness Protection Program [WitSec], complete with a blacksite facility staffed by government psychologists assisting in the mind-control and torture program, recognizes a clandestine shadow network with given WitSec Inspectors and associated federal agents and agencies conducting sadistic and genocidal practices against Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and Government Whistleblowers who unknowingly become human test animals within the fraudulent federal program.

This human laboratory control sample within the WitSec is subjected to an evolving mind-control and “no-touch” invisible physical torture experiment sourced from methods produced by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA Program and the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual [The Torture Bible]. The ongoing cover-up by WitSec’s administrators includes their lying under oath before the U.S. Congress to conceal the wrongful deaths of U.S. Government Witnesses from the lasting erosive effects of psyops, mind-control and torture while in and after having exited the Federal Witness Protection Program.

This additionally includes the theft of government funds while robbing the American taxpayers of $Billions through padded numbers to feather their budget. In 2000, I assisted the USDOJ to investigate and successfully prosecute my first WitSec Inspector, John W. Dubois [name authorized by U.S Marshals Service for release] for the same charge. Dubois was later released from prison and allowed to stalk me, convey veiled death threats and later accosted me by the arm while I was near death from cancer treatments.

WitSec Headquarters took no action after filing over 30 security notices, which remains in keeping with the most of our state and federal elected representatives; including Senator Ron Wyden, Congressman David Wu, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, and Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers. Actually my volunteer work as a consumer advocate has placed nearly $30 thousand in the State of Oregon’s depleted coffers and I like Oregon’s AG, but their motives that extends beyond the perpetuation of the “Dark Figure of Crime” is best known to each of them and should be explained to the Oregon voters before the next election; certainly I am affording them yet another opportunity to respond, since they already know my legal name and contact information.

Every frontline covert operator working deep cover assignments, Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and Government Whistleblowers who are granted a fraudulent Protective Person’s Status under Title 18 of the U.S.C. only to become unknowing human test animals in clandestine experiments, on average begin developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] within 24 days of exposure in their given operational areas. Some are affected sooner and all experience the complete deconstruction of Constitutional Civil Liberties and inalienable human rights entitled any person [human being] and/or an American citizen after being psychologically pressed into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

The oil rich nations of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Dubai that supported the attacks against America on 911, today are the only entities making money during the final glut of their end game to destroy America with the treasonous assistance of their complicit partners in the Republican Bush-Cheney administration.
With every economic hardship that our fellow human brothers and sisters are continuing to experience with the collapse of U.S. Republican capitalism, respectfully for those of us who remain an unseen minority as a protect class within plain-sight of mainstream America, the concentrated formulas used against us are horrifically deconstructive and are infinitely worse than anything being generally experienced at this moment.

This is Clandestine Genocide being conducted against American citizens by the U.S. Government. For my group of Veterans of Voluntary Covert National Service, no matter how much the economy and life improves for the majority of Americans living on Main Street, USA, our existence as Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses, Government Whistleblowers and Targeted Individuals [TIs] will remain one of Adjunct Human Slavery within a Virtual Death Camp Environment that continues to systematically and systemically murder our members who are equally entitled American citizens of good character. From that hellish place we watch the blessings of liberty enjoyed by our fellow citizens like “bubble boys” able to move about you while never allowed to penetrate the membrane of that inhuman vessel that falsely imprisons us away from our constitutional entitlements and inalienable human rights. The culpable actors within the U.S. Government have made it virtually if not completely impossible for most of use to find employment. The women in our group have to a degree been able to obtain public assistance, albeit an unnatural reduction from their former financial statuses before the WitSec Program.

This becomes an egregious human rights violation and Constitutional Crime committed by the U.S. Government against its veterans of covert national service who apparently are systemically targeted for eventual death following their voluntary participation as partisans of liberty.

A convicted felon in prison has more recognized civil liberties and opportunities made available to them than American citizen who went above and beyond the call of duty to participate in our government system to make the world and our nation a better place for all human beings.

Female Government Witness and Whistleblower Subjected to Rape Torture!
One female government witness and whistleblower recently communicated that following her discovery that a number of Republican Senators were laundering millions in U.S. taxpayers’ dollars through quasi federal programs, that she was kidnapped and subjugated to human sexual slavery for the sadistic pleasures of those wishing her death. Once programmed through mind-control techniques she was raped for two days, hung by the neck and thought left for dead until she awoke in a pool of her own blood and feces with her sexual organs destroyed.

After a 24 hour reconstructive surgery and a period of recuperation, she returned to a university where she completed her degrees only to have those targeting her for torture and mind-control, separate her from securing those University Degrees while leaving her with $30 thousand dollars in debts for student loans. Somehow she will have to pay-off those federal student loans while continuing to seek restorative justice and restitution for the crimes committed against her. Be aware that all American citizens and other innocent victims of genocidal human experimentation are being subjected to these crimes against humanity by the same individuals who espouse the rights of a blastocyst while processing Christianity. That said, even the members of the Nazi SS attended the Catholic Church.

Like this brutalized human being and gentle woman, I remain disenfranchised from the completion of my degrees by the actionable offences of the WitSec Program and without an audit conducted by the federal government, to this day I am not certain if the WitSec Inspectors actually caused me to pay nearly double what I owed in federal student loans.

Under the Bush oligarchy and within the Bush-Cheney administration, whose members were the first to avoid government service and the first to send our youth to be murdered for financial profits, a former Nazi became a Catholic Pope and the grandfather of Karl Rove [Roverer] aka “The Architect” built the Birkenau death camp. Karl Heinz Roverer was the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was the Reich-Statthalter or Nazi State Party Chairman for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A.G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp where tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and others were slaughtered through genocide. During that time and before while reaching back to 1920, the namesake of the two Bush presidents, George Herbert Walker and former Republican Senator, Prescott Bush laundered the financial assets of the Nazi industrial complex through WWI, WWII, and the Jewish Holocaust against the United States of America while our nation was at war with Nazi Germany. That treasonous legacy continues today as recognized since September 11, 2001.

The Federal Witness Protection Program with its “deep state” blackops proponents sharpened the blade of tactics later used against detainees inside Abu Ghraib Prison on the unknowing human test animals within the WitSec black project. To date the CIA torture matrix has killed and murdered an estimated 115 human slaves tortured to death inside Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq; 35 were ruled homicides. The developers of the ongoing CIA torture matrix within the U.S. Government continue to target innocent American citizens for “slow kill” and “silent kill” deaths on U.S. soil and the majority of our alleged elected representatives remain silent. What excuse will they give when this matter reaches the light of public examination?

Other Examples of Black Projects Shrouded from Public Scrutiny
Some other examples of the programs and shrouds used as covers for the testing and development of the torture matrix include: The War for Profit Corporatist Deconstruction and Reconstruction Model; the No Child Left Behind Initiative that erodes the education process in High Schools, funds the testing materials exclusively sold by Neil Bush’s education software company, defrauds varying percentages of students from attending college, herds others into the cheap labor pools, and targets new immigrant American citizens for military service under an anti-American and treasonous administration; the New Phoenix Program; “Project Monarch II”; the CIA MK-ULTRA Program [the Manhattan Project of mind-control to create the perfect Manchurian Candidate] with projects Bluebird, Artichoke and over 250 subprojects; Dr. Ewen Cameron’s development of the July 1963, CIA KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec; “Project X” where KUBARK and other new variations that had largely been used in South America from 1983 to 1987 were remixed into a second “Bible” of the perfect torturer, titled Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1993; the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the genocide of New Orleans with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ funding for strengthening the levees being diverted by Republicans to build a “Teapot Museum in North Carolina”; the FEMA trailer camp as Guantanamo Bay in New Orleans with free bus rides to Wal-Mart; Guantanamo Bay Prison, Cuba; Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq; the three word mantra “War on Terror”; Color Code Terrorism Alerts and related Fear Tactics [terrorism]; Fluctuating Gasoline Prices that rise and fall with pending legislation and elections; the Attacks on September 11, 2001 by the oil trading partners of the Bush family; the 911 Postal Anthrax from the top secret laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD and the alleged suicide of Dr. Bruce E. Ivans; the 1953 staged suicide/murder of Dr. Frank Olson, from the top secret laboratory at Fort Detrick, MD; the tactics of Psyops Terrorism used against the American people and the world; the Genocide of over 100,000 innocent Iraqis [women, men, children, and infants] as War Crimes and First Degree Murder; the unconstitutional Judicial Selection of a U.S. President; the lies told to regain control of a Democratic Congress only to deconstruct the U.S. Constitution and the hopes of American citizens with Nancy Pelosi’s “Impeachment is off the Table”; “No-Touch” Invisible Physical Torture Techniques; Targeting Individuals [TIs] with Psychotronic Weapons using Electromagnetic Pulse Energy, Radiofrequency, Microwave Radiation, and Subliminal Imaging to “Alter” Brainwave Patterns that collectively result in Mind-Control or “Brainwashing”; the “Memory Pill” aka Brainwashing made simple by Big Pharma [also involved with MK-ULTRA]; the Punishing of Goodness while Rewarding Criminality and Gross Incompetence; Pharmaceutical particulates in our Toilet to Tap Drinking Water Systems; Atmospheric Nitrogen Fertilizer and Sulfuric Acid from Coal Furnaces compounding Global Warming and Affecting the Balance of Nature with increasing numbers of Dead Zone in the Earth’s Oceans; Plastics Consumer Products manufactured from Oil being used as “Slow Kill” Poison Delivery Systems; Video Surveillance Cameras installed on virtually every street pole for the harvest of a Retinal Recognition Database while simultaneously causing Desensitization to Empirical Intimate Intrusions and Psyops Suppression of the Sovereign Thought Process to create a Toxic and Self-Consuming Society [Self-Inflicted Harm of the CIA Torture Matrix]; the Psychological Conditioning of being Electronically Strip Searched or Raped by NSA X-Ray Body Scanners in Airports while some unknown operator sits in a closed room recording the images of small children and adults into a Database for Republican Pedophiles; Microwave Antenna Arrays positioned throughout most cities that have been removed in Germany from the known harm caused by prolonged exposure; the Electoral College measured against the Popular Vote to manipulate the will of “We the People”; Electronic Voting Machine Irregularities; Ad Nauseam Rhetoric repeated through the Propaganda Ministries that have deconstructed a Constitutionally Entitled Free Press; the Absorption of Generational Wealth for Converting those in the Middle into a Peasant Class Society; the Perversion of Language with a “War on Drugs” verses the Perpetual Promotion of Prescription Pharmaceuticals with many Patented before an Illness has been Invented; and the Deregulation and Privatization of America’s Economic Infrastructure to finish what they started on 911. All of the above and more, depending on the individual concentration or a collective lamination of same, recognize the means of causing psyops terrorism and torture technique that although tested on those of us who walk unseen among you in their most concentrated forms, have increasingly been implemented against the general population of America and the World since September 11, 2001.

Standing Alone for the Human Victims of Torture.
With the exceptions of Senator, Barack Obama; Congressman, Dennis Kucinich; and Congressman, Elijah E. Cummings, the majority of our elected Congressional members, including my Senator, Ron Wyden and Congressman, David Wu have supported genocidal torture programs through their craven silence and failure to implement a Congressional investigation regarding my firsthand experience of having become an unknowing human test animal and victim of torture as Non-Criminal Federal Witness, No.: 7001.

Even though John McCain publically stated “my friends no American would allow genocide to occur when it is completely within our power to stop it.” This unfortunately is not the case and like the past this same government demeanor that once allowed the genocide of over 6,000,000 human beings during the Jewish Holocaust is at play again. My story, Black File 7001 has been blacklisted by the propagandized corporate news media, most of the progressive news media, including Democracy Now, NOW on PBS, Air America Radio, and The Ed Schultz Show. Of course talk radio is what it is and I quit listening over a year ago, but Democracy Now and NOW on PBS, are two shows that I have followed and supported for years; only they will be able to answer the reasons for their own silence.

Currently and while still seeking asylum in Canada, I am attempting to contact Oprah Winfrey with Harpo Productions, Inc., the Canadian BBC and would welcome communications with any genuine journalism organization, publisher, film maker, literary agent or elected political representative willing to discuss the Black File 7001 story. My thank to those of you who have sent a petition to the Government of Canada requesting they grant asylum under the conventions of torture cited by the UNHCR and retroprosity for my Protective Person’s Status issued by U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno under Title 18 of the United States Code.

The Bush-Cheney administration validates Black File 7001
Ironically, Black File 7001 has been reverse validated by the Bush-Cheney administration through their federal agent’s unlawful use of a communication facility while telephonically threatening, “Bah – you have people in very high places afraid to death that you are going to destroy their programs and they said if you publish your book, they will “invent” a criminal charge against you.” Following my invitation for his handler’s to go pound salt in their asses, agents of the Sensitive Operations Division of the Social Security Administration and the WitSec Program first awarded my Social Security Disability Benefits and then in an act of political retribution, punitively withdrew same under written letters of protest from the U.S. Government’s own federal judge. In an egregious violation of several federal laws that extend to a charge of treason under the Federal Identities Act, those mandated with my protection deliberately commingled federally sealed classified government documents and illegally unsealed my covert SSA file for public viewing from January 8, 2001 [my son’s birthday] until the U.S. Attorney in Seattle, WA suddenly contacted my attorney advising that she was filing a Motion to Reseal on July 14, 2008 – the Bush-Cheney administration is trying to perform a cover-up of the many crimes committed against me. A federal court judge is deciding the case on civil appeal in Seattle, WA.

Again, the administrators of the Federal Witness Protection Program [WitSec] have lied before the U.S. Congress regarding the deaths of government witnesses from the causal effects of the genocidal program while financially raping the American taxpayers with padded numbers they alleged represents 18,000 government witnesses when liberally speaking the number is more likely no higher than 8,500. Only 6% of the total number are Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses and the rest are Custodial and Criminal Federal Witnesses.

The ongoing egregious federal crimes and human rights violations committed against me directly or in layers and the mechanisms that have denied my constitutional right of legal redress under duplicitous use of national security protocols, have deconstructed my ability to enjoy the fundamental right to life, complete my university degrees, secure employment, recognize my Social Security, and retain my Social Security Disability Benefits from the actionable offences committed in political retribution by a corrupt government system that has leaking classified government information under Title 18 of the United States Code to a telecommunications company engaged in this blackops RICO conspiracy. The erosive effects caused by psyops and “no-touch” invisible physical torture by the U.S. Government, recognizes a resulting harm that has remained infinitely more damaging during the past eight years than the singular event relating to the Valerie Plame Wilson matter.

The list of criminal offenses committed against me along with the commingling and leaking of federally sealed and classified information is lengthy and has created a mortal threat environment around my geographic location in violation of the WitSec mandate. This further serves as the U.S. Government’s passive sanction for my assassination that increasingly becomes a probability nearing the end of the treasonous Bush-Cheney administration.

Under this administration and others, this is the clandestine reward for those good citizens and former law enforcement members who gave something extra in service to our nation. With a Protective Person’s Status as a Protected Class, we are “disappeared” into an unequal parallel within our mothercountry that is barren of constitutional civil liberties and inalienable human rights. While being mummified for voluntary covert national service, our individual sense of self-identity is eroded into an existence of adjunct human slavery within a virtual death camp environment were an unnatural death waits in the shadows. Once situated in the plain-sight of the general population, we are confronted by the constant threat of lethal deportation or vicarious extraordinary rendition back to our birth identities and certain death from known mortal threats and often the actionable offences committed in political retribution by the very U.S. Government personnel allegedly tasked with our protection.

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Many of you have written Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Canada and again I am indebted to you for your sense of humanity and kindness. Should any of you have time or the inclination, I would be equally grateful for a note being sent to your Elected Representatives, Oprah Winfrey, the BBC, and any progressive journalist who might assist me in sharing the Black File 7001 story. Whether my life is forfeited in this process, G-d or the Mother of All Things has placed this mission in my path and as her servant I obey.

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US Senate passes Wall Street bailout bill

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:53:47 GMT

US Senate passes Wall Street bailout bill
By Patrick Martin
2 October 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/sena-o02.shtml

The Democratic-led US Senate approved a slightly modified version of the Wall Street bailout Wednesday, reviving the $700 billion windfall for the wealthy only two days after it was defeated in the House of Representatives. The 74-25 vote saw both the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Republican presidential candidate John McCain voting to approve the bailout.

A host of leading liberal Democrats joined in approving the bill, the largest single transfer of wealth to the financial elite in US history, including Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Majority Whip Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer of New York, and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California. Only a handful of Democrats opposed the bill, joined by about 20 conservative Republicans.

Barely 48 hours after the House defeated the bailout bill—at least in part because it is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people—congressional leaders are now engaged in an anti-democratic effort to push the legislation through over mass opposition.

In one indication of the attitude of the congressional leadership to the public, the computer servers that route email traffic to the web sites of individual congressmen were shut down—on the pretext that they were overwhelmed by the high volume of traffic—with the result that constituents were no longer able to send emails opposing the bailout.

Majority Leader Reid, a Nevada Democrat, exercised his authority to attach the bailout plan to an unrelated piece of legislation already on the Senate calendar, a bill that mandated equal treatment by healthcare insurers for mental and physical illnesses. This parliamentary maneuver allowed the Senate to evade the constitutional requirement that all spending legislation originate in the lower house.

The House is expected to take up the bill Friday, with both Democratic and Republican leaders pledging to shift enough votes in each party to overturn the previous 228-205 vote rejecting the bailout. On Monday, House Democrats supplied more than two-thirds of the votes in favor of the bailout, with 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans supporting it, while 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans were opposed.

As has been the case throughout the two-week political crisis over the bailout, the Democratic Party leadership has partnered with the Bush administration to do the bidding of the financial elite. The result is a bailout plan, now on the verge of passage, identical in its fundamentals to the three-page outline first submitted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson September 19.

Paulson will be given the authority to buy unlimited quantities of “troubled assets” held by various financial firms, with the restriction only that the Treasury can hold no more than $700 billion at any one time, and that purchases must be reported to an oversight panel and posted on the Internet. The panel has no authority to overrule Paulson’s decisions.

The cosmetic measures added to the legislation last weekend—relating to executive pay and “golden parachutes,” the oversight board, and suggestions that the Treasury secretary treat homeowners facing foreclosure with leniency—were not strengthened in the Senate bill, as some liberal congressmen had suggested, but remain unchanged.

Concessions to the Republican right

The only significant concessions to the House vote are aimed at appeasing the bill’s right-wing Republican opponents. The Senate bailout bill incorporates more than $100 billion in tax cuts contained in a separate bill passed by the Senate last week, but blocked by the House because the tax cuts were not fully offset by tax increases or spending cuts, as required by congressional budget rules.

The bulk of the tax breaks, $78 billion, extend existing tax breaks for business and for renewable energy efforts. There is also $8 billion in tax relief for victims of natural disasters, including Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike, and an extension of relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, which benefits several million upper-middle-income families.

The other major change from the House bill is an increase in the amount of insurance for bank accounts provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), from $100,000 per account to $250,000, a measure that is of no benefit to the vast majority of families whose bank deposits are far smaller.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the FDIC will also be allowed to borrow unlimited amounts from the Federal Reserve in an effort to forestall widespread bank runs after the collapse of a series of major banks—Washington Mutual, Wachovia and IndyMac, to name only the largest.

While as many as 50 House Democrats voted against the bailout on the grounds that it was too favorable to Wall Street and did not assist struggling homeowners and the unemployed, there are no concessions in the Senate bill in that area. On the contrary, the main concern of congressional Democratic leaders was that a section of conservative House Democrats, the so-called Blue Dogs, might oppose the revised bailout measure because the tax provisions violate “pay-as-you-go” budget rules. Many of the Blue Dogs opposed the original bailout bill in Monday’s vote.

In a further demonstration of bipartisan support for the bailout, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, joined with the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Rick Perry of Texas, in a letter to Congress urging passage.

Obama backs the bailout

The most politically significant feature of the Senate debate on the bailout Wednesday was the speech delivered by Obama, reiterating his support for the bill.

Obama said that now was not the time to pinpoint causes or assign blame for the crisis, comparing it to a house fire, where the community must come together to put out the blaze before determining what caused it. The metaphor was an exceptionally poor one, given that the bill provides no relief at all for the millions of homeowners facing foreclosure, while giving a bounty to the Wall Street arsonists.

Obama said that once the bailout had been approved, it would be necessary to rescue families “on Main Street” who were having trouble paying their bills because of rising unemployment, gas prices, health care costs, etc. But he did not explain the priority: why the needs of the billionaires on Wall Street were so much more urgent than those of the unemployed, low-paid, uninsured and those facing foreclosure and eviction.

Moreover, as he well knows, the allocation of what will likely amount to more than a trillion dollars in public funds to absorb part of Wall Street’s losses will bankrupt the federal government. One reason he and the Democratic leadership as a whole are pushing to pass the bailout measure before the election is so that after Election Day, should he win, he will be able to declare that his “hands are tied” and he has no choice but to repudiate his campaign promises and adopt austerity measures.

The Democratic candidate warned that passage of the bailout was needed to “prevent the crisis from turning into a catastrophe,” adding, “We can’t afford to take the risk that the worldwide economy could be plunged into a very deep hole.”

In reality, the bailout will not resolve what is a systemic crisis of the capitalist system or prevent it from enveloping millions of working people in the US and around the world. The most powerful sections of the US financial elite are utilizing the crisis as an opportunity to offload their bad debts onto the government and impose the burden of the financial meltdown, for which they are responsible, on the working class. There is already much commentary in the media and among economists to the effect that this bailout is little more than a stop-gap, and even greater transfers of wealth to Wall Street will be required.

Obama admitted, “Even if we get this in place, we could still have enormous problems and probably will have enormous problems over the next few months and potentially longer.”

He then declared, as he has in several speeches and in his debate last week with McCain, that the cost of the bailout would make it necessary to cut back on future plans to spend money on federal social programs. The programs he has promised in the course of the election campaign “may have to be delayed or stretched out,” he said. He added that an Obama administration would carry out a program of budget-cutting and fiscal austerity.

In a speech earlier in the day in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Obama fostered illusions in the bailout, telling his audience, “This is not a plan to just hand over $700 billion of your money to a few banks. If this is managed correctly, we will hopefully get most or all of our money back—we might even turn a profit on the government’s investment—every penny of which will go directly back to you, the investor.”

Such lies only underscore the fundamental political reality of the 2008 campaign: The working class has no choice between Obama and McCain, both of whom are proven defenders of corporate America. Obama is emerging at this point as the more likely victor in the election, not by proposing any program to defend the interests of the vast majority of the American people, but by presenting himself to big business as a more consistent and effective defender of the interests of the American ruling elite.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Illegal Immigration and the Mortgage Mess

Rocky — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:29:51 GMT

Illegal Immigration and the Mortgage Mess

September 24, 2008

The Mother of All Bailouts has many fathers. As panicked politicians prepare to fork over $1 trillion in taxpayer funding to rescue the financial industry, they've fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers and minority home ownership mau-mauers (can't call 'em greedy, that would be racist) for blame.

But there's one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice: how illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis.

It's no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave -- Loudoun County, Va., California's Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters -- also happen to be some of the nation's largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Regional reports across the country have decried the subprime meltdown's impact on illegal immigrant "victims." A July report showed that in seven of the 10 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, Hispanics represented at least one-third of the population; in two of those areas -- Merced and Salinas-Monterey, Calif. -- Hispanics comprised half the population. The amnesty-promoting National Council of La Raza and its Development Fund have received millions in federal funds to "counsel" their constituents on obtaining mortgages with little to no money down; the group almost succeeded in attaching a $10-million earmark for itself in one of the housing bills past this spring.

For the last five years, I've reported on the rapidly expanding illegal alien home loan racket. The top banks clamoring for their handouts as their profits plummet, led by Wachovia and Bank of America, launched aggressive campaigns to woo illegal alien homebuyers. The quasi-governmental Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority jumped in to guarantee home loans to illegal immigrants. The Washington Post noted, almost as an afterthought in a 2005 report: "Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing major ethnic or racial group, have been courted aggressively by real estate agents, mortgage brokers and programs for first-time buyers that offer help with closing costs. Ads proclaim: "Sin verificacion de ingresos! Sin verificacion de documento!" -- which loosely translates as, 'Income tax forms are not required, nor are immigration papers.'"

In addition, fraudsters have engaged in massive house-flipping rings using illegal aliens as straw buyers. Among many examples cited by the FBI: a conspiracy in Las Vegas involving a former Nevada First Residential Mortgage Company branch manager who directed loan officers and processors in the origination of 233 fraudulent Federal Housing Authority loans valued at over $25 million. The defrauders manufactured and submitted false employment and income documentation for borrowers; most were illegal immigrants from Mexico. To date, the FBI reported, "Fifty-eight loans with a total value of $6.2 million have gone into default, with a loss to the Housing and Urban Development Department of over $1.9 million."

It's the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to lax Bush administration-approved policies allowing illegal aliens to use "matricula consular cards" and taxpayer identification numbers to open bank accounts, more forms of mortgage fraud have burgeoned. Moneylenders still have no access to a verification system to check Social Security numbers before approving loans.

In an interview about rampant illegal alien home loan fraud, a spokeswoman for the U.S. General Accounting Office told me five years ago: "[C]onsidering the size of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston and other large cities throughout the United States known to be inundated with illegal aliens, I don't think the federal government is willing to expose this problem for financial reasons as well as for fear of political repercussions."

The chickens are coming home to roost. And law-abiding, responsible taxpayers are going to pay for it.

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/09/illegal_immigra_51.php

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

As economic crisis deepens, rich get richer

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:32:08 GMT

As economic crisis deepens, rich get richer
Forbes publishes list of 400 wealthiest Americans
By Tom Eley
24 September 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/forb-s24.shtml

Even as the US careens into its greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, the financial aristocracy whose parasitism and criminality has brought on the crisis has held its own—and then some.

The recently released Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans shows that the combined wealth of the aristocracy has increased 2 percent, even amidst the financial breakdown and recession of the economy. “In this, the 27th edition of the list,” Forbes glumly notes, “the assembled net worth of America’s wealthiest rose by $30 billion—only 2%—to $1.57 trillion.”

Readers will be forgiven for tripping over the word “only” in relationship to a $30 billion increase in wealth for 400 spectacularly wealthy individuals. This “modest” figure—the increase in wealth for the oligarchy in a bad year—is only slightly less than the federal government has budgeted for unemployment insurance for all of 2008.

The overall wealth of the 400 richest Americans is staggering. There are no multimillionaires on the list; a minimum of $1.3 billion being required to gain admittance, while the average net worth is $3.9 billion.

The combined wealth of the richest 400 individuals is $400 billion more than the entire discretionary spending budget for the federal government. It is more than $300 billion larger than the combined 2008 outlay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is more than 15 times the combined appropriations for education and highways and mass transit.

The personal wealth of the top 400 Americans is more than twice the combined annual GDP of all of sub-Saharan Africa, home to nearly 800 million people, the vast majority of whom live in dire conditions. It is also several hundred billion dollars larger than the GDP of the world’s eighth biggest economy, that of Spain.

The club’s richest member is Microsoft magnate Bill Gates, whose net worth, $57 billion, is greater than the annual GDP of about 120 of the world’s 180 nations.

The year’s biggest winner is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose personal wealth increased by $8.5 billion to $20 billion, making Bloomberg the nation’s eighth richest individual.

On Tuesday, without a hint of irony—much less shame—Mayor Bloomberg proposed brutal across-the-board budget cuts for the city of New York. He is calling for cutbacks totaling $500 million for the current fiscal year, to be followed by much steeper cuts in the coming years. Meanwhile Bloomberg, in the course of just one year, pocketed 17 times what he is now demanding that millions of working people in New York City forfeit in terms of vital services and jobs. Only in America!

However, owing to the turbulence of the stock market, great fortunes were being both made and squandered even as Forbes published its list. “The Forbes 400 is a snapshot of estimated wealth on Aug. 29, 2008, the day we locked in prices of publicly traded stocks,” the magazine wrote. “Given how unsettled the stock market is, some of those on our list will become significantly richer or poorer within weeks—even days—of publication. Many, including AIG shareholders Eli Broad and Steven Udvar-Hazy, have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Becoming poorer is of course a relative process; we can be certain that none of the demoted oligarchs faces hunger.

Among this year’s biggest “losers”—and there is a degree of poetic justice in this—are casino moguls. Kirk Kerkorian has managed to squander $6.8 billion of ill-gotten social wealth, while the fortune of his rival Sheldon Adelson “has fallen $13 billion in the past 12 months—$1.5 million per hour.” Adelson has managed to lose more in an hour than most US workers will earn in a lifetime.

That the nation’s financial aristocracy continues to gorge itself even as the economy stagnates demonstrates the increasing parasitism of the elite. The wealth of the super-rich is no longer bound up with the growth of the real economy, as it was in the days of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford. Just the opposite is the case. The wealth of the aristocracy is based on the plundering and destruction of the real economy.

A perusal of the basis of the Forbes 400 members’ wealth illustrates the parasitic nature of US capitalism. The largest two categories on the list are “finance” with 65 members and “investments” with 51. Among the “sources” Forbes lists for these categories are “leveraged buyouts,” “investments,” “hedge funds,” “money management,” and “banking, insurance.”

The next largest category is “media/entertainment,” with 36 representatives among the Fortune 400, followed by the 35 members in the highly toxic “real estate” category. There are 30 members of the Fortune 400 who have reaped their fortunes from “technology,” almost all from Internet ventures or computer technology. Twenty-eight more are found in the “oil/gas” category.

Among the Fortune 400 there are 20 in the “retail” group, among them seven members of the Walton clan, owners of Wal-Mart, who collectively have assets of over $100 billion.

It has to be asked: Are there any members of the Forbes 400 actually associated with producing commodities or creating wealth of some sort?

There are only 19 members of the 400 in the category called “manufacturing.” However, upon inspection we see that this group is comprised of corporate raiders, oil refiners, inheritors, and controllers of holding companies. Only five members of this classification are actually associated with producing a commodity—and four of these produce light consumer goods.

Likewise, there are only 11 members of the financial aristocracy whose wealth has been associated with commodity production in the agricultural sector. But among these, nine are inheritors of the Cargill fortune. Of the other two, one has gained his fortune selling discount cigarettes; another by producing pesticides in Argentina.

There are nine members of the group in the “apparel” category, which is split between those whose wealth has come from retail sales, such as the owners of the Gap clothing stores, and those who have made windfalls by producing consumer goods in low-cost countries and selling the products for inflated prices in the US, such as Phil Knight of Nike.

There is only one member of the “construction/engineering” category, the 321st richest American, Alfred Clark, who has made his fortune by building sports stadiums. The “food” category, of which there are 21 members, is divided among retailers, inheritors, and the owners of single product lines, including the owner of the Slim-Fast empire. There are only three members of the “shipping/trucking/transport” category, and one member of “mining/lumber” (whose wealth came from overseas ventures).

In short, the incredible fortunes accumulated by the American elite have precious little to do with socially useful production. On the contrary, the financial aristocracy has reaped its obscene piles of wealth from the gutting of infrastructure, the shuttering of industrial production, and the impoverishment of working people, the broad mass of the population.

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New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:32:30 GMT

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate [oil pipeline] interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama and McCain are proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO THE BIPARTISAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!

NO TO OBAMA and MCCAIN'S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

McCain's "surge" only working for MONEY/ bribery ???

Rocky — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:45:08 GMT

McCain's "surge" only working for MONEY/ bribery ???

What's up with this story about the surge in Iraq working as McCain and Republicans love to claim - yet it appears the only reason it is working is because the US is paying them loads of money to stop killing US troops?!?! So they're bribing them with US tax payer money?

What happens when the US runs out of money due to the many other crisis right here within the US?

It's not the surge, it's the money:

"...US military leaders in Iraq also acknowledged in interviews that it is the sheik who commands the fighters who initially receives the money, which can add up to $60,000 a month and $720,000 per year for a sheik with 200 fighters..."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/22/18336/2602/817/542255

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is right

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:37:02 GMT

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is right
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
By: Ben Becker

The corporate lynching of a Black reverend

You know a political system is bankrupt when telling the truth becomes a scandal.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been the target of a racist media campaign.

In the last week, the corporate media has effectively sullied the image of Barack Obama to millions of potential voters. He has not been exposed for an extramarital affair or fiscal corruption. No, the scandal is that Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, talks openly about the history and perseverance of institutional racism in this country.

Wright is a Black liberation theologian, encouraging his congregation to embrace a perspective that reveals and highlights the concealed role of Africa and people of African descent, so they can speak "for themselves, as subjects in history, not objects in history." He is a widely respected community leader whose sermons focus on social justice, public health, collective responsibility and Black self-determination. Trinity welcomes people of all nationalities. He is part of the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination that includes 1.2 million members from all backgrounds.

Regardless, the corporate media pundits seized upon the remarks of Obama’s spiritual advisor and smeared him as an anti-white, anti-American "Black racist." In this demonization campaign, political and social context were thrown out the window, and all pretenses of objectivity abandoned. As with the media campaign against Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic in the run-up to the imperialist invasions of their countries, the only thing that emerged out of this slanderous "journalism" was the image of the "demon."

The campaign has been effective at pushing some white voters away from supporting Obama. In a national Democratic poll conducted between March 14 and 18, Sen. Hillary Clinton overtook Obama by seven percentage points. Just a few days earlier, Obama was ahead by several points. Obama lost his lead over Sen. John McCain in the same period. This abrupt swing can only be attributed to the racist demonization campaign conducted against Rev. Wright.

Corporate media shapes racist consciousness

When Obama won the Iowa caucuses in early January, he started off his speech with the words, "They said this day would never come." His message was indirect, but clear: his presidency would unite the nation and heal the historical rifts, between blue states and red states, Black people and white people. If an African American man could win a state that was 92 percent white, clearly there was reason to believe or "hope" that this country could finally bury racism.

Obama himself has gone to great lengths to avoid being labeled as the "Black candidate," leaving it to others to emphasize the potential symbolism of an African American president. He has hewed the Democratic Party line closely, avoiding any subjects that could appear as "Black issues."

With his message of "change," powerfully orated and carefully packaged, Obama went on to win not only the states in the southeast with large Black populations, but also overwhelmingly white states like Kansas, Vermont and Wyoming. This in itself was a remarkable development. It showed that without an active racist campaign stirred up by the government and the media, there exists the basis for multinational unity—even if in this case on patriotic and non-working-class terms—organized under Black leadership.

It was actually Bill Clinton, the self-styled ally of the Black community, who first tried to stir up racism among white voters. He suggestively compared Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s victory there 20 years earlier. In doing so, he intended to elicit fears from white "middle" America that Obama was a civil rights warrior in disguise.

Later, Hillary Clinton prodded Obama in a presidential debate about why he had "denounced" but not "rejected" Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The question was beyond ridiculous. It was merely an attempt to link Farrakhan’s name with Obama’s in the minds of backward white voters. At present, the Clinton camp is undoubtedly celebrating the vile demonization of Rev. Wright.

This is the tragic reality of racism in U.S. society. It is not automatically the overriding factor in every political context. But it can be turned on, almost with the flip of a switch, by the country’s ruling class. With the mass media, they have tested and precisely calibrated this racist machine over generations. Like all ideologies, it can be challenged, cracked, and in some instances, smashed. But this requires an active anti-racist struggle, which shows through experience the class character of the media and the common benefits of multinational organizing.

If these white voters had sat through one of Wright’s sermons, had heard a fuller clip of his remarks, or had been given the chance to hear the reverend himself, it is doubtful his comments would have had a major impact. But instead, in show after show, newsreel after newsreel, FoxNews and CNN only played sound-bites of Wright saying "Goddamn America." Long before corporate-owned television had become the primary instrument for shaping popular consciousness, Marx famously wrote, "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." Centuries later, his words hold true.

Wright is right

Rev. Wright was right when he identified the centrality of racism in U.S. history and said, "the country and culture is controlled by rich white people." A brief survey of Wall St. board rooms—or the Senate floor—makes this an indisputable fact.

Rev. Wright was right when he said, "the government lied about the Pearl Harbor." Rev. Wright was right when he said Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. Rev. Wright was right when he called the government an "arrogant, racist military superpower."

He was right when he called Black men turning on Black men "fighting the wrong enemy," because "both are primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat." Look at the disproportionate incarceration rate and lengthier sentences for young Black men.

Rev. Wright was right when he said Washington supported "state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans" and now, referencing the World Trade Center attacks, "the stuff we’ve done overseas is now brought right back home into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost."

Why is it so hard to believe that a destructive and imperial foreign policy creates enemies abroad? U.S. activity in the Middle East—not to mention the occupation of the Muslim holy lands in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war—caused widespread indignation in the region.

Yet, while Democrats have scored points off of Bush’s declining popularity due to the Iraq war, it is still considered heretical to suggest that the plane hijackers had a motive beyond "extremism." Bush’s ridiculous notion that they "hate our freedom" still holds sway.

Rev. Wright was right when he said "the government lied about the Tuskegee experiment," in which the government left African American men infected with syphilis to die. In every stage of U.S. history, Black people have had to endure criminal and sadistic medical experimentation. Puerto Rican women were forcibly sterilized. This history is rarely mentioned in history textbooks, but is well known in the most oppressed sectors of society. A grave distrust for the established medical consensus on the origins of HIV is perfectly justifiable.

And yes, Rev. Wright is right when he says "Goddamn America" for killing innocent people without batting an eye and "for treating her citizens as less than human." Should the country be blessed for defending apartheid South Africa and upholding Jim Crow too?

On March 18, Obama gave a lengthy speech condemning "in unequivocal terms" Wright’s comments as "not only wrong, but divisive."

Obama referred to Wright as a sort of radical uncle, whose views he does not endorse, but who he cannot disown any "more than he can disown the Black community." He called Wright’s views on the centrality of racism in U.S. society "profoundly distorted," a reflection of an embittered civil rights generation for whom "the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away." Distancing himself from Wright’s defense of the Palestinian people, Obama emphasized that conflicts in the Middle East stemmed not from "stalwart allies like Israel," but instead from the "perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

The New York Times lauded Obama’s speech as one of the most important political pronouncements in 50 years, for having stimulated dialogue on such a sensitive issue. This episode— in which the media forced Obama to repudiate the politics of the Black community in order to maintain credibility—reveals what the liberal commentators will not say: Wright is right.

Although it is certainly historic that millions of white voters have entered their local polling stations and pulled the lever for a Black candidate, a more profound anti-racist struggle is needed to halt the ruling class’s racist campaign. A good place to start is to defend Rev. Wright from the corporate media lynch mob.

posted in Democrats - 2 replies

Telling the Truth is Islam Bashing?

Rocky — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:20:12 GMT

Democrats and Republicans need to read this entire blog:

Telling the Truth is Islam Bashing?

"I am bombarded by hate and threats by the Allah-fearing fanatics, simply because I speak the truth about Islam. If telling the truth about Islam is Islam bashing, then mea culpa.

Question: Does Islam get a pass because it is a religion? Who says Islam is a religion? Millions do? What is the evidence? The words of masses of brainwashed carriers of the Islamic virus, transmitted to them by their parents, are worthless as evidence. What counts is the irrefutable fact that this creed, claimed to be the one and only religion of Allah, has been and continues to be a source of great suffering for non-Muslims as well as the ignorant masses of Muslims themselves.

I will share with you just a few of thousands of horrific things that Muslims do to people of other religions or those without any religion at all..."

Enjoy the full blog
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/07/telling-truth-is-islam-bashing.html

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

McDonald's pays $1 million in illegal immigration case

Rocky — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:30:59 GMT

McDonald's pays $1 million in illegal immigration case

McDonald's franchisee will pay $1 million in Nevada illegal immigration case

By Associated Press

"NEW YORK (AP) _ A McDonald's Corp. franchisee will pay a $1 million fine after pleading guilty in Las Vegas federal court to felony immigration offenses for giving false Social Security numbers to illegal aliens.

The charges follow an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who have said management of Mack Associates Inc. knowingly hired illegal alien workers in Reno, Nev.-area McDonald's restaurants, supplying them with false identification.

The Justice Department released details of the plea agreement late Wednesday.

In U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, attorneys for Mack Associates filed guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy to encourage and induce an alien's unlawful residence in the U.S. and one count of aiding and abetting an alien to remain in the U.S., which are felony offenses.

According to the plea agreement, Mack Associates management hired people known to reside in the U.S. illegally, and gave them names and Social Security numbers belonging to other individuals.

In addition to the fine, the government and Mack Associates agreed that the company be placed on probation during the period the fine is outstanding.

Joe Gillespie, director of operations for Mack Associates, and the franchisee's former vice president, Jimmy Moore, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting an alien to remain in the U.S. Both men face a maximum penalty of no more than five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In September, agents encountered 58 people working illegally at 11 McDonald's restaurants owned by Mack Associates near Reno, Nev., and were arrested. About 30 of these workers have been returned to their native countries. The remaining workers were provided with documentation to stay in the U.S., pending an outcome of the criminal investigation.

Representatives for Mack Associates and McDonald's were not immediately available to comment."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-mcdonalds-investigation,0,3392325.story

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Kucinich's July 4th message

Rocky — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:37:00 GMT

Kucinich's July 4th message

Friday July 4, 2008

"Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has been at the forefront of the attempt to push for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and last month presented 35 articles of impeachment to Congress.

Now Kucinich has released an Independence Day message which invokes the words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to urge support for impeachment and the restoration of the rule of law.

"Some Democratic leaders say impeachment's off the table," Kucinich begins. "So let's set a new table for our nation, upon which we place the Constitution, and where we demand that all those who've taken an oath to defend it keep their promise and protect our nation from the threat within. Please go to kucinich.us now and sign the petition which calls for impeachment. This is the one petition that will make a difference because I will be personally delivering it to your member of Congress."

"Two hundred thirty two years ago, our nation was 'conceived in liberty,' continues Kucinich, quoting Lincoln's famous phrase. "We have once again reached a moment of truth, one that Lincoln recognized at Gettysburg, as to 'whether this nation, or any nation so conceived or so dedicated, can long endure.'"

"Through the ashes of the Civil War," he goes on, "Lincoln prayed 'that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.' This 4th of July 2008, we face a different kind of war, one which is trying our souls, a war based on lies."

"With the power of truth, the power of the people," Kucinich concludes, "we can achieve a new birth of freedom." As the strains of "America the Beautiful" swell in the background, he urges, "Be the answer to Lincoln's prayer. Please pledge your support now for restoring the rule of law in America. As we once again celebrate Independence Day, let us celebrate freedom from fear and pledge that this government of the people will survive in this land that we love."

Meanwhile, President Bush delivered a July 4th address before a naturalization ceremony for new citizens at Thomas Jefferson's home of Monticello that was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. According to news accounts, "shouts from protesters were heard during Bush's remarks," while a transcript notes repeated occurrences all through the speech of "Audience disturbance," "Audience interruption," and "Audience interruption continues."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Kucinich_calls_for_new_birth_of_0704.html

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Obama Support For 'Faith-Based' Program Is Disappointing, Says Americans United

Rocky — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:06:54 GMT

Obama Support For 'Faith-Based' Program Is Disappointing, Says Americans United

But Watchdog Group Says Candidate’s Opposition To Religious Discrimination In Hiring And Publicly Funded Proselytism Are Steps In Right Direction

"Rather than try to correct the defects of the Bush “faith-based” initiative, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would do better to shut it down, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Obama today announced a proposal to expand faith-based funding during a speech in Zanesville, Ohio.

“I am disappointed,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “This initiative has been a failure on all counts, and it ought to be shut down, not expanded.”

However, Lynn said he was pleased to hear Obama express support for church-state separation and say that he would bar government-funded proselytism and religious discrimination in hiring when tax dollars are involved.

“It is imperative that public funds not pay for proselytizing or subsidize discrimination in hiring,” said Lynn. “Obama has promised that he will not support publicly funded proselytism or discrimination in hiring, and that’s an important commitment.”

The Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that religious charities can discriminate on religious grounds in hiring staff when running publicly funded programs.

Lynn said he is concerned that the Obama plan apparently would allow direct tax funding of houses of worship to run social service programs. That, said Lynn, raises serious issues of entanglement between religion and government.

Americans United has led opposition to the Bush faith-based initiative since it was unveiled in 2001."

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=9927&JServSessionIdr009=oibugz9xz3.app13a

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

"SCOTUS overturns 'Roe', eliminates right of privacy"

Enrika — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:56:31 GMT

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/3/123640/9421/696/528154

"SCOTUS overturns 'Roe', eliminates right of privacy"

by clammyc
Tue Jun 03, 2008 at 09:37:00 AM PDT

You can expect to see that headline if John McCain wins the Presidency.

It is no secret that the non-"activist judges" on the Supreme Court are the older ones, and it is no secret that there could be two, maybe even three appointments over the next 4 years. And it is also no secret that McCain has been pandering to those who want to erode the Constitution further - ironically in the name of "strictly interpreting it".

One of the more difficult things that face Democrats and progressives is to undo the "maverick" and "moderate" brand that McCain has spent decades building and crafting. There are mountains of evidence, hundreds of votes, countless comments, actions and people that he has closely aligned himself with - yet he is STILL though of as more likely to reach across the aisle and more likely to effectively work with the other party than Obama.

There are millions of independent or moderate voters who don’t know The real McCain and are unable to or unwilling to accept the cold hard reality that he is precisely the opposite of the carefully crafted persona that he is perceived to have.

I’ve been doing a lot of opposition research and writing about McCain over the past few months, and have been trying to figure out (as have many others) what the best way to rebrand him, convince uninformed voters about, and get information out regarding him. There are a lot of ways - there is the ties to lobbyists, there is the "double talk", there is the "bomb bomb bomb Iran", the "100 years in Iraq", the Hagee endorsement, the "angry and unstable" approach, the "third Bush term" approach and there is the approach of using his words and votes against him.

As we all know, McCain is a highly flawed candidate in so many ways. And while some of these are better than others to convince people of just what John McCain is all about, there hasn’t been nearly enough focus on what he would do with the Supreme Court and how drastically his preferred choices would restrict personal privacy and freedoms as well as expand corporate secrecy, executive power and erode the Church/State separation.

The attack is simple: McCain’s ideal SCOTUS would take away your privacy and expand his.

We have his own words to back this up as well. Just as Bush used code words in talking to his "base", McCain has done the same. Back in January, McCain said the following to Byron York:

"Let me just look you in the eye," McCain told me. "I've said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I've said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I've said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked."

Clones of Roberts and Alito. The two SCOTUS justices who have driven the Court further to the right than any other Court in recent memory. Alito - one who was all for the unauthorized strip searching a ten year old girl during a search that was only authorized for her father and his home. Roberts, who thinks that parolees who are not in violation of their parole can be searched without any cause or suspicion. And both, who think that mentally ill should be able to receive the death penalty - just to name a few cases.

Let’s also remember that McCain voted for every single one of Bush’s judicial appointees, and that the court he is looking to expand has done the following things in a short period of time:

"in just three years the Roberts Court has crippled school-desegregation efforts (and hinted that affirmative action may be next); approved a federal law that bans a form of abortion; limited the reach of job-discrimination laws; and made it more difficult to challenge the mixing of church and state."

Besides the fact that this is the very definition of "activist judges" or "legislating from the bench", the SCOTUS that McCain wants to see will continue to erode personal freedoms and rights. Not only that, but McCain also cited Scalia as a "model" of who he would select.

Scalia - the most extreme of the Justices - one who approves of torture and one who, unlike Thomas (who I may disagree with on nearly everything but is at least relatively consistent in his decision making process) is highly hypocritical in his views and decisions and has a long history of not supporting personal rights and freedoms.

This is the reality - the Constitution has been eroded on a tremendous scale by the Bush administration, and abetted in no small part by Scalia, Alito and the Roberts SCOTUS. John McCain’s dream is to pack and stack the Court with more Justices that will eliminate or erode personal rights and freedoms under the Bill of Rights, whether it be the First, Fourth or Eight amendments, whether it be in the area of a woman’s right of privacy, whether it be intruding into people’s personal lives or expanding Executive power and secrecy (as Scalia has already proven when he protected Cheney and his secret energy commission, despite being duck hunting buddies).

For me, this is the biggest reason to make sure that McCain does not win in November. It is bad enough that we have to deal with a couple of decades of Roberts and Alito and Thomas and Scalia. To add two or three more Justices to this draconian line of thinking will be devastating to the future and direction of this country.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The RBC results are in

Enrika — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:59:18 GMT

"The vote is 27 votes to seat the entire Florida delegation, with everyone getting a half vote. No committee member voted no or abstained."

"Michigan Delegation to Be Sat at Half Strength. 19 votes for, 8 votes against. Again, 69 pledged delegates to Clinton, 59 pledged delegates to Obama, each delegate gets a half vote."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/31/184311/435/559/526265
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/31/1973/67320/515/526285

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

James Pence: If I Was A Terrorist

Enrika — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:30:56 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EXKLVgEx0

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Turn John McCain's YouTube Problem into a Nightmare!

Enrika — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:47:27 GMT

From Brave New Films:

"There's no question John McCain is getting a free ride from the mainstream press. But with the power of YouTube and the blogosphere, we can provide an accurate portrayal of the so-called Maverick. We can put the brakes on his free ride!

Since we first released The Real McCain a year ago, our REAL McCain series has garnered close to 2 million views, with over 13,000 comments and tens of thousands more in petition signatures! Clearly, John McCain's record is something the public wants to discuss, and yet the corporate media is doing NOTHING to present the truth. We feel obliged to continue countering the mainstream media's love of McCain. And so we thought it was high time for a sequel: The Real McCain 2."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

http://therealmccain.com/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/27/191613/927/960/523806

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

CBS Coverage of Anti-War Strike

Fri, 02 May 2008 21:00:09 GMT

CBS Coverage of Anti-War Strike

West Coast Dockworkers Strike Against Iraq War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKzLEjzvtfM&feature=related

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

NAZIS TO ATTEMPT RALLY, WASHINGTON DC ON 19 APRIL, 2008

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:59:20 GMT

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/142834/index.php

[ In order to see the video and the comments to this posting from indymedia click on the link above ]

Youtube video:
www.youtube.com/watch

Assemble at 11:30 AM on the Southwest corner of Constitution Ave NW and 14th St NW
Neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement Plans to Rally on National Mall near Washington Monument

On, April 19, 2008, at 12 PM (noon) the neo-Nazi, white-supremacist organization known as the “National Socialist Movement” is planning to march and rally “against illegal immigration” on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on the North Side of the Washington Monument. The monument is located to the South of Constitution Avenue NW, between 15th St NW and 17th St NW.

Coming on the heels of the racist immigration ordinance passed in Prince William County, Virginia (and similar laws passed elsewhere in the US), and coupled with the alarming rise in the number of known hate groups in the United States, we feel that the march of these racist bigots must be confronted vigorously, and with strength.

Despite claims that those opposed to immigration are concerned about “the rule of law”, terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement have always attempted to blame immigrants, African-Americans, Jews, non-heterosexual people, and all people of color for what they perceive to be “societal problems”. It is clear that their hatred is based on racial prejudice, and the law is merely an excuse to spread their white supremacist beliefs. We believe that it is not any coincidence that xenophobes and white supremacists share views on immigration, and immigrants.

The National Socialist Movement, according to their website, are “America's Nazi Party”, and are “…inspired by our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.” The group is currently, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States, largely due to the implosion of several other neo-Nazi groups.

They are the same organization that, in order to stir up hatred, marched in Toledo, Ohio (in 2005) in a neighborhood largely made up of people of color. They did indeed, get a reaction, as riots ensued, and the Nazis, and the police protecting them, were run out of the area for a time.

We invite all those opposed to fascism and racism to come and confront this very real, and dangerous neo-Nazi group. Gather at 11:30 AM on the Southwest corner of Constitution Ave NW and 14th St NW (the Mall side), to assemble before confronting the fascists.

posted in Democrats - 3 replies

Check Out the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:33:48 GMT

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Biofuel Caused Hunger Brings Down Haitian Prime Minister

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:09:25 GMT

In this Liberation News Mailing:

1. Biofuel Caused Hunger Brings Down Haitian Prime Minister
2. UK Protests call for Biofuel Targets to be Scrapped
3. Other Suggested Reading

********************
Movement to cap food prices brings down Haiti's prime minister
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By: Silvio Rodrigues
(Reprinted with permission of the Party for Socialism and Liberation)

Food crisis sparks mass demonstrations

Pressured by mass protests and riots against rising food prices, Haitian lawmakers dismissed Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis in hopes of defusing the crisis. Just days before, 16 of 27 Haitian senators signed a letter calling for the resignation of Alexis.

Demonstrations began on April 2 in Les Cayes, but quickly spread to other areas of the country. For several days, Haitians erected barricades of burning tires and old cars in the streets.

On April 8, thousands of Haitians marched to the presidential palace to protest the sharp increase in food staples and to demand the resignation of the President René Préval. (Utah Independent, April 8)

Demonstrators rammed the palace gates with a rolling dumpster in an attempt to storm the building. U.N. occupation forces in jeeps and assault vehicles responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Soon, the U.N. troops were overwhelmed by the size and fury of the crowds, who turned their anger against the surrounding stores. (Times Republic, April 8)

Opposition lawmakers spearheaded the vote against Alexis, a close ally of Préval, in hopes of mitigating popular anger and capitalizing on the crisis. Youri Latortue, nephew of former prime minister Gerárd Latortue, played a key role in the opposition campaign. Gerárd Latortue became prime minister following the 2004 coup against Aristide, working hand in hand with Washington and its imperialist allies. (Reuters, April 10)

Whether the opposition’s move will be effective remains to be seen. About 25 demonstrators gathered to chant "Aristide or death" outside the parliament following the vote. ""Alexis left? What's the difference?" asked a Haitian chicken vendor. (International Herald Tribune, April 12)

Alexis’ dismissal will do little to fill the stomachs of hungry Haitians. The poorest Haitians live on less than $2 a month. The country suffers from scarce arable land and imports most of its food, including more than 80 percent of its rice. (CTV News, April 12)

Cookies made from dirt, salt and shortening are a staple of the Haitian diet, costing only around 5 cents as of January. Doctors say that relying on the cookies for sustenance can be dangerous; for Haitians, they alleviate the pain caused by hunger. (National Geographic, Jan. 30)

The rising price of foodstuffs is a global phenomenon—protests have erupted in Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso and elsewhere.

The crisis springs from the inherent anarchy of capitalist production. Producers make economic decisions that affect the lives of billions with only their own short-term gains in mind. Among other factors, the growing demand for ethanol has shifted agricultural production away from food crops.

Because capitalists must constantly seek the most profitable alternatives in order not to be driven out of business by their competitors, they are unable to avoid such crises—or to offer a way out of them, for that matter. Subsidies or international "aid" are at times provided to temper popular unrest when it threatens imperialist interests.

It is hard to say whether such "relief" would appease the ire of Haitians at the present juncture. For the impoverished masses, the food crisis was the catalyst for an explosive outburst of deep-rooted hatred for the occupation. The February 2004 coup that toppled Aristide left an indelible mark in the consciousness of a people already well-familiar with imperialist intervention.

René Préval was elected to the presidency in 2006, supported by poor Haitians largely because of his past association with former president Aristide. At the time, two years had passed since the coup and Haiti was already under U.N. occupation. Some sectors of progressive and liberal opinion believed that the 2006 "democratic" elections indicated that things were getting better.

The imperialist occupation under the U.N. flag has continued throughout Préval’s presidency. One only remains in power under occupation by adhering to the framework stipulated by the occupiers. The Préval government has not—and cannot—end the imperialist occupation.

With neither the government nor the opposition offering a way out, poor and working Haitians are growing increasingly reliant on the most powerful force for change—themselves.

***************
UK Protests call for Biofuel Targets to be Scrapped

16 April 2008 joint press release by Biofuelwatch and Global Forest Coalition

London-There were demonstrations in London yesterday and groups across the UK also protested against the introduction of mandatory biofuel blending.

Outside Downing Street speakers from Friends of the Earth, Global Forest Coalition, GM Freeze, campaign against Climate Change and Biofuelwatch condemned the government's decision to go ahead with its biofuel policy against overwhelming evidence of catastrophic impacts on climate, communities, biodiversity and food security.

Other protests were held outside the constituency offices of Ruth Kelley, Secretary of State for Transport, and Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment. More protests took place at BP and Tesco fuel stations. BP and Tesco are two of the companies with significant investment in biofuels (also called agrofuels) from large-scale monocultures. They have been strongly lobbying for mandatory biofuel blending.

"The UK has chosen to ignore a vast mountain of evidence that biofuels are contributing to hunger, climate change, deforestation and human rights abuses," said Dr. Rachel Smolker, main author of "The Real Cost of Agrofuels." She continued, "Perhaps they are counting on new technologies using cellulose from wood and grasses, but these won't sidestep the problems either. Whatever feedstocks are used will result in further expansion of industrial monocultures, possibly including genetically engineered trees. The bottom line is that there is a limited amount of land available, a large population to feed and a desperate need to preserve remaining biodiverse ecosystems. Instead of focusing on improving efficiency and reducing consumption, the UK is mandating further destruction."

Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch adds, "Protests against the agrofuel industry and this government's biofuel policies will not end. The government is talking about vague 'sustainability standards', whilst agrofuels are causing ever greater harm to the climate, to forests and other ecosystems, to communities in the global South, to biodiversity worldwide, and to food sovereignty and food security. We need a moratorium on all agrofuel incentives and targets to prevent those catastrophic impacts."

On 8 April, twenty-nine UK and international groups wrote to the UK government, calling for an agrofuel moratorium and demanding a suspension of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, and opposition to new EU biofuel targets - both the proposed 10% biofuel target in the Renewable Energy Directive, and the inclusion of biofuels in the draft new Fuel Quality Directive. Around 200 organisations from North and South have signed a call for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures, and there are separate calls for a U.S. agrofuel moratorium and for an African agrofuel moratorium, as well as growing number of declarations from the Southern groups that are deeply concerned about the impacts which biofuel policies in Europe, including in the UK, are having on their communities, food sovereignty and environment.

Contact:
Almuth Ernsting, Biofuelwatch, +44-1224-324797 (UK, any time)
Orin Langelle, Global Forest Coalition, +1.802.578.6980 (U.S., any time)

*************************************
3. Other Suggested Reading:

Biofuels and The Internationalization of Genocide
by Fidel Castro
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/mier4/14refexf.html

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
by Steven Argue
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

US Marines occupy Haitian capital amid charges Aristide was kidnapped
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/hait-m02.shtml

***************
Subscribe free to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say

Rocky — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:24:24 GMT

What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say
by Sam Harris

March 21, 2008

"Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say:

He did not say that the mess he is in has as much to do with religion as with racism--and, indeed, religion is the reason why our political discourse in this country is so scandalously stupid. As Christopher Hitchens observed in Slate months ago, one glance at the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ should have convinced anyone that Obama's connection to Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. would be a problem at some point in this campaign. Why couldn't Obama just cut his ties to his church and move on? "

Enjoy the full article -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/what-barack-obama-could-n_b_92771.html

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union'

Enrika — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:29:21 GMT

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

2008 election results a little early...

Rocky — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:04:08 GMT

2008 election results a little early...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/283.html

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

I HURL at the commentS by geraldine ferrarro!

lmbfreespirit — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:01:20 GMT

DIS.GUS.TING!
I am soooooooooooooo ashamed!

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

EXCUSE ME, I was under the impression that votes MATTER!

lmbfreespirit — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:26:52 GMT

she is lookin' like an old washed-up HAS BEEN... which she is~ looking like an IDIOT bushie~ trying to STEAL the election!!!!!!!
Barack does have MOST popular & delegates!!!!!!!

SOORY, but move along NOW!!!!!

posted in Democrats - 2 replies

HOPE, INTEGRITY, & "truthidy"!

lmbfreespirit — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:17:22 GMT

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Obama health care plan!

lmbfreespirit — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:08:47 GMT

Plan for a Healthy America
“We now face an opportunity — and an obligation — to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates… My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.”

— Barack Obama, Speech in Iowa City, IA, May 29, 2007

At a Glance
Quality, Affordable and Portable Coverage for All
Lower Costs by Modernizing The U.S. Health Care System
Fight for New Initiatives

Speak your mind and help set the policies that will guide this campaign and change the country.

Present your ideas
Discuss with others
Watch the VideoThe Problem
Millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured because of rising medical costs: 47 million Americans — including nearly 9 million children — lack health insurance with no signs of this trend slowing down.

Health care costs are skyrocketing: Health insurance premiums have risen 4 times faster than wages over the past 6 years.

Too little is spent on prevention and public health: The nation faces epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases as well as new threats of pandemic flu and bioterrorism. Yet despite all of this less than 4 cents of every health care dollar is spent on prevention and public health.

Barack Obama's Plan
Quality, Affordable and Portable Coverage for All
Obama's Plan to Cover Uninsured Americans: Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress. The Obama plan will have the following features:
Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.
Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.
Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.
Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.
Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.
National Health Insurance Exchange: The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.
Employer Contribution: Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small employers that meet certain revenue thresholds will be exempt.
Mandatory Coverage of Children: Obama will require that all children have health care coverage. Obama will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage, including allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents' plans.
Expansion Of Medicaid and SCHIP: Obama will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function.
Flexibility for State Plans: Due to federal inaction, some states have taken the lead in health care reform. The Obama plan builds on these efforts and does not replace what states are doing. States can continue to experiment, provided they meet the minimum standards of the national plan.
Lower Costs by Modernizing The U.S. Health Care System
Reducing Costs of Catastrophic Illnesses for Employers and Their Employees: Catastrophic health expenditures account for a high percentage of medical expenses for private insurers. The Obama plan would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold if they guarantee such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers' premiums.
Helping Patients:
Support disease management programs. Seventy five percent of total health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Obama will require that providers that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs. This will improve quality of care, give doctors better information and lower costs.
Coordinate and integrate care. Over 133 million Americans have at least one chronic disease and these chronic conditions cost a staggering $1.7 trillion yearly. Obama will support implementation of programs and encourage team care that will improve coordination and integration of care of those with chronic conditions.
Require full transparency about quality and costs. Obama will require hospitals and providers to collect and publicly report measures of health care costs and quality, including data on preventable medical errors, nurse staffing ratios, hospital-acquired infections, and disparities in care. Health plans will also be required to disclose the percentage of premiums that go to patient care as opposed to administrative costs.
Ensuring Providers Deliver Quality Care:
Promote patient safety. Obama will require providers to report preventable medical errors and support hospital and physician practice improvement to prevent future occurrences.
Align incentives for excellence. Both public and private insurers tend to pay providers based on the volume of services provided, rather than the quality or effectiveness of care. Providers who see patients enrolled in the new public plan, the National Health Insurance Exchange, Medicare and FEHBP will be rewarded for achieving performance thresholds on outcome measures.
Comparative effectiveness research. Obama will establish an independent institute to guide reviews and research on comparative effectiveness, so that Americans and their doctors will have the accurate and objective information they need to make the best decisions for their health and well-being.
Tackle disparities in health care. Obama will tackle the root causes of health disparities by addressing differences in access to health coverage and promoting prevention and public health, both of which play a major role in addressing disparities. He will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care through quality measurement and reporting, implementation of effective interventions such as patient navigation programs, and diversification of the health workforce.
Insurance reform. Obama will strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance and will promote new models for addressing errors that improve patient safety, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and reduce the need for malpractice suits.
Lowering Costs Through Investment in Electronic Health Information Technology Systems: Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes it hard to coordinate care, measure quality or reduce medical errors and which costs twice as much as electronic claims. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT. Obama will ensure that patients' privacy is protected.
Lowering Costs by Increasing Competition in the Insurance and Drug Markets: The insurance business today is dominated by a small group of large companies that has been gobbling up their rivals. There have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years, and just two companies dominate a full third of the national market. These changes were supposed to make the industry more efficient, but instead premiums have skyrocketed by over 87 percent.
Barack Obama will prevent companies from abusing their monopoly power through unjustified price increases. His plan will force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration. His new National Health Exchange will help increase competition by insurers.
Lower prescription drug costs. The second-fastest growing type of health expenses is prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are selling the exact same drugs in Europe and Canada but charging Americans more than double the price. Obama will allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S. Obama will also repeal the ban that prevents the government from negotiating with drug companies, which could result in savings as high as $30 billion. Finally, Obama will work to increase the use of generic drugs in Medicare, Medicaid, and FEHBP and prohibit big name drug companies from keeping generics out of markets.
Fight for New Initiatives
Advance the Biomedical Research Field: As a result of biomedical research the prevention, early detection and treatment of diseases such as cancer and heart disease is better today than any other time in history. Barack Obama has consistently supported funding for the national institutes of health and the national science foundation. Obama strongly supports investments in biomedical research, as well as medical education and training in health-related fields, because it provides the foundation for new therapies and diagnostics. Obama has been a champion of research in cancer, mental health, health disparities, global health, women and children's health, and veterans' health. As president, Obama will strengthen funding for biomedical research, and better improve the efficiency of that research by improving coordination both within government and across government/private/non-profit partnerships. An Obama administration will ensure that we translate scientific progress into improved approaches to disease prevention, early detection and therapy that is available for all Americans.
Fight AIDS Worldwide. There are 40 million people across the planet infected with HIV/AIDS. As president, Obama will continue to be a global leader in the fight against AIDS. Obama believes in working across party lines to combat this epidemic and recently joined Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) at a large California evangelical church to promote greater investment in the global AIDS battle.
Support Americans with Disabilities: As a former civil rights lawyer, Barack Obama knows firsthand the importance of strong protections for minority communities in our society. Obama is committed to strengthening and better enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) so that future generations of Americans with disabilities have equal rights and opportunities. Obama believes we must restore the original legislative intent of the ADA in the wake of court decisions that have restricted the interpretation of this landmark legislation.

Barack Obama is also committed to ensuring that disabled Americans receive Medicaid and Medicare benefits in a low-cost, effective and timely manner. Recognizing that many individuals with disabilities rely on Medicare, Obama worked with Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) to urge the department of health and human services to provide clear and reliable information on the Medicare prescription drug benefit and to ensure that the Medicare recipients were protected from fraudulent claims by marketers and drug plan agents.
Improve Mental Health Care. Mental illness affects approximately one in five American families. The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that untreated mental illnesses cost the U.S. more than $100 billion per year. As president, Obama will support mental health parity so that coverage for serious mental illnesses are provided on the same terms and conditions as other illnesses and diseases.
Protect Our Children from Lead Poisoning. More than 430,000 American children have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Lead can cause irreversible brain damage, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and, at very high levels, seizures, coma and death. As president, Obama will protect children from lead poisoning by requiring that child care facilities be lead-safe within five years.
Reduce Risks of Mercury Pollution. More than five million women of childbearing age have high levels of toxic mercury in their blood, and approximately 630,000 newborns are born at risk every year. Barack Obama has a plan to significantly reduce the amount of mercury that is deposited in oceans, lakes, and rivers, which in turn would reduce the amount of mercury in fish.
Support Americans with Autism. More than one million Americans have autism, a complex neurobiological condition that has a range of impacts on thinking, feeling, language, and the ability to relate to others. As diagnostic criteria broaden and awareness increases, more cases of autism have been recognized across the country. Barack Obama believes that we can do more to help autistic Americans and their families understand and live with autism. He has been a strong supporter of more than $1 billion in federal funding for autism research on the root causes and treatments, and he believes that we should increase funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to truly ensure that no child is left behind.

More than anything, autism remains a profound mystery with a broad spectrum of effects on autistic individuals, their families, loved ones, the community, and education and health care systems. Obama believes that the government and our communities should work together to provide a helping hand to autistic individuals and their families.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The Anti-War Candidates

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:22:43 GMT

While Obama, Clinton, Huckabee, and McCain are all pro-war and have no real solutions for global warming, there are a number of candidates opposed to the war. Besides anti-war Republican Ron Paul, who on the question of global warming opposes all environmental regulations, each of the following political parties will likely run anti-war candidates:

Peace and Freedom Party
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/

Green Party
http://www.cagreens.org/

Socialist Equality Party
http://www.wsws.org/index.shtml

Socialist Party
http://sp-usa.org/

Party for Socialism and Liberation
http://www.pslweb.org/site/PageServer

Socialist Workers Party
http://www.themilitant.com/index.shtml

Workers World Party
http://www.workers.org/

In addition the following are anti-war candidates and likely running whether or not they get their party’s nomination:

Mike Gravel
http://www.gravel2008.us/

Cynthia McKinney
http://www.runcynthiarun.org/

And the following are anti-war anti-global warming events in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans.

DNC Disruption 2008
http://dncdisruption08.org/

RNC Welcoming Committee
http://www.rncwelcomingcommittee.org/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

keep HOPE alive!

lmbfreespirit — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:40:24 GMT

LisAnne,

Your blog post "the HOPE of stemcells!" to Cal Poly Mustangs For Obama has been approved
by the group administrator.
Please go to the link below to view the group.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CalPolyMustangsForObama

Thank you.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

California results with 96.1% in

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:15:37 GMT

California results with 96.1% in:

Peace and Freedom Party:
Stewart A. Alexander (P&F) 283 5.4 %
Gloria E. La Riva (P&F) 1,059 20.4 %
John Crockford (P&F) 292 5.7 %
Stanley Hetz (P&F) 87 1.6 %
Brian P. Moore (P&F) 280 5.3 %
Ralph Nader (P&F) 2,093 40.2 %
Cynthia McKinney (P&F) 1,114 21.4 %

P&F Web Page
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/

Green Party
Kent Mesplay (Grn) 564 2.0 %
Jared Ball (Grn) 446 1.6 %
Jesse Johnson (Grn) 509 1.8 %
Kat Swift (Grn) 846 3.0 %
Ralph Nader (Grn) 16,872 61.1 %
Elaine Brown (Grn) 1,259 4.6 %
Cynthia McKinney (Grn) 7,138 25.9 %

Green Party web page:
http://www.cagreens.org/

Propositions:
91 N Transportation Funds. 2,660,054 41.9% 3,683,643 58.1%
92 N Community Colleges. Funding. Governance. Fees. 2,789,400 42.6% 3,747,831 57.4%
93 N Limits on Legislators' Terms in Office. 3,077,373 46.5% 3,532,127 53.5%
94 Y Ref on Amd to Indian Gaming Compact: Pechanga 3,737,815 55.8% 2,965,739 44.2%
95 Y Ref on Amd to Indian Gaming Compact: Morongo 3,734,992 55.8% 2,959,430 44.2%
96 Y Ref on Amd to Indian Gaming Compact: Sycuan 3,717,234 55.7% 2,962,109 44.3%
97 Y Ref on Amd to Indian Gaming Compact: Agua Caliente 3,718,478 55.7% 2,957,947 44.3%

Democrat Party:
Barack Obama (Dem) 1,690,307 42.4 %
Hillary Clinton (Dem) 2,068,837 51.9 %
Mike Gravel (Dem) 6,479 0.1 %

DNC Disruption 2008
http://dncdisruption08.org/

Obama is leading Nationally:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html

Republican Party:
Mike Huckabee (Rep) 261,276 11.6 %
Duncan Hunter (Rep) 12,055 0.5 %
Alan Keyes (Rep) 9,274 0.4 %
Sam Brownback (Rep) 1,978 0.0 %
John H. Cox (Rep) 2,580 0.1 %
John McCain (Rep) 955,211 42.1 %
Ron Paul (Rep) 96,544 4.2 %
Mitt Romney (Rep) 768,338 33.9 %
Tom Tancredo (Rep) 3,237 0.1 %

RNC Welcoming Committee
http://www.rncwelcomingcommittee.org/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Yes We Can

Enrika — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:32:28 GMT

http://www.yeswecansong.com/

To everyone in Super Tuesday states: *Please*, VOTE on February 5th, and bring your family, friends, coworkers, people you find wandering on the street, etc. Our future depends on it.

http://www.barackobama.com/

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/

Lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

"Yesterday, a new independent video about Barack Obama began flying around the Internet that embodies the sense of inspiration that so many people feel about his candidacy. Words don't do it justice, you have to watch it for yourself." -- MoveOn.org

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Liberation News Voting Recommendations

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:41:07 GMT

Every couple years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us.

Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press to do so.

**************
Liberation News Voting Recommendations for The February 5, 2008 California Primaries
By STEVEN ARGUE

State Ballot Propositions

Proposition 91, Transportation Funds – Vote NO

Prop 91 will force the governor and state legislature to use the $2 billion collected annually from the gasoline tax only for transportation uses. It doesn’t address the need for higher subsidies for public transportation nor other measures necessary to curtail global warming. Vote NO.

Proposition 92, Community College Funding, Governance and Fees – Vote YES

Prop 92 will reduce community college costs to $15 per unit, and freeze it there, while also sending more state money from the general fund to community colleges. This measure is also supported by the California Federation of Teachers and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges. Vote YES.

Proposition 93, Limits on Legislators’ Terms in Office – Vote NO

Prop 93 will reduce the current term limit of 14 years to 12 years for California state legislators. This is a useless proposition that will not address the undemocratic nature of U.S. elections, ruled by the money of donations by big capital, ruled by the propaganda of the corporate media, and ruled by winner takes-all elections as opposed to proportional representation. If voters want to continue to re-elect particular politicians, that should be their democratic choice. Vote NO.

Propositions 94, 95, 96, and 97, Amendments to Indian Gaming Compacts – Vote YES

This is a question of Native sovereignty. The State of California has no right to tell Native people how to run their nations. These measures would allow the Pechanga, Morongo, Sycuan, and Agua Caliente bands to add more slot machines to their casinos. Native people in the United States, as compared to whites, suffer much higher infant mortality, lower life-expectancy, and higher unemployment. This is due to American racism, land theft, and genocide against Native people. The ability of Native people to use their status of sovereignty to their advantage and make money from gaming is a good thing. One drawback is that a number of California First Nations will not get any of the money from this gaming because they are not federally recognized. Yet, what needs to change is having federal recognition of tribes currently denied. In addition, casino workers deserve higher pay and union protections. Yet, the fact that gaming money should be more evenly distributed and that casino workers should be better able to organize unions, doesn’t change the fact that Indian gaming has helped Native people, and that the fundamental question here is one of Native sovereignty. Vote YES.

Presidential Candidate Recommendations

Democrat and Republican Parties, Not Recommended

On Principle, Liberation News opposes both the Democrat and Republican Parties as capitalist parties funded and controlled by big capital. Continued corporate control of America will only bring more wars, environmental destruction, exploitation, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a further erosion of democratic rights. All Democrat and Republican candidates, with exceptions of Democrat Mike Gravel and Republican Ron Paul, are pro-war. All Democrat and Republican candidates are also opposed to socialized medicine, and only Mike Gravel is for single payer medicine.

Also see:
Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency
http://people.tribe.net/steveargue2/blog/685fff76-d834-41f1-8187-d280883740dc

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/212284.php

Green Party, Not Recommended

While the Green Party and its candidates generally have fairly good immediate positions on the war and a number of other social issues, Liberation News does not support Green Party candidates because the Green Party is a capitalist party.

The Green Party is clear in their program. They state that they are for a system of small capitalism. Yet the small capitalists commonly have a smaller profit margin and often exploit workers worse than the big capitalists. In opposition to such a vision of small and inefficient capitalist exploiters, Liberation News looks to labor struggle and the nationalization of industry under democratic workers’ control, with universal suffrage and democratic rights, as the way to fight and neutralize the corporate exploiters and bring justice for the working class.

It was a massive and fighting labor movement, led to large extent by socialists, that forced the American ruling class and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to carry out the New Deal reforms in the 1930’s. This was out of fear of further unrest and potential revolution. It is the position of Liberation News that the most meaningful reforms do not come from reformism, such as that of the Green Party, but from revolutionary and working class struggle.

Peace and Freedom Party, Recommended

The Peace and Freedom Party has seven candidates. While the Peace and Freedom Party is socialist in its program, many members have a propensity towards supporting liberal capitalist candidates at times. This is reflected in the choices registered Peace and Freedom Party members will be deciding between. Those seven candidates will now be briefly evaluated.

Stewart Alexander, Recommended

Liberation News recommends a vote for Stewart Alexander, the best activist candidate with a clear socialist and democratic program. He is currently in the Peace and Freedom Party and he is the Executive Director of the African American Civil Liberties Union and was the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2006. He is clearly for an immediate end to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, supports fully socialized medicine, and is in favor of a socialized economy with the resources of society used for human and environmental needs as opposed to the profit and exploitation of capitalism. YES on Alexander.

Gloria LaRiva, Not Recommended

Gloria LaRiva is a clear socialist and dedicated activist against U.S. imperialist wars and racism as well as other socialist causes. This makes her worth considering. Besides running in the Peace and Freedom Party primaries, Gloria LaRiva is the Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate for president. Yet, her party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is not clear, as Stewart Alexander is, about the need for socialism to be democratic. While a number of countries did better with undemocratic forms of socialism than how they were doing under capitalism, including Cuba today, the abuses that have also occurred in undemocratic socialist societies have proven the need for universal suffrage and full democratic rights in socialist societies.

Brian Moore, Worth Considering

Brian Moore is a socialist and dedicated activist against the war. Besides running in the Peace and Freedom Party primaries, Brian Moore is also the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party. He calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and has helped organize an important coalition against the war in Florida. Generally, however, Stewart Alexander does a better job of using his campaign to explain the root evils of capitalism and the need for socialism.

Ralph Nader, Not Recommended

Ralph Nader is a liberal millionaire capitalist, and not a socialist. He agrees with the capitalist Green Party program. In addition, he will not run unless Hillary Clinton is nominated. If that happens he says he may run for president to oppose her. Earlier in the primaries he also endorsed Democrat John Edwards. Yet there is little difference between pro-war, pro-“PATRIOT” Act, and anti-single payer healthcare Obama and Edwards, and pro-war, pro-“PATRIOT” Act, and anti-single payer healthcare Clinton. Still, Nader spreads illusions that various war-mongering corporate Democrat candidates are worth supporting. This is one of the reasons Nader is not worth supporting.

Stanly Hetz, Not a Serious Candidate

Stanly Hetz does not call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, nor does he call for socialized medicine or single-payer healthcare, and instead calls for suing insurance companies under certain situations. He also seems to have a late start in his campaign and does not yet even have a website up. Hetz is not worth considering for such a serious post as winning people to the program of socialism through his electoral campaign.

Cynthia McKinney, Not Recommended

Cynthia McKinney was a congressperson of the Democrat Party for twelve years. She has since broken with the Democrats and is running as a Green Party candidate, but was also put on the Peace and Freedom Party primary ballot. While McKinney takes a number of good stands against the war and for single payer healthcare (not fully socialized healthcare), she is presently in support of the program of the Green Party, a party for a system of small capitalism. Yet the small capitalists commonly have a smaller profit margin and often exploit workers worse than the big capitalists. In opposition to such a vision of small and inefficient capitalist exploiters, socialists look to labor struggle and the nationalization of industry under democratic workers’ control, with universal suffrage and democratic rights, as the way to fight and neutralize the corporate exploiters and bring justice for the working class.

John Crockford, Not a Serious Candidate

In the official California voter guide John Crockford uses the precious space available to him to repeatedly say that he will be best qualified to represent the San Joaquin Valley. Yet he’s running for president in a socialist party where he should be putting forward an internationalist program to end capitalism, imperialism, and the environmental destruction of the planet. Crockford is not worth considering for such a serious post as winning people to the program of socialism through his electoral campaign.

Summary of State Recommendations:

Proposition 91, Transportation Funds – Vote NO

Proposition 92, Community College Funding, Governance and Fees – Vote YES

Proposition 93, Limits on Legislators’ Terms in Office – Vote NO

Propositions 94, 95, 96, and 97, Amendments to Indian Gaming Compacts – Vote YES

Presidential Candidate recommendation:

Stewart Alexander, Peace and Freedom Party

These are the recommendations of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Starting an Intra-Dem party 'Stop Hillary' Campaign

breindl — Tue, 08 May 2007 01:24:13 GMT

Starting an Intra-Dem party 'Stop Hillary' Campaign

Every Democrat (actually almost every person) I ask thinks there is no way that Hillary can win the election.
Many of same people dislike her and don't want to see her opportunistic spinelessness in power.
But regardless of one's personal reaction to her, it is plain to see that she CANNOT win. Somehow the big money is willfully ignoring this. YET AGAIN the dem party machinery is backing a loser.
She is despised on the left and on the right and disliked in t he center. The Democratic party appears to be in*yet another slow-motion train wreck*. She will activate Republican resistance like no other candidate. I saw a Hillary scarecrow on an organic blueberry farm in New England last summer. She is HATED.

Do other horrified onlookers have an interest in speaking out about this obvious disaster in the making? And working to dissuade the big guns from backing yet another loser and ensuring more Republican rule.

I'm not much of an organizer, but this is a major folly that needs stopping.

posted in Democrats - 3 replies

MoveOn.org endorses Obama for President

Enrika — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:32:07 GMT

Dear MoveOn member,

With hundreds of thousands of ballots cast across the country, for the first time in MoveOn's history, we've voted together to endorse a presidential candidate in the primary. That candidate is Barack Obama.

Something big is clearly happening. A few weeks ago, MoveOn members we surveyed were split. But with John Edwards bowing out, progressives are coming together. Obama won over 70% of the vote yesterday, and he's moving up in polls nationwide.1 As comments poured in from MoveOn members across the country, the sense of hope was inspiring. Here's how Christine Y. in New Jersey put it:

"I've never felt so strongly about any one candidate in my entire life. He's truly an inspiration to all of us—especially the younger generation. I will stand by him 100% for as long as he's willing to stand up and fight for this country!"

What does MoveOn's endorsement mean? People-power. Together, we are 3.2 million Americans who care about our country and want change. Half of us live in states with primaries or caucuses this coming "Super Tuesday."

We know how to roll up our sleeves and win elections, and if we all pitch in together between now and Tuesday, we can help Sen. Obama win the biggest primary day in American history. Think about it: volunteering during the next four days could mean four years of a progressive president. Can you sign up right now to volunteer for Obama's campaign? Click here:

http://pol.moveon.org/volunteerforobama/?id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=535

There are lots of ways to help. You can call voters from home, go door-to-door with others in your community, travel to "Super Tuesday" states, donate, put up a yard sign, volunteer in a campaign office, or join a local meetup. Senator Obama is running a grassroots campaign, and there's a role for everyone.

Many of us feel like change is within reach for the first time in years. Here's some more of what MoveOn members see in Obama:

"This country needs real, progressive transformation. Barack Obama is the candidate who gives us the best hope of uniting and inspiring the nation to move in that direction, while also restoring America's dignity and standing as a member of the global community."—James M., Connecticut

"While I'm impressed with Clinton and believe she would make a very good president, I'm actually MOVED by Obama. In the end, I believe if Obama is elected he has the potential to bring the country together behind him."—Patricia S., Wisconsin

"He was right on the biggest question of the era—opposing the war from the start."—Jacob S., Washington, D.C.

"I support Barack Obama for the same reasons I support MoveOn.org: the more people are inspired to get involved, the better the outcome for our country. Senator Obama has demonstrated a unique capacity to inspire participation and to make public service 'cool' again. He is also sound on all the issues that matter to me and my family."—Liz B., New York

"I live in a red state, and I see my conservative neighbors and friends showing a positive interest in Barack. They like him. They are ready to be swayed. And I see my Democratic friends and family members getting excited like never before...With Barack as our candidate, I am convinced that we can win in a landslide in 2008 and usher in a new era of progressive politics."—Desirina B., Georgia

To be clear, we won't always agree with all of Obama's positions. And MoveOn members said overwhelmingly that, regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination, we'll work hard to win the White House in 2008. Whatever happens in the primary, we'll push the Democratic nominee to campaign progressively and then we'll push them to fulfill their promises after they win.

The building of a progressive consensus around Senator Obama is tangible. Earlier this week, John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy said Obama is the first presidential candidate to be as inspirational as her father.2 Yesterday, progressive magazine The Nation said that electing Obama is "a chance we can't pass up."3 And then DailyKos.com, the most widely read progressive blog, announced Obama won 76% in a reader poll this week.4

It's time to get to work electing a president who is inspiring a nation and is talking about big, progressive change. Click here to volunteer in these next crucial days:

http://pol.moveon.org/volunteerforobama/?id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=536

This is just the beginning of a long road to victory in November. Thanks for all you do, and will do to change our country for the better in 2008.

–Eli, Wes, Joan, Justin, Adam G., Adam R., Ilyse, Karin, Nita, Noah, Marika, Laura, Peter, Anna, Matt, Daniel, Carrie, Tanya, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, February 1st, 2008

P.S. As we were about to click "send" we received the following response from Senator Obama. We wanted to share it with you: "In just a few years, the members of MoveOn have once again demonstrated that real change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. From their principled opposition to the Iraq war—a war I also opposed from the start—to their strong support for a number of progressive causes, MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grassroots movement for change. I thank them for their support and look forward to working with their members in the weeks and months ahead."

Sources:

1. "Race Tightening Between Obama and Clinton," The Nation, January 31, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3364&id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=537

2. "A President Like My Father," Caroline Kennedy in the New York Times, January 27, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3360&id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=538

3. "The Choice," Chris Hayes in The Nation, January 31, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/hayes

4. "2008: 1/30 results," DailyKos.com reader poll, January 30, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3361&id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=539

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=12015-7567656-RaEtvO&t=540

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

I have the audacity of HOPE!

lmbfreespirit — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:45:12 GMT

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/group?referrer=http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/globalwarmingactivistsforobama

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Why did Edwards suspend his candidacy?

Wildman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:14:35 GMT

I haven't been able to put my finger on it yet. What do you think? Especially Edwards supporters.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

http://action.barackobama.com/page/signup/

lmbfreespirit — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:05:07 GMT

http://action.barackobama.com/page/signup/

posted in Democrats - 2 replies

A Critical Time in My Campaign

Frank — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:58:40 GMT

At this time I am coming to you at a critical time in my campaign and now is the time that I truly need your help to keep my campaign alive and growing.

I need everyone to perform three very easy and quick tasks.

First, the New American Independent Party has decided to hold their nominating process in early February. In order to vote in that process you must be registered with them by February 1st. Please go to the following web address and register so that you can vote for me in the upcoming nomination.

http://www.newamericanindependent.com/Join.html

Second, in conjunction with my being on the ballot in the Arizona primary, I am working towards receiving the endorsement of two newspapers in the Tucson area. As part of that process I need you to click on the link below and vote for me in their poll. My portion is located about half way down the page.

http://projectwhitehouse08.blogspot.com

Third, please pass this email along to everyone you know requesting that they also participate in helping me continue to move the campaign forward.

That's it, short, sweet and simple; but I need your help.

"Anything is Possible in America"

Don't forget to ask for your campaign cards so we can continue to spread the word.

Media Update:

I will also be discussing the question of illegal immigration with Joe Bechtold on his show on January 20th at 1 PM PST at www.freeworldradionetwork.net

Thank-you for your continued support and please remember to tell everyone you know about my efforts. The election is still a long ways away and with your help I am continuing to make progress.

Thanks
Frank McEnulty
frank@frankforpresident.org
www.frankforpresident.org

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Bush to Sell Billions in Weapons to Saudi Dictatorship

Wildman — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:33:38 GMT

I wonder how many Americans will end up killed by these weapons...

White House Times Arms Sale, Bush Trip
By Matthew Lee
The Associated Press

Saturday 12 January 2008

Washington - The Bush administration will notify Congress on Monday of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to Saudi Arabia, moving up the announcement to coincide with the president's arrival in Riyadh, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite concern about the deal from some lawmakers, the State Department, which last month said it would delay the notification until after Congress comes back into session, will announce the proposed sale on Jan. 14, a day before the House returns to work and more than a week before senators return to Washington, said a senior official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations on the matter.

The official said the new timing was "appropriate" and "symbolic" as it would come within hours of Bush's arrival in Saudi Arabia, the penultimate stop on his current Middle East trip. Air Force One is scheduled to land in Riyadh on Monday after a stop in Dubai.

The official announcement will kick off a 30-day review period during which lawmakers could move to block the sale.

Faced with congressional unease and requests from senior lawmakers for more time to review the sale, the administration agreed in December to put back the notification until Congress returns to session this month.

Although the new House session does not officially begin until Jan. 15 and senators do not return until Jan. 22, Senate Democrats have been briefly opening and closing the body each day during its holiday break, meaning the upper house remains technically at work.

The sale is a key element in the U.S. strategy to bolster the defenses of its Arab allies in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing majority Sunni Muslim Gulf nations against threats from Shiite Iran.

A main aim of Bush's Mideast visit is to convince the Saudi leadership as well as those in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that he remains committed to preventing Iran from destabilizing the region, despite U.S. intelligence findings that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons development in 2003.

Although administration has staunchly defended the sale as critical to U.S. interests, its desire to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated weaponry has raised eyebrows from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who say the transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munitions technology would lend it highly accurate targeting abilities that could threaten Israel.

Those concerns have not been assuaged by the administration's plan to counterbalance the Saudi sale with $30 billion in military assistance to Israel - a more than 25 percent increase over the next 10 years - and statements from Israeli officials who say they understand the rationale for the sale and will not oppose it.

In a letter to Bush sent last fall after plans for the sale first became public, 186 House members expressed serious reservations about the plan and at least one, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., has said he plans to introduce a resolution to block the sale. His resolution has nearly three dozen co-sponsors.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

No to Rightist Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:32:26 GMT

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:35:49 GMT

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

~MY.GUY!

lmbfreespirit — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:39:33 GMT

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/homeland/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:38:42 GMT

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
and the Struggle to Achieve It

By Steven Argue

As someone without healthcare, I support the idea of socialized medicine for the United States. Socialized medicine will bring healthcare to everyone. Besides legitimate self-interest, my personal position comes from being an advocate for social justice with a vision of an egalitarian society. As such, I not only see universal access to healthcare as a basic human right, I also see that socialized healthcare will mitigate some of the racial and class inequalities in our society. In addition, socialized medicine is cheaper than the costs of current system of for-profit capitalist healthcare. It also looses the profit motive of insurance companies to deny needed procedures. From this knowledge, and these personal convictions, I am strongly in favor of socialized healthcare in the United States like that established in Europe as well as established in Cuba with the 1959 revolution. Short of a fully socialized healthcare system I see that the single payer system (i.e. socialized health insurance run by the government), like in Canada, would be a significant step forward for the United States.

In the United States there’s a lot of confusion on terminology. With a system of socialized medicine hospitals are directly owned by the government and doctors are government employees. It’s a universal system where everyone is covered and all health care is paid for by the government. Under a single payer health care plan, health care is universal and paid for by the government, but it is a system still largely based on private hospitals and private physicians.

Two main arguments are encountered when discussing socialized medicine. One argument is that it will cost too much. The second argument is that socialized medicine doesn’t work to provide adequate healthcare. Neither argument stands up to scrutiny.
Socialized medicine and single payer medicine actually cost less than the United State’s current for profit capitalist health care system. Both statistics and common sense back this up.

According to statistics from 2003, the United States spends $5,711 per capita per year for health care while Canada spends about half of that, $2,998 per capita per year (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2007). In fact, the costs per capita are much cheaper in every other developed country with some form of socialized healthcare. In other examples Sweden spends $2,745, Germany $2,983, and the United Kingdom $2,317 (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2007). In addition, Cuba , with their well known socialized healthcare system, spent only $251 per capita on healthcare in 2006 (United Nations World Health Organization, 2006).

The reason socialized insurance is much cheaper and more efficient than private health insurance is because single payer eliminates the health insurance racket with all of its waste in capitalist profits, paperwork, and overpaid CEOs. In addition, such insurance practices as routinely denying needed medical procedures to keep profits up are eliminated, thus reducing capitalism as being the cause of death.

Socialized healthcare does work. It is working very well in Cuba. Cuban life expectancy in 2006 was 77.6 years, while the life expectancy of the United States for that same year was slightly less, 77.5 years (United Nations Development Program, 2006). It is interesting that poor Cuba with a history of poverty before their 1959 socialist revolution, and a devastating U.S. imposed economic blockade since, is able to provide good healthcare for everyone through socialized medicine. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment, turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance, or allow insurance companies to decide, based on profit motive, whether the insured actually receive the care they paid for and need. The Cubans have done this by taking the profit out of illness and injury and providing healthcare as a basic human right.

Canada, like Cuba, has a higher life expectancy than the United States. In 2004 the life expectancy of Canada hit 80.2 years (Statistics Canada, 2004). With Canada’s socialized health insurance system, like Cuba’s socialized medical system, every single person is covered. In the United States 45.8 million Americans do not have health insurance (U.S. Department of Health and human Services, 2005).

On another key indicator of health, infant mortality, the United States is also nearly the worst in the developed world, only worse than the recently turned capitalist country of Latvia (Green, 2006). The infant mortality rate in the United States in 2002 was 7.0 deaths before the age of one per every 1,000 live births (Center for Disease Control, 2005). In comparison, other advanced countries with forms of socialized medicine and socialized health insurance have lower infant mortality. This includes rates per thousand births in Japan of 3.2, Germany with 4.4, Italy with 4.5, France with 4.6, and the United Kingdom with 5.6 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

Cuba, with their system of socialized medicine has an infant mortality rate of 6.2 per thousand live births, a rate much lower the United States rate of 7.0 per every thousand live births (BBC News, 2002). This is also lower than every other Latin American country (BBC News, 2002).

The only other country in the Americas with an infant mortality lower than Cuba is Canada with their system of socialized health insurance. The Canadian infant mortality rate in the year 2000 was 5.3 (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003).

In addition, a United Nations report on the status of Native Americans in Canada has credited Canada’s relatively recently established socialized health insurance system with drastically reducing an extremely high infant mortality among Native Americans (United Nations, 1993). In 1979, that death rate for Canadian Native Americans was 27.6 per thousand live births, but by 1999 it had dropped to 8.0 deaths per thousand live births (Treasury Board of Canada, 2003). These improvements coincide with Canada’s passage of the Canada Health Act in 1984 that brought their socialized insurance system to the entire country at that time (Health Canada, 2002).

For Blacks in the United States between 1995 and 2002, the infant mortality rate was 13.9, more than double the rate of 5.9 for whites in the same time period (Center for Disease Control, 2005). Canadian statistics are a strong indication that a socialized insurance system in the United States could both decrease the infant mortality rate of the general population and dramatically decrease the infant mortality of oppressed and impoverished minorities such as Blacks, as it did for Canadian Native Americans.

The statistics show that socialized medicine is cheaper, saves lives, and helps alleviate class and racial inequalities in healthcare.

Prospects for Socialized and Single Payer Medicine

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has declared, "It's time to provide quality affordable health care for every American, and I intend to be the president who accomplishes that goal finally for our country" (CNN.com). This is the same promise that Bill Clinton made when he ran for office in 1992.

After being elected, in Bill Clinton’s first State of the Union address, he said, “And on any given day, over 37 million Americans -- most of them working people and their little children -- have no health insurance at all.” Yet, despite Bill Clinton’s campaign promise of universal health care, his defeated proposal to congress would not have provided health care to every American, nor did it address the other fundamental problems of private health insurance. After his health care proposal was defeated, Clinton dropped the issue. In fact, the Bill Clinton administration was opposed to a bill for single payer health care introduced by Wellstone, Conyers, and Mcdermott that actually would have provided universal health care. By the time Bill Clinton left office, an additional three million more Americans were uninsured.

Today Republican candidate Mitt Romney has declared of Hillary Clinton’s promised health care plan, “It’s a European-style socialized medicine plan, that’s where it leads–and that’s the wrong direction for America” (Shulte).

Yet, unfortunately, Clinton’s plan has nothing in common with socialized medicine, neither of the European variety, nor the Canadian single payer. Her plan is to keep the broken and expensive capitalist system of health care, a system that keeps the insurance industry in charge of life and death questions of whether or not we receive health care when we need it.

In addition, the Clinton plan would make the purchase of health insurance by America’s uninsured mandatory for those who do not get insurance from their employer and who do not qualify for government assistance. Yet, the problem for America’s nearly 50 million uninsured is not that we don’t want to have insurance, the problem is that we can’t afford it. Clinton’s plan of making us criminals for not purchasing health insurance will not resolve this fundamental problem.

By making the purchase of health insurance mandatory Clinton makes the false claim that hers is a plan for universal health insurance as compared to the plan of Obama. Neither would provide universal health care. John Edwards has taken the absurdity of forced insurance purchases one step further, detailing a plan that would include the necessity of showing proof of health insurance at the time of paying taxes, with penalties for those who do not provide that proof.

In a similar fashion as Mitt Romney, Republican contender Rudolph Giuliani has extended false accusations of socialized medicine to other Democratic hopefuls stating, “Whether it’s HillaryCare or ObamaCare or EdwardsCare, the idea that it’s not socialized medicine is a trick. It’s a massive growth of government control of medicine” (Rovner).

The truth, however, is that the only presidential candidates of the Democrat and Republican Party that are for single payer health care are Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and none are for full socialized medicine. The other major candidates, who oppose single payer, enjoy massive contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

In addition to being excluded from money, the Kucinich and Gravel campaigns have also been excluded from debates. Most recently, for the 2008 election, CNN and the Des Moines Register made the decision to exclude both Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel from a key debate in Iowa. Yet Biden and Dodd, who are behind Kucinich in the national polls, but who reject single payer health care, were allowed into the debate. This kind of undemocratic shenanigan is to be expected of CNN, a corporate media source that was forced to publicly apologize for a number of lies they told about Michael Moore’s pro-socialized medicine film “Sicko”.

While Kucinich has alienated the corporate power structure with his stand for single payer health care, he has also alienated much of his natural base by voting for Bush’s “War on Terror”, voting for the U.S. travel ban against Cuba, and by voting against Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In 2001 Kucinich voted in favor of the US travel ban against Cuba. The travel ban does not allow U.S. citizens to spend any money in Cuba, basically making travel to Cuba illegal. It is under the travel ban that Michael Moore has been harassed by the U.S. government for bringing sick 9/11 rescue workers, who were unable to receive medical treatment in the United States, for medical treatment in Cuba. The United States has had hostile relations with Cuba ever since the 1959 Cuban revolution overthrew the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship, nationalized the United Fruit Company owned by the Rockefeller family, ended Jim Crow style racist segregation, and began providing free socialized health care and education.

In contrast to Kucinich’s support for U.S. measures against Cuba, Mumia Abu-Jamal recognizes the gains Cuba has made in areas such as health care. Of the U.S. and Cuban health care systems, Mumia Abu-Jamal stated May 2nd, 2003:

“What about the human right to health care? In the US, you can obtain excellent health care if you can afford it. Cuba, meanwhile, boasts the largest number of doctors per capita on earth. They provide medical care to people all around the world. Indeed, there are more Cuban doctors working in other countries than the UN’s World Heath Organization. Millions of men, women and children in this country have no medical insurance and no real prospect for decent medical care.” (Abu-Jamal 5/2/03)

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States whose trial, according to Amnesty International, was not fair and “did not comply with international justice standards” (Amnesty International). Yet, in 2006 Kucinich voted to condemn the French City of St. Denis for naming a street after Mumia. The resolution boldly proclaimed Mumia’s guilt, despite international recognition of the injustice dished out to Mumia, and despite the fact that the courts are still reviewing the case. Despite the injustice represented by this resolution and despite 31 members of Congress voting against it, Kucinich voted for it.

Showing a similar lack of support for the needs of the people, Kucinich voted for Bush’s so-called “War on Terror”. This was a vote that effectively gave Bush the power to invade any country at any time. That vote could have been used for anything, and was used by Bush to invade Afghanistan. Likewise, despite pretending to be a peace candidate, Kucinich’s calls for a strong and efficient military do not address the fact that the United States is the most aggressive and dangerous nation in the world.

The tremendous lack of judgment on these three votes alone, along with Kucinich’s promotion of the pro-war, anti-single payer health care, and corporate controlled Democrat Party, have alienated the left from Kucinich’s campaign.

Presidential candidate Mike Gravel doesn’t have a recent voting record, but was actively opposed to the Vietnam War in Congress, voting to cut off funding for the war, and helping to release the Pentagon Papers that exposed many wrong doings by the U.S. government in Vietnam. On the issue of health care, Gravel states on his website that he proposes “a universal healthcare system that provides equal medical services to all citizens, paid for by a retail sales tax (a portion of the Progressive Fair tax)” (Gravel website). Yet, sales taxes are not fair taxes. They are regressive taxes that charge the poor a much higher percentage of their income than they charge the rich. While it is true that the rich are not paying their fair share under the current tax system, Gravel’s proposal is even worse.

Sadly for those who think solutions could come from the Democrat Party, Kucinich and Gravel are the best the Democrat Party could produce.

While the mainstream of the American political establishment rejects any form of socialized medicine, all political parties to the left of the Democrats and Republicans support some form of socialized medicine. This is true from the Green Party and Reconstruction Party to the various socialist parties who run candidates, including the Peace and Freedom Party, Socialist Action, Socialist Party, Workers World Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, and Socialist Equality Party.

Breaking from the pro-war anti-health care Democrat Party is former Georgia Democratic Congressperson Cynthia McKinney. In a video news release declaring her candidacy for president she says, “The Democrat is no different from their Republican counterparts, eat out of the hands of corrupt lobbyists and feed at the same corporate tough” (McKinney). McKinney is running for president on the Reconstruction Party ticket as well as in the Green Party primaries.

On health care McKinney states, "I've supported every universal single payer health care plan. She goes on to state, “People who rail against `socialized medicine' in Canada and the UK have to explain why life expectancy is longer in Canada and the UK, why infant mortality is lower in Canada and the UK" (Deeth). McKinney further denounces the war in Iraq stating that the money being squandered could be better used on social programs such as rebuilding New Orleans, child nutrition, and health care, stating in part, “one billion dollars a day can provide medical care for the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance” (McKinney).

Another Green Party candidate, Kent Mesplay, declares on his website:

“Medical attention is a human right not yet recognized by the United States government. Nearly every other industrialized country on the planet has National Health Care. We are tied with South Africa for last place. In the same manner that we have a socialized military that at best provides for some aspects of our physical security, single payer health insurance is necessary to ensure that all people within our borders receive at least a basic level of medical and dental care.” (Mesplay).

While this may be a good position on single payer health care, it ignores the fact that the U.S. military does not provide physical security to the people of the United States, but is instead used to kill and terrorize the people of the world for the security of the profits of American corporations.

Also supporting single payer health care, Green Party candidate Kat Swift states:

“Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and other prominent Democrats are the greatest obstacle to universal health coverage. Except for a few mavericks like Rep. John Conyers [D-Mich.], who has regularly introduced single-payer bills, Democrats have joined Republicans in favoring HMO and insurance corporations over guaranteed publicly-financed quality health care for every American. It's a safe bet that the 2008 Democratic nominee will -- like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry before them -- follow the same pattern.”

Likewise, Green Party candidate Jared Ball, a Black free-lance journalist and college professor who calls for freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and all political prisoners states, “Medicine for profit cannot be sustained as a model of managing health care for any progressive society” (Ball).

To the left of the Green Party is Elaine Brown, a former Black Panther Party member and activist for social programs for the poor and for prison reform. On health care she declares herself for, “Full and free health care for everyone, as exists in most civilized countries.”

Elaine Brown was a candidate for nomination as Green Party candidate for president until, on December 28, 2007, she broke with the Green Party, pointing out it was a capitalist Party and accusing the Green Party of racism. In her public statement Brown declared, "In effect, the present Green Party leadership promotes a kinder, gentler capitalism, a moderated racism, an environmentally-sustainable globalism, which I cannot support." On racism in the party she declared she intended to use her campaign “to bring large numbers of blacks and browns into the Party, particularly from the hood and the barrio” but that the Green Party “hierarchy seemed utterly fearful of the prospect of a massive influx of blacks and browns into the Green Party". Brown has given no indication that she now intends to continue her run as a candidate to the left of the Greens.

To the left of the Green Party are socialist candidates that call for full socialized medicine, like in Europe and Cuba, but who also see that single payer health care would be a step forward. These include likely Socialist Equality Party candidate Bill Van Auken, who calls for full socialized medicine, and says of the Canadian Single Payer system as an imperfect form of “socialized medicine”.

Likewise Peace and Freedom Party candidate and Socialist Party USA nominee for vice president, Stewart Alexander states,

“I favor a fully socialized medical care system, with as a first step a single-payer system similar to Medicare, but covering people of all ages. I favor eliminating the "co-pays" that are such a burden, and keep people from seeking needed care. We should take the profit out of the health-care system, and fully fund it. (The money now spent on health care in the USA is about twice as much per person as is spent in Western Europe, with less effective delivery of care. No additional money would actually be needed, but taxes on the wealthy few should be used initially to help fund improvements.) Eventually, I favor a fully-socialized system, funded from the surplus of the socialized economy, with an emphasis on prevention and public health.” (Alexander)

Also advocating full socialized medicine is Socialist Party USA nominee and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Brian Moore. In the California Voters Guide he states that he would, “establish guaranteed minimum income, housing and socialized healthcare for all”.

Not mentioning socialized medicine, but supporting single payer, Party for Socialism and Liberation nominee and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Gloria La Riva states, “The three main focuses of my campaign will be to oppose the racist attacks on immigrants; to propose a massive jobs program and increased social spending as an alternative to anti-crime hysteria and new prisons; and to give strong support for Single Payer Healthcare” (La Riva).

While generally being a good activist party, a strong concern among many on the left towards the Party for Socialism and Liberation is their uncritical support for undemocratic communist models, a problem that will cause many to instead vote for non-Stalinist candidates such as Stewart Alexander or Brian Moore in the Peace and Freedom Party primaries, or for other anti-Stalinist socialist parties that may run candidates such as the Socialist Equality Party, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action, or the Freedom Socialist Party.

In contrast to some of the anti-democratic positions of Gloria La Riva’s party, presidential candidate Stewart Alexander states,

“Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production, but I like to be more specific. There are, have been, and can be many forms of socialism, but I believe that the best, strongest and most beneficial form of socialism, the kind of socialism I personally work for, is common ownership of the economy coupled with its democratic control by working people.” (Alexander)

Obviously, there are clear alternatives to the capitalist Democrat and Republican Parties that are working hard to promote a workers agenda that includes either fully socialized medicine or single payer healthcare. Yet, almost all of the unions of the United States remain committed to endorsing and financing Democrats and only Democrats in elections. A good number of unions, such as the SEIU, even endorse Democrats that are opposed to single payer health care and help fund the same campaigns that are being funded by the big insurance companies. These endorsements of the anti-worker politicians of the Democrat Party are a blatant violation of the interests of the membership. Such endorsements hurt attempts at building alternative parties that represent workers interests, and hurt the ability of workers to protest and strike against such politicians that are not representing our interests. Some other unions, such as the California Nurses Association, take the stand of only endorsing candidates who support single payer health care. This is a step forward, but many on the left see that a full break by labor from the corporate controlled Democrat Party will be necessary.

Ultimately, what is needed is the building of a spirit of resistance among workers, the unemployed, and students, where we no longer passively agree to politicians and union leaders who pretend to be lesser evils, but are rarely even that. We must challenge and change the organizations we are part of, and when that fails, break away and build new ones. Most importantly, we must fully resurrect the use of political strikes and demonstrations to force the bosses and government to give us what we need, as is often done in countries with socialized medicine such as France. It is this kind of resistance that won socialized healthcare in Europe after the Second World War, and it will be this that will bring socialized medicine to the United States.

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
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References:

Abu-Jamal, Mumia. "Mumia 5/2/03 Taped Commentary on Cuba." Radio4all and Prisonradio.org. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.iacenter.org/polprisoners/maj_cuba03.htm. Internet.

Alexander, Stewart. “Presidential Candidate Questionnaire” Socialist National Committee, Socialist Party. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://vote-socialist.org/p08/questionnaires/alexander.html. Internet.

Ball, Jared. “Healthcare.” Jared Ball for President Website. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.jaredball.com/?cat=12. Internet.

“Clinton Unveils Mandatory Health Insurance Program” CNN.com. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/17/health.care/index.html. Internet.

“Concluding observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Canada”. 6 March, 1993. United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Jt9OTyVZWTYJ:www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/280a3783f5a26d09c12563e80058b47e%3FOpendocument+infant+mortality+ canada +%22united+nations%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=16&gl=us. Internet.

“Cuba Records Lowest Infant Mortality Rate”. BBC News. 3 January, 2002. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1739773.stm. Internet.

Deeth, John. "Cynthia McKinney Brings Green Campaign to Iowa City." Iowa Independent. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.iowaindependent.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=3D80FCACF0E1EC162CC087F14BCF9BC5?diaryId=1610. Internet.

Green, Jeff. “U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says”. 10 May, 2006. CNN.Com. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/index.html. Internet.

Health Canada, Government of Canada. 25 November, 2002. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/nr-cp/2002/2002_care-soinsbk4_e.html. Internet.

“How Mike Stands on the Issues.” Mike Gravel ’08 Website. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.gravel2008.us/issues. Internet.

“Human Development Report”. 2006. United Nations World Health Organization. Accessed 23 September, 2007. Available from: http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html. Internet.

La Riva, Gloria. “Gloria La Riva for Governor”. California Online Voting Guide. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://calvoter.org/archive/94general/cand/governor/lari/larispeech3.html. Internet.

Mesplay, Kent. “Healthcare”. Kent Mesplay for President. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.mesplay.org/healthcare.html. Internet.

McKinney, Cynthia. “Cynthia McKinney Announces Campaign for Presidency” McKinney for President 2008 Website. Accessed 2 January, 2008. Available from: http://www.runcynthiarun.org/node/25. Internet.

“Overview of the Uninsured in The United States, An Analysis of the 2005 Current Population Survey”. 22 September 2005. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed 23 September, 2007. Available from: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/05/uninsured-cps/index.htm. Internet.

“Presidents Report, Canada’s Performance 2003”. 2003. Treasury Board of Canada. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/report/govrev/03/cp-rc-PR_e.asp?printable=True. Internet.

“Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Infant Mortality --- United States, 1995-2002”. 10 June 2005. MMWR Weekly. Center for Disease Control. Accessed 26 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5422a1.htm. Internet.

Rovner, Julie. “Socialized Medicine Belittled on Campaign Trail.” 6 December, 2007. NPR Morning Edition. Available from Physicians for a National Health Program: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/december/socialized_medicine_.php. Internet.

Shulte, Elizabeth. "Hillary Clinton’s First Health Care Non-Reform." 27 September, 2007. Dissident Voice. Available from: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/hillary-clintons-first-health-care-non-reform/. Internet.

“Snapshots: Healthcare Costs”. Kaiser Family Foundation. January 2007. Accessed 23 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm. Internet.

“Statistics Canada”. 20 December, 2006. The Daily. Accessed 23 September, 2007. Available from: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/061220/d061220b.htm. Internet.

“USA: Mumia Abu-Jamal -- Overturning of death sentence falls short of full justice” 19 December, 2001. Amnesty International. Available from: http://www.amnesty.org/en/alfresco_asset/9e6893af-a3f9-11dc-9d08-f145a8145d2b/amr511832001en.html. Internet.

***************
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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Ron Paul is Still Nuts, That's Why

Enrika — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:46:46 GMT

"So, without further ado, here (greatly condensed from the definitive take-down at Orcinus) are some concrete positions he's taken to cite when you want to push back against your Paul-bot in-laws, co-workers, and assorted acquaintances:"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/13/131540/47/78/420978

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

How about calling us PROgressives?

lmbfreespirit — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:34:56 GMT

cuz we are, aren't we?
NEW century, fancy new name ;)*

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

THE IDEA OF A BLACK PRESIDENT By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:26:41 GMT

THE IDEA OF A BLACK PRESIDENT
[col. writ. 12/18/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal

For much of the US populace, the very idea of a Black president is one so new, so novel, that it forces many people to think of it as if it is barely possible; as if it is the stuff of fiction, not fact.

Fiction has indeed been the realm of this idea, as in movies, and television series, actors have played the part, but that, of course, is on TV.

Of course, time will tell if that is more than imagination, but for millions of people who share this vast land space we call North America, the idea is neither new nor ground-breaking.

That's because there are some 100 million people living in Mexico, and that country had a Black president (albeit briefly) --some 173 years ago.

It was during their war for independence from Spain, when a warrior emerged, a Black Indian named Vicente Guerrero.

In his first battle, he was commissioned a Captain. As the independence war raged on, many of the leading revolutionaries were either killed, or captured. Guerrero fought on, leading some 2,000 men into the Sierra Madre mountains to continue the fight.

By 1821, the Mexicans were prevailing over the Spanish, and Guerrero was hailed as an incorruptible independence fighter. In 1829 he became President of Mexico, and as scholar William Loren Katz writes in his 1986 book, Black Indians:

He began a program of far-reaching reforms, abolishing the death penalty, and starting construction of schools and libraries for the poor. He ended slavery in Mexico. Yet, because of his skin color, lack of education, and country manner, he was held in contempt by the upper classes in Mexico City. This president who had, according to {US. historian M.H.} Bancroft, " a gentleness and magnetism that inspired love among his adherents." was still " a triple-blooded outsider." Black historian J. A. Rogers summarized Guerrero's striking accomplishments by calling him 'the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of Mexico."[p.48]

Guerrero, who in his youth was an illiterate mule driver, once bitten by the bug of Mexican independence, rose to the highest office in the land.

He learned to read when he was about 40, and helped craft the Mexican Constitution, of which he wrote the following provision: "All inhabitants whether white, African, or Indian, are qualified to hold office." He wrote this in 1824, over 30 years before the US Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, which announced, emphatically, that"...a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." and that black people weren't, and could never be citizens of the United States.

In that era of revolution and social transformation, a Black man became president of the second largest country in North America.

Today, 178 years later, we still wonder if such a thing is possible.

What does that say about the United States?

--(c) '07 maj

{Source: Katz, William Loren, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 1986 [Simon Pulse/pb ed.,2005], p.42}

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, framed and in prison, with what could be the final decision on his legal appeals possibly coming down soon. That decision could give Mumia his freedom, a new trial, life in prison, or execution. It is time to turn up the heat against this injustice.

Free Mumia!

For more on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436405.php

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Republicans and Democrats: A brief parable.

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:35:27 GMT

Republicans and Democrats: A brief parable.
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/08/13/tomo/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

PRESS STATEMENT: Revised 12.06.2007, Black File 7001, Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness.

Lee Vin Bah — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:04:44 GMT

PRESS STATEMENT: Revised 12.06.2007, Black File 7001, Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness.

Freelance Journalist inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness. “Black File 7001” is a work of investigative journalism that initially began in 1994. Early in 1999, I completed a covert assignment with the FBI lasting five years after having been previously requested to stand-down from a fulltime university curriculum with an inactive law enforcement background for possibly twelve months. Immediately thereafter I entered the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec) and ever since have continued to experience the U.S. government’s use of psychological torture practices and political retribution by the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration. Multiple actionable offenses have been committed under state, federal and international law while the culpable agents and agencies remain shielded from civil and criminal prosecution by the administration’s threat or issuance of national security letters, which prevent legal discovery and subvert the rule of law. The U.S. government does torture, I am one of its American victims and am requesting a humanitarian intervention before it is too late.

EDITORIAL FOREWORD:

Producing the report titled “Black File 7001” has experienced the threat or issuance of national security letters by the Bush-Cheney administration, a subordinate agent directly under the administration threatening me with the invention of a criminal charge if I publish and the suppression of this story by the same Democratic Congress that falsely promised an end to the money laundering operation in Iraq that remains perpetuated by the insidious genocide of our American military service members and other innocent human beings throughout the world.

As a former lifelong humanitarian member of what use to be the Republican Party until 2000 and a person who also voted for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, I charge the neoconservatives with having filled the bowels of this Trojan Horse Republican Party with the stench of operating a continuing criminal enterprise under the guise of bringing democracy to the world.

The U.S. government infrastructure has been overthrown and this administration has declared constitutional civil war against the United States of America. The American people must organize in a lawful and peaceful revolution that mirrors and surpasses the civil rights era. We must march on Washington, D.C. and picket the corporate offices of the propaganda ministries to force their coverage of your protests and displayed messages.

It is critically important that before the next election we must demand Democratic Congressional members to openly support publically funded elections; not for profit universal healthcare; free or affordable higher education for all citizens; the meaningful development alternative fuel sources; the abatement of the conditions causing the honey bee populations from disappearing from around the world (later in the primary story I will invite you to read why noticing the smallest of G-d’s creatures holds the largest messages); and the criminal investigation of the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration regarding the Black File 7001 report.

Career politicians, regardless of political affiliations who fail the muster of the American people should be removed and replaced with genuine representatives before the next voting cycle.

Americans must become the partisans of liberty to reclaim the dream and promise of America and our inalienable rights as human beings. The jackbooted fascists of today must be prevented from emulating the treason of U.S. Senator Prescott Bush through their perversion of peace for the profits of war. The American mainstream has already been herded towards the invisible and tangible death camps of democracy. In those places you will endured conditions far worse than any physical torture where other Americans like me have been left for dead for over thirty years. These human beings of whom I speak are not criminals or terrorists; they are honorable American citizens who answered their country’s call to duty for special covert government service only to become a disposable population and the hidden dirty secret of the U.S. government.

Since 1970, one thousand and eighty (1,080) American citizens have existed as something cousin to death camp victims from the destructive effects of the Federal Witness Protection Program. These non-criminal federal witnesses and American veterans of voluntary covert government service became the unknowing test subjects in a clandestine torture experiment that exists as the precursor model for converting a freethinking U.S. civilian population into a self-consuming enslaved society. Within the death camp known as “WitSec” these human beings are subjected to the insidious methods of psychological torture that systematically erode the individual sense of self-identity until the will to live has been lost.

ABOUT ME:

My WitSec No. is 7001, I am a husband, father, writer, and freelance journalist who remained inside the Federal Witness Protection Program as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness and am now ready to surface under guarded conditions with the firsthand story of how a minority group of honorable American citizens are being psychologically tortured and politically persecuted by the U.S. government. Immediately I am seeking the support of the American public and progressive news media; the representation of a listed creative agent; contract negotiations with book publishers and the motion picture industry; a university initiative with an accredited school of journalism to include lecturing options and the sanitized conversion of my college records; and communication platforms with Ms. Oprah Winfrey and Mr. George Clooney via the Smoke House Studio.

By comparison to the physical injuries that I have endured from trauma and other accidents, the lasting effects of psychological torture are far worse. This form of torture is sourced from the fascist mindset of the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration through their commissions of actionable offenses and political retributions. As a veteran of voluntary covert government service who operated undercover for five years while contracted by the FBI as an agent of the federal government, I state unequivocally and categorically that the U.S. government does torture human beings. As an American citizen and non-criminal federal witness let the record show that I am declaring myself as a torture victim of the U.S. government. With my soul dying and the body giving signs that it wants to follow I offer that no truer words have ever been written than “give me liberty or give me death” or that “the worse death is a life without hope.”

Having previously been blessed with an out of body experience during trauma that was caused by the U.S. government and prior to my recovery in advance of relearning how to walk, I am not frightened by a natural death. The experience of dying for me confirmed the Socratic belief that the human soul is made of two parts with one half being a physical finite and the other a non-physical infinite. Life as seen from the eyes of the body is an illusion or one half of a duality. It was possible to see from two separate and paralleling perspectives at the same time. The physical world appeared normal while my body felt the tremendous force of being pulled into the earth. Initially from within the spiritual realm there was no ugliness, no beauty, no gender, and only muted colors with humanoid forms. Before I lost the sight of my physical body, the last human emotion that I felt was an all encompassing global pity that literally enveloped the earth with my living sentient energy. Soon I was sitting in space and the beauty of the earth returned with the comforting tenderness of a loving mother and at my back was the warmth of wisdom and strength from a fatherly sun. A few moments passed and my two halves were made whole again to continue the journey that brought me to this place of inhuman suffering.

In self-definition I am a Humanitarian-Universal-Infrastructuralist or a person who has spent a lifetime identifying and interrelating the commonalities between myself and all known sentient beings and other components within the universe from which to become more human.

My views of the current U.S. President and Vice President find them culpable for treason, egregious crimes against humanity and international terrorism while wearing a mask of insipid divinity. Clearly these judicially selected ten cent millionaires are criminal sociopaths who function from a series of learned behaviors used to produce a desired result while being incapable of recognizing any genuine sense of right and wrong.

These individuals and their followers bare the marks that brand their names with the gamatria of the most inhuman and deceptive beings that walk among us on the earth in legion with what some would call the antichrist. Although I have never considered myself worthy of the blessings, respectfully I believe that throughout my life there have been a number of occasions when my being was touched by the many faces of G-d. With all of that said, one should never confuse spiritual currency with political capitol since the latter is most often sourced from the abyss of false profits, which brought the genocide over six million Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals in Nazi Germany; the slaughter of tribal nations in America; the turning of human beings against their brothers and sisters throughout history; the selling of children, women and men as slaves; the gang rape and victimization of Arabic women who are then whipped as criminals; and the 911 terrorist attacks used to perpetuate war profiteering and oil piracy for those who drink from a rivers of human blood and suffering. Considering my temporary acquaintance with death, I believe the purest form of spiritual worship that collectively joins us with the universe is simply the individual act of at least attempting to recognize the human being in all people.

BLACK FILE 7001:

“Black File 7001” is a work of investigative journalism that began in 1994 as an academic prospectus with the goals of publishing books, producing movies, film documentaries, and developing a lecture syllabus with the thinking who better to teach than a person with skin in the game. While in a fulltime academic setting and shortly after beginning this protect, I discovered actionable intelligence that was brought forward for case installation at the federal level. Already possessing an inactive law enforcement background and specialized skill sets where few if any training manuals exist, the FBI requested my voluntary assistance for a projected twelve months. Five years later I completed the FBI undercover group one investigation having successfully penetrated four organized crime groups while never being afforded one day off for that entire period of time. Since other federal law enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle long duration personal security operations, I entered the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec) as a Non-Criminal Federal Witness in 1999. Nearly immediately after entering the WitSec the named agents and agencies of the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration unthinkably began outing my active covert status. Since exiting the WitSec in good standing early in 2001, political retributions by the U.S. government have continued to terrorize me with actionable offenses and the tactics of psychological torture. These culpable acts additionally serve as a passive sanction for the assassination of an American citizen and a former covert agent of the federal government. This story is uncharted territory and I am unaware of any other writer/journalist who has actually penetrated this fraudulent clandestine federal program, which shrouds itself beneath an undeserved veil of secrecy that exists in the absence of public scrutiny and meaningful congressional oversight. The latter might explain why multiple action notices regarding this investigation have gone unanswered by the craven Democratic Congress that I helped elected to office with their false promise of ending the corporatist money laundering operation in Iraq.

Within the next 30 day or by New Year’s Day 2008, I will publish an extensive sanitized report that has been redacted from a much larger work. Please communicate with me and contact your local election campaign committees to demand that your congressional members take action in this matter.

American citizens are being used as the unknowing test subjects in a clandestine torture experiment shrouded within the Federal Witness Protection Program (WitSec). Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses (1,080) are a special minority class of American citizens in title only who are being used as a laboratory control sample for the applied tactics of terrorism and psychological torture (psyops) on a U.S. civilian population by the U.S. government.

Writing remains one of my two fragile anchors holding me to this world and a federal agent (L.H.M.) directly under the Bush-Cheney administration has telephonically communicated “you have a lot of people in high places afraid to death that you are going to destroy their programs…and if you publish a book, the government will invent a criminal charge against you.” After refusing not to publish with an invitation to that federal agent’s handlers to “go pound salt up their asses”, a series of actionable offenses were committed against me in political retribution under state, federal and international law. These same entities on several occasions have outed my classified status that with each culpable act, serves to intensify what has become a standing passive sanction for the assassination of an American citizen and former covert agent of the federal government.

As a physically disabled person from two trauma accidents caused by the federal government or incurred in the line of duty during covert government service, I applied for Social Security Disability Benefits (SSDB) through the required classified channels. This process required that I utilize my second WitSec Inspector (A.S.) and the Social Security Administration’s Sensitive Operations Division (SOD) that was established for persons in covert-ops, the CIA and the U.S. State Department working oversees. The Social Security Disability Benefits were authorized, but following my refusal not to publish the WitSec and SSA’s SOD conspired to punitively withdraw my SSDB. This occurred prior to beginning treatments for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer in 2004. The government’s own federal court judge who heard the SSA case issued several letters of complaint to the Sensitive Operations Division, charging that office had provided the court with erroneous information and that the SOD’s delay in responding was contemptuous to the point of preventing a fair hearing. Two months past while the SOD and WitSec crafted their evidence and my SSDB’s claim entered the appeals stage. During the initial SSDB process, repeated telephonic conversations had been made with and between the WitSec and the SOD to insure that the production of the SSA documents would not out my covert status. After multiple assurances that complete security would be maintained, the WitSec and SOD deliberately or at the least through total gross incompetence filed documents that outed my covert status by commingling my identities in violation of several federal laws and a federal court seal. After the matter was sent to the SSA Hearing and Appeals Board where it remained for two years that federal agency notified my private attorney they had lost my classified government file in violation of the same laws allegedly protecting my covert status. A copy was returned by my attorney and two weeks later my benefits were denied again. The SSDB matter is pending on civil appeal to the federal court where I am certain it will be again denied by the government’s crafting of the evidence. Lastly the WitSec and SOD conspired to deconstruct my only viable work history by purging a covert front business located in Texas from the regular SSA computer system and additionally failed under contract to sanitize and convert my previous Social Security records into my new Jewish name. Allegedly I had been employed by that Texas front business for over a decade as a construction estimator that for all I knew might have found Dick Cheney answering the telephones on an earlier occasion. Following the WitSec and SOD’s punitive acts of political retribution, during two subsequent visits to the local SSA office the computer screen was so void of information that the office staffers contacted their supervisors to report they believed their computer system had been penetrated by hackers.

Prior to 911 and before the USDOJ had been prostituted by this corrupt administration, I was able to assist in the covert criminal prosecution of my first U.S. Deputy Marshal/WitSec Inspector (J.D.) for his theft of government funds.

After 911 and following my refusal not to publish under threat of the invention of a criminal charge by the U.S. government that same former WitSec Inspector/federal felon was released from prison and allowed to stalk me. While near death from chemotherapy and radiation treatments for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer that same federal felon physically accosted me by the arm inside of a warehouse superstore. Thirty-six security notices went unanswered by the U.S. Marshals Service’s Federal Witness Security Program Headquarters.

The second WitSec Inspector (A.S.) eventually came to my home with a regular deputy marshal who did not have a WitSec security clearance, which further outed my covert status and sarcastically laughed that he had forgotten to tell me that the WitSec Headquarters’ mailing address had been changed after 911 and that under the new U.S. Patriot Act my only means of communicating with headquarters was directly through him. That WitSec Inspector continued to smile while stating that my classified information and security notices had been circulated by several staffers without WitSec clearances before it got to where I thought it was being sent. When asked about the other Deputy Marshal’s security clearance, the WitSec Inspector stated “owe I use non-WitSec personnel all the time to handle WitSec matters.” This same WitSec Inspector has committed multiple actionable offences and has outed my covert status numerous times while creating a growing mortal threat environment around my geographic location.

Many of the public self-aggrandizing claims and testimonials given before the U.S. Congress and published by the Federal Witness Protection Program will soon be debunked within my Black File 7001 report.

Following the WitSec and SOD’s removal of my work history with their deletion of the covert front business from the SSA computer system and even though I am a very capable and multitalented individual with strong skill sets, given this act and the government’s failure to perform under written contracts, I have been unable to find employment after submitting over 3000 job applications. However by comparison and in direct contrast to my own personal situation, the first WitSec Inspector (J.D.) after his release from federal prison for the theft of several thousand dollars in U.S. government funds is now gainfully employed and processing the private financial records of American citizens as a mortgage loan officer. Under this administration criminals and traitors are rewarded and the good servants of the American people become part of a disposable population.

Out of 18,000 federal witnesses, 16,920 are criminal and custodial federal witnesses and 1,080 of that total number are “non-criminal federal witnesses.” The six percent who are non-criminal federal witnesses are comprised of honorable American citizens from every cultural identity within our society. These same veterans of voluntary covert government service took that extra step above and beyond the call of duty to participate in our system while defending our constitutional democracy and the American people. Within that minority of six percent I am an even smaller number of non-criminal federal witnesses who entered covert government service with an inactive law enforcement background and specialized skill sets of a nature that possess few if any training manuals.

The ACLU of which I am a member has tried to bring four previous cases involving non-criminal federal witnesses through the Washington, D.C. office. With each lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Bush-Cheney administration has issued national security letters to prevent the legal discovery of evidence and thus subverted the rule of law. However, in my possession is the actual physical evidence that includes but is not limited to federal court documents proving the outing of my covert status; the federal court documents of the first WitSec Inspector (J.D.); lawfully produced audiotape recordings of WitSec personnel and others; and the proof of warrantless wiretapping, data mining, the electronic theft of intellectual property; et al. One should remember General Douglas MacArthur’s island hopping campaign during WWII. As that relates to this matter, I am bypassing a slugfest with Goliath that would only serve to hold me in stasis with my foot in the courtroom door. Instead I invite all freethinking human beings to a Greek debate in the court of public opinion. Criticism and contemplation are necessary to keep a flourishing democracy alive. Let the U.S. government bring forth its best criminal cowards to stand on the square with me in open examination before the American people and the world.

THE TREASON OF CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

It is also my intention to challenge the blatant lies told before the U.S. Congress by Condoleezza Rice regarding the administration’s knowledge of events prior to 911 – the FBI and CIA did have operational joint counterterrorism taskforce offices since the mid 90s.

“A litany of lies about 911, Iraq and now Iran – There is one point that I am compelled to insert within this document beyond the scope of its primary focus and here seems as good a place as anywhere. A covert FBI Special Agent and former teammate in charge of two special operations groups who worked in the field with me and whom I supported in the hunt for Eric Robert Rudolph also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, revealed during the mid 90s that both the FBI and CIA had established joint counterterrorism taskforce offices to exchange foreign and domestic intelligence. This fact directly contradicts Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before congress regarding the August 6, 2001 PDB Briefing Report titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”, during which Rice stated that a fractionalization existed between federal agencies, which prevented intelligence information from being communicated to the Bush administration. The most blatant lie came when Rice stated that no joint FBI/CIA taskforce offices existed before or during that time, while alleging joint taskforce offices were being established forthwith. Further supporting a charge of perjury against Condoleezza Rice and I believe grounds for treason, appears to be former CIA Director, George Tenet’s public testimony regarding actionable intelligence in July 2001 regarding Osama bin Laden’s plan to attack American targets using commercial jetliners. July 2001 marked the last time that I flew on a commercial aircraft on my way to lecture at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia and an occasion when I exchanged passing remarks with former U.S. Senator Gary Hart sitting near me. The actionable intelligence was clearly suppressed by the Bush-Cheney administration. In other words, given these facts and the known associations between the 911 Terrorists; the family of Osama bin Laden; the Saudi Arabian Royal family; the United Arab Emirates (poised to purchase 25% of Citibank and 40% of the U.S. and British Stock Markets); and the oil trading partners, personal friends and business associates within the Bush-Cheney syndicate it appears that the United States of America was allowed to be attacked by a foreign enemy to act as a protagonist event for the perpetuation of war profiteering and oil piracy. Therefore I strongly believe that if the unveiled enemies of the American people were not politically shielded, they would have already been prosecuted for treason, conspiracy, racketeering, money laundering, operating a continuing criminal enterprise, international terrorism, and crimes against humanity.”

SPECIAL NOTE CONCERNING IRAN:

Before the 2006 election the U.S. Intelligence agencies already knew that Iran did not have a “secret nuclear weapons program.” That report was presented to the Bush-Cheney administration and was politically suppressed with instructions given between the lines to craft new evidence. The facts are that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has not been able to achieve a greater rate than 3.8% enrichment, which is even a lower percentage than what is required to bring a peaceful nuclear power plant online and far less than the enrichment level needed to produce a nuclear weapon. The psychology of substituting sexuality for the creation of illegal wars with oil rich sovereign nations, seems the iconic aphrodisiac of this administration when laminating that over sixty-eight elected Republican politicians have been charged and convicted of sexual crimes against children; that George W. Bush, a known cocaine user (sexual stimulant), deserted his post in the Air Nation Guard when they began drug testing; that both Bush and Cheney took multiple deferments from military service during Vietnam so that other Americans could die in their places; that Dick Cheney made use of a Freudian phallic extension in the form of a shotgun to shot his friend in the head during a hunting expedition; that Dick Cheney has a pneumatic penile implant to achieve an erection; and that the nude photograph of George W. Bush in college displays an unremarkable penis. Add these factors together with the absolute power over the U.S. military and the world will recognize a six headed monster with twelve hearts that numbers 666 and produces the political fodder that destroys the sovereign thought process, creates a toxic society and consumes the collective human soul. Plainly stated devil cannot exist without followers.

MY REQUEST TO MEDIA, UNIVERSITIES, PUBLISHERS, MOVIE PRODUCERS, AND THE WORLD OF HUMAN BEINGS:

While my reaching out might become the closing scene in a lifelong journey to become more human, knowingly I choose my own death over remaining a torture victim and slave within an uncultivatable existence where self-nurturing and remaining true to one’s own nature is an impossibility. The Democratic Congressional members that I helped elect have remained silent with the full knowledge of this matter and only a handful of good human beings seem to be listening for the moment. Already a subordinate federal agent directly under the Bush-Cheney administration has telephonically threatened that if I publish a book the government will invent a criminal charge against me. This is not the America that I defended and have nourished. Nevertheless if we are to remain a world of human beings, we the people must publically exam the U.S. government’s ongoing psychological torture of up to 1,080 Non-Criminal Federal Witnesses who are American citizens and your good neighbors. Currently I have established online locations on YouTube, Tribe.net, Comcast, and have posted on the message board at The Ed Schultz Show website where these American citizens can share their stories with other human beings and possibly begin to reclaim their individual sense of self-identity through these communication platforms. One non-criminal federal witness has already communicated they are hiding outside the U.S. to protect themselves from U.S. government torture. Recently I attempted to communicate with a well known actor’s movie studio and was informed that I must have a listed creative agent to represent my story before they will be legally able to communicate with me. Therefore and in as much that I would dare to hope to restore my own life back to the place where it should have already been, I am seeking the representation of a listed Creative Agent, Business Negotiations with members from the Publishing and Motion Picture Industries, and a University Initiative from an accredited School of Journalism where I might combine all of these components within a flourishing academic setting to create a lecture syllabus and continue writing. Please do not think me a selfish person, because I have remained one of the most extroverted and giving human beings you could ever know. This academic and professional prospectus has endured as my long-range plan since beginning this journalism project and is one of the few reasons why I have not ended my own life after experiencing something cousin to an extraordinary rendition to a clandestine blacksite torture facility that exists invisibly within the plain-sight of American society. Please do not let this story die with me and challenge the validity of any member of the Democratic Congress for their repeated failures to respond to several action notices regarding this matter.

Beyond the above I wish to offer one final piece of personal information. When I relocated to this area I had no intention of becoming involved with anyone and had anticipated reclaiming my academic standing to achieve my goals in life. While visiting a local bookstore and coffee house, I met the finest human being whom I have ever known and today that person is my wife. Together we raised our young child from her previous marriage and I have been blessed by the experience of being a father. Had it not been for my wife’s medical insurance I would not be here today writing this story. My wife retires at the end of this year and our child is now attending a university. What that means for me living on a fixed monthly annuity income and having been waited out by the WitSec while my saving depleted is that I will not be able to afford the additional $600.00 a month for my portion of the medical insurance policy. Further I have been unable to move in any direction to build the life that I wanted from the resulting harms caused by the WitSec cocoon that I will address in detail within the redacted report that follows. To protect my family and legally separate myself from my wife in the event of recurring illness, I am preparing to file the divorce papers on my desk. Never will I forgive or forget that the U.S. government under the Bush-Cheney administration has systematically deconstructed my family and prevented my equality as a person and an American citizen while psychologically torturing me in ways that have already killed other Americans who are non-criminal federal witnesses through suicide and medical neglect. This deconstruction of my family unit is comparatively symbolic to the overthrow of the U.S. government infrastructure by the international crime consortium and the same coconspiratorial war profiteers who attacked the United States of America on September 11, 2001. Having lived so long as the shell of an American citizen in title only, if I am unable to be made whole again in America, then as a torture victim and dissident under political persecution I am prepared to request asylum from the government of Canada. Should that fail and if I cannot be restored then I am ready to leave this world for the peace of oblivion and wish each of you mozel tov.

THE QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED BY A GROWING NUMBER OF HUMAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP YOU?

First please do not attempt to send any money I believe that it is possible to earn a living with the years invested in this story and I prefer paying my own way, which has remained the purpose of my labors while enduring U.S. government torture. Profoundly from a place of extreme isolation your concerns are priceless gifts that have touched me deeper than words could possibly express and I truly feel your human warmth and compassion.

Beyond that human inclusion the most important act of support is not to let this story die from a lack of response or another empty promise by the congress just so this matter will be “disappeared” like the 1,080 American patriots who are non-criminal federal witnesses in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Please meditate for the good energy of the universe to encompass the lives of all human beings and continue to contact any person or organization who will if nothing else at least feel the truth of this torture story: Democratic Party headquarters around the nation; elected representatives who truly wish to remain in office; U.S. and international human rights organizations; members of the progressive news media (The Ed Schultz Show, Air America Radio, Democracy Now, The Nation Magazine, I.N.N. International News Net, Studs Terkel, the ACLU, Civil Rights Attorneys; etc.); the free and independent sovereign nations of the world (Vancouver BC, Canada, UK, Italy, Spain; etc.); the International Court of Justice aka the World Court and Cour internationale de Justice; and any other conduit of communication that might wish to know, share or actuate this true story.

Ms. Oprah Winfrey and Mr. George Clooney are two people whom I admire for their humanitarian and creative contributions to the world. With their support this story will not be silenced and human lives will be saved. Please send each of them “one” simple note requesting their support of the “Black File 7001” story and include my website and e-mail addresses. The movie “Syriana” spoke to me at a very personal level with Bob’s betrayal by the government he served that ultimately resulted in his death. Oprah Winfrey's all-girl leadership academy in South Africa is only one of the endless humanitarian contributions made to the world by this great human being. The education system has played a significant part of my life with a trilingual professional educator in my immediate family, a child currently attending a university and my own employment with the FBI in the third year of a fulltime academic curriculum. The purpose of that covert government service was initiated to prevent national and international organized crime organizations from distributing methamphetamine within the public school systems and throughout the United States of America.

For a time I prevented the false prophets who professed a love of children and humanity from preying on the innocent, but the “war on drugs” like the “war on terrorism” are only political mantras meant to perpetuate and fatten the cash cows of government profiteers.

PLEASE CONTACT MR. GEORGE CLOONEY WITH ONE LETTER ONLY:

Agent:
Mr. George Clooney
C/o Bryan Lourd
Creative Artists Agency
2000 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
424.288.2000
424.288.2900 fax

Publicist:
Mr. George Clooney
C/o Stan Rosenfield & Associates
2029 Century Park East
Suite 1190
Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA
310.286.7474
310.286.2255 fax

Movie Studio:
Smoke House
Attn: Mr. George Clooney
C/o Warner Bros.
4000 Warner Blvd., Bldg. 15
Burbank, California 91522 USA
818.954.4840
818.954.4860 fax

PLEASE CONTACT MS. OPRAH WINFREY WITH ONE LETTER ONLY:

The Oprah Winfrey Show
Attn: Ms. Oprah Winfrey
http://www.oprah.com/email/email_landing.jhtml

BLACK FILE 7001 CONTACT INFORMATION:

E-mail:
BlackFile7001@comcast.net

Tribe.net:
http://people.tribe.net/49395906-0c49-4c98-b92a-79f37b7927cb

You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/BlackFile7001

Comcast: Currently blocking my ability to establish a website online.

The Ed Schultz Show (Message Boards – “The Media” Section)
http://www.bigeddieradio.com

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

New CIA Operation To Overthrow Chavez Exposed

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:39:07 GMT

CIA Operation "Pliers" Uncovered in Venezuela

Psyop aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow President Chavez

By Eva Golinger
11/29/07 "Global Research," --- - An internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela. The memo summarizes the different scenarios that the CIA has been working on in Venezuela for the upcoming referendum vote on December 2nd. The Electoral Scenario, as it's phrased, confirms that the voting tendencies will not change substantially before Sunday, December 2nd, and that the SI (YES) vote in favor of the constitutional reform has an advantage of about 10-13 points over the NO vote. The CIA estimates abstention around 60% and states in the memo that this voting tendency is irreversible before the elections.

Officer Steere emphasizes the importance and success of the public relations and propaganda campaign that the CIA has been funding with more than $8 million during the past month - funds that the CIA confirms are transfered through the USAID contracted company, Development Alternatives, Inc., which set up operations in June 2002 to run the USAID Office for Transition Initiatives that funds and advises opposition NGOs and political parties in Venezuela. The CIA memo specifically refers to these propaganda initiatives as "psychological operations" (PSYOPS), that include contracting polling companies to create fraudulent polls that show the NO vote with an advantage over the SI vote, which is false. The CIA also confirms in the memo that it is working with international press agencies to distort the data and information about the referendum, and that it coordinates in Venezuela with a team of journalists and media organized and directed by the President of Globovision, Alberto Federico Ravell.

CIA Officer Michael Steere recommends to General Michael Hayden two different strategies to work simultaneously: Impede the referendum and refuse to recognize the results once the SI vote wins. Though these strategies appear contradictory, Steere claims that they must be implemented together precisely to encourage activities that aim toward impeding the referendum and at the same time prepare the conditions for a rejection of the results.

How is this to be done?

In the memo, the CIA proposes the following tactics and actions:

Take the streets and protest with violent, disruptive actions across the nation
Generate a climate of ungovernability
Provoke a general uprising in a substantial part of the population
Engage in a "plan to implode" the voting centers on election day by encouraging opposition voters to "VOTE and REMAIN" in their centers to agitate others
Start to release data during the early hours of the afternoon on Sunday that favor the NO vote (in clear violation of election regulations)
Coordinate these activities with Ravell & Globovision and international press agencies
Coordinate with ex-military officers and coupsters Pena Esclusa and Guyon Cellis - this will be done by the Military Attaché for Defense and Army at the US Embassy in Caracas, Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO)

To encourage rejection of the results, the CIA proposes:
Creating an acceptance in the public opinion that the NO vote will win for sure
Using polling companies contracted by the CIA
Criticize and discredit the National Elections Council
Generate a sensation of fraud
Use a team of experts from the universities that will talk about how the data from the Electoral Registry has been manipulated and will build distrust in the voting system
The CIA memo also talks about:
Isolating Chavez in the international community
Trying to achieve unity amongst the opposition
Seek an alliance between those abstentionists and those who will vote "NO"
Sustain firmly the propaganda against Chavez
Execute military actions to support the opposition mobilizations and propagandistic occupations
Finalize the operative preparations on the US military bases in Curacao and Colombia to provide support to actions in Venezuela
Control a part of the country during the next 72-120 hours
Encourage a military rebellion inside the National Guard forces and other components
Those involved in these actions as detailed in the CIA memo are:

The CIA Office in Venezuela - Office of Regional Affairs, and Officer Michael Steere
US Embassy in Venezuela, Ambassador Patrick Duddy
Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO) at the US Embassy in Caracas and Military Attaché Richard Nazario
Venezuelan Political Parties:
Comando Nacional de la Resistencia
Accion Democratica
Primero Justicia
Bandera Roja
Media:

Alberto Federico Ravell & Globovision
Interamerican Press Society (IAPA) or SIP in Spanish
International Press Agencies

Venezuelans:
Pena Esclusa
Guyon Cellis
Dean of the Simon Bolivar University, Rudolph Benjamin Podolski
Dean of the Andres Bello Catholic University, Ugalde
Students: Yon Goicochea, Juan Mejias, Ronel Gaglio, Gabriel Gallo, Ricardo Sanchez

Operation Tenaza has the objective of encouraging an armed insurrection in Venezuela against the government of President Chavez that will justify an intervention of US forces, stationed on the military bases nearby in Curacao and Colombia. The Operation mentions two countries in code: as Blue and Green. These refer to Curacao and Colombia, where the US has operative, active and equipped bases that have been reinforced over the past year and a half in anticipation of a conflict with Venezuela.

The document confirms that psychological operations are the CIA's best and most effective weapon to date against Venezuela, and it will continue its efforts to influence international public opinion regarding President Chavez and the situation in the country.

Operation Tenaza is a very alarming plan that aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow (again) its legitimate and democratic (and very popularly support) president. The plan will fail, primarily because it has been discovered, but it must be denounced around the world as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela's sovereignty.

The original document in English will be available in the public sphere soon for viewing and authenticating purposes. And it also contains more information than has been revealed here.

For the full text in Spanish, see: Operación Tenaza: Informe confidencial de la CIA devela plan de saboteo al referéndum del 2 de diciembre http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/n105390.html

********

[Note: The following article appeared in Issue No. 2367 (Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, 2007) of Informations Ouvrières (Labor News), the publication of the Workers Party of France. The translation is by The Organizer newspaper.]

Venezuela: What's at Stake in the Dec. 2 Referendum?

By ANDREU CAMPS

A referendum on the reforms to the Venezuelan Constitution proposed by President Hugo Chavez will be held Sunday, December 2nd. The reforms involve 33 articles of the Constitution and include such questions as the right of the president to seek re-election, the place and role of communal institutions, the unity of the national territory, and the control by the State of the nation's natural resources.

U.S. imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy have been waging a virulent campaign for many months now against Article 230 of the Constitutional Reform, which stipulates: "The term of office of the president is seven years. The president of the Republic can be re-elected for a new term in office." This is a formulation that does not limit the number of terms a president can serve.

These attacks against the Constitutional Reform process are the continuation of an uninterrupted campaign waged by these right-wing forces against Hugo Chavez ever since he took office -- a campaign that includes two attempted coup d'etats (which were defeated by the mass mobilizations of the Venezuelan people), two lockouts imposed by the powerful bosses' federation (Fedecamaras), and an attempt to remove Chavez from office via a binding referendum in August 2005 (an attempt that also was defeated by the uprising of the people).

Again, over the past weeks, we have witnessed multiple armed confrontations in the universities, followed by an open provocation by the King of Spain during the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago [about which we reported in the last issue of our paper].

The People Will Vote for National Sovereignty

No one can doubt that on December 2nd, the Venezuelan workers, youth and people will vote against this new attempt by the reactionary forces to deny them their sovereignty and to overturn a government and president they have freely elected.

They will vote against the attempts by the oligarchy and all the reactionary forces to return Venezuela to its previous role as a servant of Washington.

They will vote to continue the nationalizations, so that their State oil company, PDVSA, does not return to the claws of the imperialist masters, so that the funds generated by the exploitation of the nation's natural resources can continue to benefit the working people and youth of Venezuela.

They will vote for Article 302 of the Constitutional Reform, which states: "The State reserves itself the right -- for reasons of sovereignty, development and national interest -- to exploit the nation's oil and gas resources and to produce and control all services and goods of public interest and strategic character. The State will promote national manufacturing, making use of the raw materials derived from the exploitation of the country's natural resources."

This means that Venezuela will not only be an exporter of raw materials, it will export finished and semi-finished products, including oil-based products.

They will vote so that, according to Article 303, "PDVSA and all its affiliates and concessions can not privatized -- neither fully nor partially."

They will vote, as stipulated in Article 307, to ban all large business interests whose actions are contrary to the social interests of the nation."

They will vote, as stipulated in Article 318, so "that the national monetary system seeks to attain the essential objectives of the socialist State and of the people's well-being, above all other considerations. The Executive Branch and the Central Bank of Venezuela, in full coordination, will set the counry's monetary goals. ... The Central Bank has no autonomy. Its functions are subordinate to the national economic policies and to the Plan of National Development."

This means that Venezuela will reclaim its sovereignty over its Central Bank, which has, up till now, been in reality under the control of the International Monetary Fund.

The mass of the population will vote December 2nd for national sovereignty and for a total break with all forms of subordination to imperialism.

----

Sidebar Article:

Control Over Oil and Gas Resources at the Center of the Constitutional Debate

The current Constitution of Venezuela was adopted through popular consultation in 1999, after the election to a Constituent Assembly in July of that year. The Constituent Assembly was convened after the victory by Chavez in the December 1998 presidential election.

In November 2001, under the implementation provisions of the newly adopted Constitution, the government decreed the full control by the State over PDVSA, the large corporation in charge of oil and gas extraction in Venezuela. This was a corporation that functioned hitherto as a sort of state within a state, with 70 percent of its profits invested in 200 corporations based in the United States.

This affirmation by the Chavez government of the national character of PDVSA was one of the main factors that led the U.S. Embassy, with the support of the Spanish Embassy, to carry out an attempted military coup on April 11, 2002 -- an attempt that was smashed by the revolutionary mobilization of the Venezuelan people.

Since the last election, the Chavez government has forced the multinational corporations that discover new oil fields to become mixed-capital enterprises, with majority ownership and control by PDVSA, thereby reinforcing the role of State in the extraction of the nation's oil resources Up till that point, these oil fields were not under State control.

A large percentage of the proceeds from Venezuela's hydrocarbons, now controlled by the State, can thus be invested in social programs -- called "missions" by the government -- such as education, healthcare, public housing and basic urban infrastructure.

These billions of dollars, no longer in the coffers of the multinational corporations, are now NOT under the aegis of the IMF and World Bank. This is what imperialism finds intolerable. -- A.C.

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Mike Gravel for President!

Robert — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:37:12 GMT

Hey ya'll! I sincerely ask everyone to look up Mike Gravel. He's running for president. Look him up on wikipedia.org and youtube.com and gravel2008.us. Also, look up and watch the video "Why We Fight" on youtube.com (it's in 4 parts). I've been doing a lot of research about the military-industrial complex and it's control over American society. I've started to post my research online at www.americanreality.net. Spread the research! Make sure to watch the upcoming debate, paying particular attention to Senator Mike Gravel! Thanks! Peace!

posted in Democrats - 3 replies

Liberals (and freethinkers) need to stop respecting Islam!! (Sam Harris video)

Rocky — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:52:02 GMT

Liberals (and freethinkers) need to stop respecting Islam!! (Sam Harris video)

"Sam Harris nails it in this video. The problem with so many liberals is that they get so tied up in opposing Christianity and oppression in America, that they actually start to defend Islam and oppression in the middle east (which are actually a lot worse). These liberals need to rise above this dichotomy though and oppose both Christianity AND Islam, and western oppression AND middle eastern oppression.

I've made this plea to fellow atheists before, and I'll make it again. You've managed to avoid being suckered in by other types of harmful ideals., So please don't be suckered into political correctness and respecting religions that are actually much worse than Christianity just because you have the misguided notion that foreign cultures are quaint and should be preserved or that backward countries should have the right to govern their countries however they see fit. The truth of the matter is, Islam is a bigger threat to rationality than Christianity is, and countries like Iraq and Iran are far more oppressive than America is. So wake up, atheists, and stop sticking up the bad guys."

"Sam Harris on Tucker" VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBOGQckaF0U

"The End of Liberalism?" -

Head-in-the-Sand Liberals: Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.
By Sam Harris
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-end-of-liberalism/

* This comes from a person on myspace named "crocoduck" http://www.myspace.com/crocoduck

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Pipeline to Peril

Rocky — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:21:31 GMT

Pipeline to Peril - Europeans traded for oil
by Richard L. Rubenstein

"On the European continent, Jews are under siege. The EU has turned aggressively against Israel, and the post-Holocaust taboo on anti-Semitic speech and incitement has been broken, opening the way for a plethora of anti-Jewish statements, cartoons, and caricatures.

What lies at the root of this shift? During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries unleashed the oil weapon, embargoing critical oil exports to the United States and Western Europe as a strategy for compelling Israel to withdraw unconditionally from all territories occupied in the 1967 war.

The US rejected Arab demands, but the European Community (EC, later EU), more dependent on Arab oil than America, decided on a policy of outright appeasement. This led to a series of quasi-official meetings between European and Arab officials and experts that culminated in a meeting at the ministerial level in Paris on July 31, 1974. There, an agreement was reached to initiate the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD), an ongoing series of closed, high-level meetings between senior officials of the two sides which would enable the EC and the Arab League to formulate a new understanding on economic, cultural, and diplomatic issues. An important EAD objective was the eventual replacement of the US by the French-led European Community as the dominant influence in the Middle East. Over time, the EAD would institute a number of long-term policy agreements that guaranteed the Europeans both an uninterrupted oil supply and lucrative export contracts with oil-rich Arab states. In return, the Europeans would facilitate international recognition of the PLO at a time when its charter called for Israel's destruction, and enable Arab religious, cultural, and intellectual institutions to achieve unprecedented influence in Europe.

The Arabs also pressured the EC to relax its immigration rules and permit a massive influx of Muslims into Europe. From its inception, every EAD meeting passed resolutions in support of Muslim immigration to Europe...."

http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1113

This article demonstrates that Europeans have been traded for oil. They are slaves to their gov't that traded them for oil. The US is doing the same thing. Now, I understand why legal and ILLEGAL immigration of Muslims has been rampant - it was part of the deal.

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

"America is facing total collapse " VIDEO

Rocky — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:49:11 GMT

"America is facing total collapse " VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGpY2hw7ao8

I like "60 Minutes" and this video is serious. I don't think it even mentioned the US gov't giving assistance to ILLEGAL immigrants either which is costing Americans 90 Billion per year. And if they're given Amnesty, it will be in the TRILLIONS. No kidding.

At the end of this video, it mentions how Ron Paul is the "only" Presidential candidate that can tackle this issue. I disagree - (D-Ohio) Dennis Kucinich has a plan the deal with this issue as well as NAFTA - as he's the ONLY one who wants to do away it and start over with a clean slate etc, etc. I'm not sure he's much help with the ILLEGAL immigration issue though. He'll also create energy independence from oil and other fossil fuels so that Americans are not funding the Islamic terrorists.
http://www.dennis4president.com/home

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

The Fight For Single Payer and National Healthcare

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:10:04 GMT

The Fight For Single Payer and National Healthcare

By Steven Argue

As an advocate for social justice and someone with no healthcare, I am strongly in favor of national healthcare like in Cuba, and short of that a single payer system would be a significant step forward.

National healthcare does work. It is working very well in Cuba. It is interesting that tiny poor Cuba under a U.S. economic blockade is able to provide good healthcare for everyone. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment or turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance. Cuba has taken the profit out of illness and injury and provide healthcare as a human right.

Likewise, while the United States is sending military troops to set up death squad governments in Iraq and Haiti and to intervene in Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and prop up the death squad government of Colombia, Cuba instead sends doctors. Cuban doctors save lives. They are on the ground in a number of countries providing regular care, and they are also sent to countries in emergencies. A few years back Cuba sent doctors to Central America after a bad hurricane and saved many lives. Likewise they offered to send doctors to New Orleans immediately after Katrina, they were well trained in dealing with that type of situation and would have saved lives, but Bush refused to let them in. A similar thing happened with the Nicaraguan government refusing entry, but that government let the Cuban doctors in due to protests.

And Canada, also unlike the United States, has better healthcare where everyone is covered. Lately the NAFTA agreement has unfortunately been intervening against the Canadian single payer system, but it is still a much better system of healthcare than in the United States. Single payer is much cheaper and more efficient than the health insurance racket. Unfortunately the Democrats and Republicans are subservient to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and for-profit hospital industries. Single payer eliminates the health insurance racket with all of its waste in profits, paperwork, and overpaid CEOs. And despite the cries of the extreme right neo-cons and libertarians, none of the major candidates have any plans to make any significant change to the healthcare racket in America.

It will take a major struggle against the corporate power structure to gain single payer healthcare. The main force that has the potential strength to do so is organized labor, a force that could shut down production to make our demands.

Unfortunately many of the unions that are supposed to represent labor are in the back pockets of the corporations and the Democrat Party. Instead of fighting for single payer healthcare the SEIU recently held rallies for Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). None of these corporate politicians support single payer healthcare.

This is bad enough, but Dawn Lee, spokesperson for the SEIU, says the SEIU takes no position on HR 676, a single payer bill introduced by Conyers.

There are unions, such as the California Nurses Association (CNA), that support single payer. But until the labor movement breaks its love affair with the corporate Democrat Party, and begins to once again rely on the militant action of the rank and file, as it did in the 1930’s, we will not only not gain single payer healthcare, our standard of living will continue to decline by every other indicator as well, while massive corporate profits soar.

Pass HR 676, single payer for the United States!

Pass SB 840, single payer in California!

Put union dues into strike funds instead of the Democrat Party!

For mass action and a general strike for single payer healthcare!

End the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba!

Preserve Canadian Single Payer, Repeal NAFTA!

Steven Argue for Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 2 replies

Sharia (Islamic) Law in Germany -- Well On The Way!

Rocky — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:10:07 GMT

I thought Democrats in the states should be made aware of this one. Pass it onto other Americans please.

Sharia Law in Germany -- Well On The Way!

An excellent 8-part article in Der Spiegel. Seems at least some
Germans are waking up to the dangers of multi-cultural tolerance,
towards those who are fully intolerant, and plan to eventually "take
over". Americans, Brits, Europeans, Canadians... especially women!
Read and learn. This is happening in your territory as well. J.D.

*Part 1: Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629,00.html
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores
the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a
growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are
helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is
welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists. ...

*Part 2: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-2,00.html
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islam expert from the central German
university town of Marburg, has a similar take on the matter. "Do we
already have Sharia here?" she asks, adding that the Frankfurt case
shows that "things are getting out of hand here." ...

*Part 3: Violating the Principles of Equal Treatment
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-3,00.html
For far too long, Germany's muslim immigrants were not asked to put
much effort into integrating. For decades, German judges essentially
paved the way for Islamic fundamentalists to form a parallel society.
They raised little opposition to the strategy employed by Islamic
groups to demand their supposed religious freedom in court until they
got it. But the judges must have known, argues Johannes Kandel, that
"giving preferential treatment to groups violates the principle of
equal treatment in a secular legal system. ...

*Part 4: Giving the Muezzin Free Reign
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-4,00.html
Muslims can also often count on the support of German courts when it
comes to building mosques. As far back as 1992, the Federal
Administrative Court ruled that neighbors must "fundamentally accept"
being woken before sunup. ...

*Part 5: The Camel Fatwa and other Letters from Absurdistan
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-5,00.html
This was an attitude that still prevailed in the minds of German
judges one year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. At the time,
the higher administrative court in the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia ruled that a female Muslim student in the 10th grade
should be permitted not to take part in a school trip. The family had
argued that Islam prohibits allowing girls to go on such trips
without being accompanied by a male family member. The family also
insisted that the girl was constantly worried about losing her
headscarf. The judges found that such fears were "comparable with the
situation of a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her
disability, can only travel with a companion." This assessment was
devastating because it accepted the rules of a camel drivers' society
in the modern age -- literally, because a few years earlier, an
Islamic legal opinion dubbed the "camel fatwa" had been added to the
professional literature. ...

*Part 6: "Integration Has Failed Here"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-6,00.html
Experiences in urban German schools show just how much integration
has suffered as a result of the decisions of timorous judges in past
years. At the Carlo Mierendorff School in Preungesheim, a Frankfurt
neighborhood, about one-third of students in the upper grades are
permitted to not attend class trips for religious reasons, says
Alexander Zabler, the school's principal. To prevent their daughters
from traveling with schoolmates, many Muslim parents have either
called the girls in sick or simply ordered them not to show up.
Zabler tried many approaches, including talking to the parents,
visiting them at home, offering special meals for Muslims during
travel -- but all to no avail. Finally he turned to the government
and asked the local school board for help -- also to no avail. He has
since resigned. ...

*Part 7: Forced Marriages and Servility
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-7,00.html
Of course, in many families there is no escaping the closeness
justified by Muslim traditions and rules. Women are brought up to
serve and obey. Boys are alternately spoiled and beaten, as custom
requires. According to a study conducted by the Lower Saxony
Criminology Research Institute, physical abuse of boys is more than
twice as common in Turkish families than German families. And "girls
from conservative families say that their fathers and brothers have
the right to hit them," reports Judith Gerling-Tamer, an educator at
the Elisi Evi Support Center for women and girls in Berlin's heavily
Muslim Kreuzberg district. ...

*Part 8: Europe at a Crossroads
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629-8,00.html
Berlin attorney Seyran Ates says: "We are at a crossroads, everywhere
in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel
society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic
constitutional state?" ...

posted in Democrats - 4 replies

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:58:07 GMT

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

By Steven Argue

Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us.

Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.

A front-runner in the race is pro-war Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000. Those pro-war votes include the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, pounds the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.

In her recent successful run for Senate Hillary Clinton amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient running for Senate in the country. Her money came from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

Barack Obama

Another front-runner and “rising star” of the Democrat Party is Barack Obama. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama has voted for the Patriot Act by voting to renew it in 2006. He also voted for the racist anti-immigrant wall as well as the “guest worker” program that denies immigrants rights, but allows them to come to this country to be exploited and under-paid. Obama also voted for the so-called “Class Action Fairness Act” that makes it harder for the people to sue corporations.

One might think that Obama, as a black man in racist America, might have something to offer on issues dealing with the suffering caused by the racist police state, mass incarceration of the poor, lack of healthcare, and dramatic drop in the standard of living of the multi-racial working class and poor. Instead Barack Obama plays into racist stereotypes, blaming the victims of racist America rather than the corporate criminals, stating:

"Such wisdom might help us move beyond ideological bickering and serve as the basis of a renewed effort to tackle the problem of inner-city poverty. We could begin by acknowledging that perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such poverty is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock. . ." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, pps. 255-256

The inner cities of America have, by and large, been abandoned by the same capitalists that got rich off of the jobs they have now exported, just as the victims of hurricane Katrina were left to die by this same racist system. Yet the best thing to do according to Barack Obama is for black girls to stop having children out of wedlock.

In his book Uncle Obama not only lets this racist system off the hook, but he praises one of the worst anti-working class reforms of the Clinton administration stating, "we should also acknowledge that conservatives-and Bill Clinton-were right about welfare as it was previously structured." Bill Clinton’s welfare reform has caused homelessness, hunger, and less access to other basic necessities for the poor in America, but Barack Obama says Bill Clinton and the conservatives were right.

Both Obama and Clinton have voted for war appropriations. The fact that they both decided at the last minute to vote against war appropriations in the most recent vote on supplemental war appropriations is a symptom of the fact that the war has not gone as planned. The war has not gained the desired oil loot for U.S. corporations and has caused a number of growing problems for U.S. imperialism including internal dissent in the United States. And while Clinton and Obama have finally voted against war appropriations this time, their pro-war Democrat Party garnered plenty of other votes to keep the imperialist war going.

In his book, Barack Obama makes clear his support for the billions being squandered on lining the pockets of the military contractors stating, “given the depletion of our [military] forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher [Pentagon] budget in the immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p 307).

Joe Biden

Another Democrat candidate is Joe Biden. Unlike many Democrat presidential candidates that have tried to distance themselves from the war that they voted for to begin with, in the most recent vote on war appropriations Joe Biden voted with the majority of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate putting billions of dollars towards the continued U.S. imperialist slaughter of the Iraqi people.

John Edwards

Another presidential candidate with a pro-war record is John Edwards. Edwards voted for the war against Iraq and campaigned as a vice presidential candidate on the pro-war John Kerry ticket. At that time both candidates defended their votes for the war. John Edwards has since apologized for his vote for unprovoked military aggression and mass murder (without using that wording and without recognizing that his vote for war was a criminal act).

Yet when Edwards was running for the position of vice president in 2004 this what he had to say on his pro-war vote:

“We need to stick to this [defending their Iraq war votes]. We should stand by our votes, say we would vote that way again. If you admit a mistake, it shows weakness in time of war. That's what the Republicans want us to do.” (John Edwards's changing tune on the Iraq vote, Scot Lehigh, The Globe, April 17, 2007)

Bill Richardson

Another candidate trying to paint himself as an antiwar candidate of the people is presidential candidate and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Richardson doesn’t call for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but instead calls for a slow withdrawal. In the early 1990s he did vote against the U.S. war to reinstate the anti-woman pro-U.S. corporate oil monarchy in Kuwait, but later said he regretted that vote. In addition Richardson is a strong supporter the pro-corporate anti-worker NAFTA, GATT, and WTO. On the death penalty Richardson, like many Democrats, says it is a good thing.

Well over one hundred inmates in the United States have had their convictions overturned as a result of new DNA evidence being brought to light, with some of these being death penalty cases. Still prosecutors have fought against the use of DNA evidence to overturn old convictions, even when the lives of innocent people are on the line. In racist America, death penalty juries are always more likely to convict because all who oppose the death penalty are excluded from these juries, making them juries that are more biased towards supporting the prosecution. Blacks often face all or mostly white death penalty juries. These are juries likely to contain a number of people who think that all Black people are criminals, making these jurors incapable of weighing the evidence and understanding the concept of reasonable doubt even in those rare circumstances when the evidence is fairly presented.

Why would anybody support the death penalty being carried out by a system that has been proven to make so many mistakes? The answer lies in the fact that the death penalty is an instrument of terror used by the American ruling class against the working class, poor, and people of color. On the one hand when such innocent people are executed it has no importance to the likes of Joe Biden because to them the lives of the poor and people of color are cheap. But for the ruling class, the added bonus of the death penalty is when it is used in political cases to silence dissent such as with the executions of Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, the Haymarket martyrs, and the threatened execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As governor, the fact that Joe Biden has no problem with the death penalty means that he already has blood on his hands.

Dennis Kucinich

Likewise Dennis Kucinich is portraying himself as the standard bearer of peace, love, and liberalism, but has voted in favor of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The resolution Kucinich voted for falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance eyewitness William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself up as an anti-war candidate of the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”

So Kucinich advocates more frugal and efficient spending on imperialist terror and murder.

This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"

Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"

The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.

Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."

Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.

Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war in Afghanistan.

In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002:

“When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.” Mumia Abu-Jamal

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.

The day after the September 11 attack this author wrote:

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2002

Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.

On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This position not only ignores the role of the people of the United States, Britain, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere rising up and resisting the war and imperialist occupations, but it is also is being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement back into the pro-war Democrat Party.

Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich has any intention of winning the presidency. His role is one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).

Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that, despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for the “responsible” politicians of the Democrat Party.

It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of this racist legal lynching, while at the same time doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton

In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”

“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans.

Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hillary Clinton

As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)

Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.

The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)

Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time. Other Democrats are given similar scores by these political hacks.

“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.

Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the real anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.

Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.

No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!

Obama, Clinton, and Richardson, Supporters of Racist Israel

Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, many basic rights, often including the basic right to live. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist and religious Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.

Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”

She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.

Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.

On Israel “anti-war” Richardson shares Hillary Clinton’s views stating, “I am firmly committed to one of the United States' closest and most important allies - the State of Israel. Throughout my career, I've steadfastly supported Israel, obtaining a consistently pro-Israel voting record in Congress and defending Israeli interests as Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Barack Obama also backs racist Israel stating, “The United States and Israel share important interests - promoting a peaceful Middle East, combating terrorism, and encouraging reform in the Arab and Muslim world.” Likewise as a senator he has backed the massive military aid the United States gives Israel every year and says he will continue this policy as president stating he will, “insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel”.

For Socialist Democracy!

Let me be clear on this point, Obama and Clinton, and the rest of the pack will not betray us. They cannot betray us because they were never with us. Under the current politics most Americans would never have heard their names if they were on our side.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her millions of dollars in corporate bribes, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.

How we can all resist:

Tell the truth!

Build the mass movement in the streets!

Strike against arms producers!

Become ungovernable!

Hot cargo war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks!

Build towards a general strike against the war!

Support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war!

Drive military recruiters off campus!

No tolerance or excuses for the pro-war, racist, and capitalist Democrat Party!

Build the socialist movement to end imperialism, racism, environmental destruction, and capitalism!

End U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution!

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Democrats - 1 reply

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked (Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 04:28:02 GMT

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”

By Steven Argue

The following is the first in a series of ten articles I have written answering the top ten myths being circulated by those who advocate execution or continued prison for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”

In the preliminary hearings, Mumia made requests for a line-up. This is not the kind of move one does if they are guilty. Part of Mumia’s reasoning was that eyewitnesses that were lying would have a harder time with their conscience if they actually saw him in the flesh.

Interestingly enough, the prosecution didn’t want a line-up and argued their point saying that none of the witnesses had actually seen Mumia shoot Faulkner. Judge Sabo denied the line-ups on these grounds. Yet two “eyewitnesses”, Cynthia White and Robert Chobert, did claim they saw Mumia shoot Faulkner, so Mumia was unfairly denied a line-up.

Supposed Witness To Mumia Shooting Faulkner Number One…
Prosecution Star Witness Cynthia White

Despite the false claims by the prosecution used to deny a line-up, Cynthia White did testify that she saw Mumia with a gun in his hand, that she saw him shoot Faulkner twice in the back, and that she saw Mumia standing over Faulkner as shots were being fired. Overwhelming physical and eyewitness evidence proves that this was perjured testimony.

The prosecution’s version of events, largely dependent on White’s testimony, claims that Mumia stood over Faulkner repeatedly shooting and missing until he hit Faulkner’s head. Yet the physical evidence says this is not true. No divots or marks were left on the sidewalk from these missed shots. Later articles will explore this and other physical evidence further.

As a prosecution witness, Cynthia White gave two extremely different versions of events at two different trials. One version was given at William Cook’s trial, and a differing version at Mumia’s trial. At Cook’s trial she said there was a passenger in Cook’s VW. At Mumia’s trial she claimed there was no passenger.

In the case of Mumia, eyewitnesses have said that the passenger in Cook’s VW was one of the actual killers. Yet Mumia was not riding in the VW and the prosecution claims that Mumia was the lone killer. So in Mumia’s trial, it was useful for the prosecution to disappear the passenger from the testimony, despite White’s other testimony that there was a passenger. These two differing versions, obviously including perjured testimony, were cynically used by prosecutors to fit differing prosecutions.

There is also physical evidence of a passenger in the VW, evidence that was illegally suppressed by the prosecution for 13 years. That evidence was an ID found on the body of Officer Faulkner. It was in the name of Arnold Howard. As a result of this evidence, Arnold Howard was arrested by the police and tested to see if he had fired a gun the night of the shooting. Arnold Howard told the police that he had loaned his ID to Kenneth Freeman. (Transcript for August 11, 1995, pp. 130-131.)

In addition, Arnold Howard testified at that post conviction hearing that Kenneth Freeman was also arrested that night, and that Howard personally witnessed a woman picking Freeman out of a line-up. Like Arnold Howard’s ID, police reports of this arrest and line-up of Kenneth Freeman have also apparently been suppressed, but in this case have never been released.

The VW driver, William Cook, also placed Kenneth Freeman as the passenger in the VW. In Cook’s signed declaration of what happened he also says Freeman was carrying a .38 that night. Cook went on to say, in that declaration, that after the shooting,

“Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] talked about a plan to kill Faulkner. He told me that he was armed on that night and participated in the shooting. He was connected and knew all kinds of people. I used to ask him about it but he talked but never said much. He wasn't a talker. I didn't see Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] for a while after that. Poppi [Kenneth Freeman] had been in Germany in the army. That night he was wearing his green army jacket.”

Eyewitness William Singletary says that a man in a green army jacket got out of the VW, shot Faulkner, and ran. Mumia Abu-Jamal was not wearing an army jacket that night and not riding in the VW. Nor did Mumia run away, he was shot and ran nowhere. The jacket Mumia was wearing is in evidence and it is a red quilted ski jacket with a couple blue stripes. Nor was William Cook, the driver of the VW, wearing a green army jacket.

The prosecution’s version of events denies anyone on the scene wearing a green army jacket. Besides Singletary and Cook, five other eyewitnesses also put a man in a green army jacket on the scene. These were stake out Officer Forbes (the putative first officer to arrive), Officer Stephen Trembetta, Robert Magiltan, Michael Scanlan, and Arnold Beverly, who has confessed to being one of two people that killed Faulkner. Beverly states in his confession that he was also wearing a green army jacket that night as well.

In addition, the prosecution’s version of events denies anyone running from the scene.
Six eyewitnesses contradict this by saying they saw men running from the scene. These would have been the real shooter or shooters. Those eyewitnesses are Dessie Hightower, William Singletary, Veronica Jones, Robert Chobert, Arnold Beverly, and William Cook.

So the prosecution’s star witness testified for the prosecution that there was a passenger at Cook’s trial, and said there was no passenger at Mumia’s trial. Eyewitness testimony and physical evidence suppressed by the prosecution shows there was a passenger wearing a green army jacket that shot Faulkner and ran. That passenger, Kenneth Freeman, murdered Officer Faulkner either by himself or with the help of Arnold Beverly. On May 14, 1985, according to the testimony of Arnold Howard, Kenneth Freeman’s naked corpse was found outside in the cold handcuffed. No investigation was carried out on Freeman’s death and the coroner reported the cause of death to be a heart attack.

So it is established, with her contradictory stories, that Cynthia White was not telling the truth. This would be bad enough. But, in fact, none of the nine eyewitnesses that testified at the trial and subsequent hearings can remember seeing Cynthia White at the immediate scene at all. None, this includes the other prosecution witnesses.

William Singletary states that he saw her earlier down the street. When he saw her she said, “Hey, how you doing? It's cold out here.” Then noticing his car she said “a brand-new Cadillac Eldorado, 1982 model, wow, that's a great car! You ain't that bad-looking either. But I don't date black guys.” To which Singletary says he responded, “And I don't date prostitutes.” Singletary says that she then walked down the street and didn’t actually see the shooting. ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In fact, Cynthia White confessed to both Pamela Jenkins and Yvette Williams that she did not see the shooting and that the police put the screws to her to lie. In addition, a mountain of testimony shows a clear pattern by the police to try to get similar perjured testimony from other people.

In a hearing after the trial Pamela Jenkins testified, “I know that Cynthia White worked as a prostitute in the Center City area, specifically at Locust and 13th Street, during 1980 and 1981, and that she was a prostitute, police informant, and turned tricks for the police officers in the district.”

If in fact Cynthia White was a police informant, and this information was withheld from the defense by the prosecution, that alone would be legal grounds for a new trial, but it gets much worse.

Jenkins testified at hearings in 1997 that Police Officer Thomas Ryan tried to make her testify that she saw Mumia shoot Officer Faulkner at the original trial, even though she was not at the scene of the shooting. Jenkins, 15 and a prostitute, was the girlfriend of Officer Ryan at that time. She also testified that she worked both as a prostitute for police and as a police informant for the corrupt Center City Police.

Jenkins also testified that Cynthia White told her in late 1981 that she was also being pressured to testify against Mumia, and that White was afraid for her life.

In a signed affidavit Jenkins states,

“Tom Ryan, Richard Ryan and other police officers pressured me and asked me if I had seen the shooting of the police officer and whether I had been in the area of the shooting that night. When I said 'no' they pressured (me) some more and asked me was I really sure that I hadn't been on the street that night and seen the shooting. It was clear to me that Tom Ryan and Richard Ryan wanted me to perjure myself and say that I had seen Jamal shoot the police officer."

Despite showing a clear intention by the police to frame Mumia, no jury has been allowed to hear Jenkins’ testimony in Mumia’s case. Not only is Pamela Jenkin's testimony essential evidence of a deliberate police conspiracy to frame Mumia by manufacturing perjured evidence, it also helps to destroy the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, Cynthia White.

Jenkins' credibility has, however, been bolstered by the fact that she was a key witness used to unravel the massive police corruption in Center City District. Her testimony was instrumental in reversing the decisions of hundreds of cases and helped lead to the removal of the entire team of cops that led the “investigation” of Mumia’s case due to their corruption and mob connections.

Other eyewitnesses have said the same thing as Jenkins. In a signed affidavit Yvette Williams has stated,

“I was in jail with Cynthia White in December of 1981 after Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed. Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say she saw Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it.”

Later in the Affidavit Yvette Williams states,

“When Lucky [Cynthia White] told me she didn’t even see who shot Officer Faulkner, I asked her why she was “lying on that man” [Mumia Abu-Jamal]. She told me it was because for the police and vice threatened her life. Additionally, the police were giving her money for tricks. “The way she talked, we were talking “G’s” [$1,000.00]. She also said she was terrified of what the police would do to her if she didn’t say that Mumia shot Officer Faulkner. According to Lucky, the police told her they would consolidate all her cases and send her “up” (Muncy), a women’s prison, for a long time if she didn’t testify to what they told her to say. Lucky told me she had a lot of open cases and out-of-state warrants and was scared of going to Muncy. She was scared that her pimp “would get pissed off” at all the money he was losing when she was locked up, and off the street. She was afraid that when she got out he would beat her up or kill her.”

According to legal papers filed by the defense,

“in the days after the shooting, [White] was arrested at least twice for prostitution. Her picture was posted in the 6th District with instructions for arresting officers to 'Contact Homicide'. Each time police picked White up and took her statement, she revised her story [on Faulkner's shooting]. Without explanation, bench warrants against her were not prosecuted.”

Pamela Jenkins has publicly asked Cynthia White to tell the truth stating:

“We know we can bring this down to a nutshell if you just come forward. We've all lost a lot by coming forward, I've lost somebody I love dearly... Just do it this one time, one favor, that's not asking a lot. Then maybe you can clean up your past, like the rest of us are doing.”

The prosecution does seem to be afraid of Cynthia White coming forward to tell the truth, and have presented false testimony of evidence that she is dead. In a hearing in Judge Sabo’s court, a Philadelphia police detective testified that the FBI had "authenticated" that a corpse had the same fingerprints as White. Yet the fingerprints the DA withheld at that time, and later finally produced for the now cremated corpse, don’t match the fingerprints of Cynthia White.

Cynthia White’s own mother stated that the same corpse was not Cynthia White. Other eyewitnesses, that the defense attempted to have testify, testimony denied by Sabo, had seen Cynthia White alive and walking around during the time she was supposed to be dead. Yet instead of hearing defense witnesses that stated that Cynthia White was alive, the only testimony Sabo would allow was the false testimony of the Philadelphia detective claiming “authenticated” fingerprints. Sabo snapped, “As far as I’m concerned she’s dead. I’m making a ruling. We’re finished.” Evidence has never meant much in Judge Sabo’s court, if the prosecution says she’s dead, she’s dead.

So the evidence on Cynthia White shows that she could not have seen the shooting; that Mumia was wrongly denied his right to a line-up; that the police intimidated White and others to testify against Mumia; that the police that “investigated” Mumia have been kicked off the force for corruption; that Cynthia White had a motive to lie; that the police possibly withheld information that Cynthia White was a police informant; that the DA illegally withheld physical evidence for 13 years that showed that White’s testimony was perjured and that showed that Mumia did not commit the crime; that the DA knowingly used testimony from White that was perjured; and that claims of the prosecution and police were accepted without evidence or witness rebuttal in Judge Sabo’s court.

Essential Eyewitnesses Ignored By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number One, Pamela Jenkins

I include Pamela Jenkins in this list, not because the “fry Mumia” camp includes her among the eyewitnesses that supposedly saw Mumia kill Faulkner, but because they don’t, and why they don’t. As was shown in the section on Cynthia White, the police tried to pressure here into testifying that she saw Mumia kill Faulkner, even though Jenkins was not at the scene of the shooting, but Jenkins refused to do it. The honesty of Jenkins is the only reason why the prosecution did not use her, and this also why she is not mentioned in the “fry Mumia” literature as seeing Mumia shoot Faulkner.

Essential Eyewitnesses Ignored By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number Two, Veronica Jones

Veronica Jones also is not mentioned in the fry Mumia literature, but she is also a very important eyewitness. Jones, while being called by the defense in 1982, testified for the police and prosecution.

Before the trial, Veronica Jones gave a completely different version of events than was contained in an earlier police report. In her original version of events, contained in a report she gave to police, Veronica Jones said she saw two men running from the scene. Yet at the trial the two men running were missing from her testimony. This came as a complete surprise to the defense because Mumia’s supposed attorney, Anthony Jackson, did not even bother to interview witnesses before the trial. Earlier in the trial Mumia was denied his legal rights when his attempt to fire Anthony Jackson was denied by Judge Sabo.

Jones retracted her 1982 court testimony in 1996, saying that her original police report was the truth, and that she was coerced by the police into saying she didn’t see anybody running from the scene. She gave this testimony despite being forcefully reminded by Judge Sabo that her testimony could be seen as an admission of perjury and could land her seven years in prison. She was in fact arrested from the witness stand, but for a bounced check from a different state, being served with an insufficient warrant by out of state New Jersey State Troopers.

Despite the police harassment, and a review of her entire criminal history on the witness stand, including her life as a prostitute, Jones brought her children to court to learn from her mistakes. She explained that she was relieved to be setting things straight because what she did to Mumia with her false testimony had been eating her up inside over all those years.

On the stand, admitting to perjury, Jones explained that she was awaiting trial for an unrelated robbery charge in 1982 when police detectives approached her in her cell offering to give her a deal by changing her story as a witness in Mumia’s case. She had originally stated that she heard two shots, looked around the corner, and saw two men running from the scene. The two men running fit the version of William Singletary where he saw someone else shoot Mumia and run, but it didn’t fit the police/prosecution story being woven against Mumia. Mumia was unable to run because he was shot.

She explained that the deal offered by the police was that she could go to prison for five to ten years and loose custody of her two young children or she could get out of the predicament by lying for the police saying that nobody was running from the scene.

Despite the importance of the testimony of Veronica Jones in Mumia’s case, both in corroborating eyewitnesses that say the actual killer or killers ran from the scene, and as another witness testifying to a clear pattern of police intimidation to acquire falsified testimony, Sabo ruled in 1996 against her testimony being heard by a new jury trial.

Likewise, in the original trial, Sabo ruled in favor of prosecution objections when Veronica Jones was already admitting to being the target of the police in their attempts at gaining false testimony:

"I had got locked up [together with other prostitutes] I think it was in January [1982]. […] I think sometime after that incident. They were getting on me telling me I was in the area and I seen Mumia, you know, do it, intentionally. They were trying to get me to say something that the other girl [Cynthia White] said. I couldn’t do that."

As Jackson continued this questioning Veronica Jones said, “we had brought up Cynthia [White]’s name and they told us we can work the area [as prostitutes] if we tell them [what the police wanted to hear].” At this point Judge Sabo ruled in favor of prosecutor McGill’s objections and would only allow further questions of Veronica Jones on what she saw the night of the shooting. As from the beginning of the trial, ruling after ruling has declared, police misconduct is not open to scrutiny and a court of law is no place for evidence of Mumia’s innocence.

Supposed Witness To Mumia Shooting Faulkner Number Two, Michael Scanlon

The use of Michael Scanlon’s name in “fry Mumia” literature as a witness to Mumia committing the murder is nothing but the purest cynicism. Michael Scanlon did not identify Mumia as the person who shot Faulkner, and could not say that the person he saw shoot Faulkner was Mumia. At the trial, when asked by prosecutor Mcgill, “Are you able to identify anybody, either the driver, or the man who ran over and shot the police officer?” Scanlon replied, “No, sir.” (trial transcript, 6/25/82).

Michael Scanlon’s testimony actually puts further holes in the prosecution’s story by placing someone in a green army jacket in the immediate scene of the shooting around the VW. According to the prosecution only Mumia, Cook, and Faulkner were present at this location, but the evidence shows that one or two people were present wearing green army jackets that killed Faulkner before Mumia arrived. The jackets Mumia and Cook were wearing are in evidence and they do not resemble green army jackets.

Supposed Witness To Mumia Shooting Faulkner Number Three, Albert Magiltan

Like Scanlon, Magiltan is used in the “fry Mumia” literature as a witness to Mumia committing the murder, and like Scanlan, Magilton did not identify Mumia as the person who shot Faulkner. When Magiltan was asked at the trial, "you don't know who fired the shot at him, do you?" Albert Magiltan responded, "I never said I did, no." (trial transcript, 6/25/82). Magiltan didn’t even see the shooting.

Magilton did, however, report to defense investigators that he saw a person run from the parking lot wearing a green army jacket. This fits the confession of Arnold Beverly, who says he ran out from the parking lot, wearing a green army jacket, to shoot Faulkner.

Essential Eyewitness Ignored By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number Three, Police Officer Stephen Trombetta

Police Officer Stephen Trombetta reported that the suspect was wearing a green army jacket as opposed to Mumia’s red and blue ski jacket.

In addition, Trombetta rode with Mumia in the van to the hospital. Inspector Alfonso Giordano, the senior officer on the scene in charge of the Mumia “investigation”, reported that on that van ride Mumia had confessed to shooting Faulkner. Giordano was removed from the Philadelphia Police and prosecuted for corruption immediately after Mumia’s trial. P.O. Trembetta was with Mumia during that entire van ride and, in direct contradiction to Giordano’s claim of a confession, reported that Mumia made no comment.

Essential Eyewitness Despised By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number Four, William Singletary

While William Singletary did sign a statement saying that Mumia did it, he later stated that he signed that statement under the duress of police threats. Of that statement he says, “That's what they made me say, I stayed in there [in a police interrogation room] from 4:30 to 9:30 a.m. and when I left, I felt like I had been raped.”

William Singletary has since stated, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen got out of the car and shot him [Faulkner]. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

Despite signing the statement, Singletary refused to lie for the police during the trial. Yet the “fry Mumia” camp often cite Singletary as an eyewitness against Mumia stating that his statement (that he says the police typed up and told him to sign) was so similar to those of the other “eyewitnesses” that his first signed statement had to be the truth and that what Singletary has been insisting for the past 25 years is a lie.

Singletary says that he is willing to take a lie detector test, but he is afraid of coming to Philadelphia. He says the Philadelphia police harassed his business to the point that it went under while also threatening him and warning him to get out of town. He did eventually move to North Carolina and says, “I'm not coming to Philadelphia unless y'all got Wells Fargo and Lords of London" for protection.

Supposed Witness To Mumia Shooting Faulkner Number Four, Robert Chobert

In his initial report taken by Inspector Alfonzo Giordono, five minutes after the shooting, Robert Chobert stated that the man that shot Mumia ran away. Mumia, who was shot at the scene, never did any running.

Later, Robert Chobert changed his story to that of the prosecution. The shooter no longer was running away and the jury was never allowed to hear Chobert’s original report.

Robert Chobert, a convicted arsonist that was driving on a suspended license and was on felony probation at the time of the shooting, has also recanted his testimony according to a sworn statement by Mark Newman.

At the time of Mumia’s trial, Chobert was on felony probation for the firebombing of a school. Revocation of that probation could have meant over 20 years in prison. Chobert was in fact violating that probation by unlawfully driving his taxi on a suspended license that night. Thus, Chobert would have been easily manipulated by the police and/or by the prosecution.

Under penalty of perjury, Mark Newman stated in a signed affidavit that, “Chobert told me that he did not see anyone standing over a prone Officer Faulkner, firing shots at the officer. Chobert said that what actually happened was that he was sitting in his taxi when he heard gunfire.” And that he did not actually see the shooting.

According to that signed affidavit of Mark Newman, Chobert didn't see Mumia shoot Faulkner, wasn't parked behind Faulkner as he said he was at the trial, and that Chobert gave the police that false testimony they wanted to avoid having his parole revoked.

Physical evidence, as well as eyewitness testimony, proves that Chobert's cab was not parked behind Faulkner's as Chobert claimed in court. This evidence includes 31 recently released photos taken by photojournalist Pedro Polakoff just minutes after the shooting. These photos clearly show that Chobert's cab was not parked behind Faulkner’s police car as Chobert had claimed in court.

This corroborates the testimony of Mark Newman when he states, "Chobert told me that on December 9, 1981, he had actually been parked, in his taxi, on 13th Street, north of Locust (contradicting his trial testimony that he was parked behind Officer Faulkner's police car on Locust St., east of 13th Street.)" This is also relevant to Chobert not having the vantage for seeing the shooting.

Newman’s testimony is also corroborated by Chobert’s legal troubles and a clear pattern by the police to offer similar deals to other witnesses including three eyewitnesses, Pamela Jenkins, William Singletary, and Veronica Jones, stating publicly, and Cynthia White also stating privately, that they were coerced, threatened, or otherwise offered deals by the cops to give false testimony.

The police officer that got the “identification” of Mumia from Robert Chobert was Alfonzo Giordano. In the original police report that has the shooter running from the scene, Robert Chobert is said by Giordano to say it was the guy from MOVE that did it. Giordano was removed from the force and prosecuted for corruption related to the mob, a corruption probe that turned over many other police/prosecution convictions. In addition, Giordano had been involved in political operations against Philadelphia MOVE and the Black Panther Party. As such, Giordano would have instantly recognized Mumia, a former Black Panther and an independent journalist that had exposed police wrong doing against MOVE.

In a revealing set of moves Giordano was never called as a witness at Mumia’s trial. This despite Giordano providing testimony at Mumia’s preliminary hearing of a “confession” in the van, despite his being the senior officer at the scene, despite his supposed firsthand identification of a witness, and despite his testimony of finding the “murder weapon”. During the trial Giordano was removed from active duty and assigned to a desk. The first working day after the trial was over Giordano resigned from the Philadelphia police force. In 1986 Giordano copped a plea on federal charges based on receiving tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs during the 1979-80 period but didn’t spend any time in jail.

In addition to Giordono’s corruption, under racist Police Chief Frank Rizzo, Giordono was in charge of the Stake Out Unit of the Philadelphia Police that carried out repression against the Black Panther Party from 1968 –1970. Giordono also played a supervisory role in the 1977-78 police barricade and attack on the MOVE organization under Mayor Frank Rizzo. That police attack had followed earlier murders by the Philadelphia police of MOVE members and followed a long starvation blockade by the Philadelphia Police against the MOVE headquarters. In the police attack two MOVE members were shot, nine MOVE members were framed by the Philadelphia Police, MOVE children were stolen, and, as film footage shows, Delbert Africa was kicked and stomped by the police as he lay on the ground. In addition, Officer Ramp was shot and killed.

While nine MOVE members were railroaded to prison for the death of Officer Ramp, the evidence does not fit. The one bullet that killed Ramp came from behind and had a downward trajectory. Yet Ramp was facing the MOVE headquarters where MOVE members were in the basement and any bullets would have had an upward trajectory and hit him from in front.

Presiding over the kangaroo court that convicted the MOVE 9 was Judge Malmed. Shortly after the trial and conviction of the MOVE 9, Mumia, as an independent journalist, called in to a talk radio show where he asked Judge Malmed, “Who shot James Ramp?” Judge Malmed honestly answered, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

In the attack on MOVE the police and Mayor Rizzo claimed that the first shots came from the MOVE headquarters, but the independent eyewitnesses including a number of journalists present, confirm what MOVE members and the physical evidence says, that the first shot came from across the street and not from the MOVE headquarters.

At Mayor Frank Rizzo’s victory press conference on the 1978 police attack, Frank Rizzo directly threatened Mumia Abu-Jamal when Mumia asked him a question. Mumia was present as a freelance journalist and asked the gloating Rizzo, “What about the brutality?” Instead of answering Mumia’s question Rizzo responded angrily with a threat: “They believe what you write, and what you say, and it's got to stop. And one day, and I hope it's in my career, that you're going to have to be held responsible and accountable for what you do.”

In addition to commanding this attack against MOVE, Giordono, earlier, then under Police Chief Rizzo, carried out surveillance of leftists including the Black Panther Party.

With Mumia having been a former member of the Black Panther Party and a high profile critic of police actions against MOVE, there is no question that officer Giordono would have instantly recognized Mumia at the crime scene. This would be one of the motives for Giordono to want to falsify testimony and other evidence to pin the murder on Mumia.

A number of other well-known political frame-ups have occurred in the United States. The prosecution of Mumia fits the pattern of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program against the Black Panther Party, where local law enforcement worked with the FBI in murdering some BPP leaders in cold blood, such as Fred Hampton in Chicago, and knowingly framed and prosecuted other innocent BPP members, such as Geronimo ji Jagga in LA who spent 30 years in prison before he was exonerated of the false charges against him and freed.

A possible additional motive for framing Mumia can be found in the confession of Arnold Beverly. Beverly stated, “I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area.”

Things that Beverly said are corroborated by, among other things, police corruption, three separate FBI investigations of police corruption in the Center City area at the time, evidence of fear that Faulkner was an FBI informant, evidence that Faulkner was an FBI informant, and the murder of other witnesses involved in cases against the Center City Police at that time. One of those murders was of Bertram Schlein, an eyewitness that testified against Central Division Chief John DeBenedetto. A suspect in that murder was Kenneth Schwartz, a former police officer and reported associate of Inspector Alfonzo Giordono.

A former Philadelphia Police Officer turned mob hit man, Ronald Previte, has testified as government informant on mob killings. Previte stated that during his ten years as a Philadelphia cop he “learned more about being a crook” than any other time in his life.

If the police were in fact involved in the murder of Police Officer Faulkner, this would mean that they would not be interested in finding the actual killer. They would want to pin the murder on someone else, and who better in the eyes of Giordano than his journalistic critic, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Whatever the exact motive or motives, the mountain of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct in this case proves that the criminal “justice” system both had (and has) no interest in finding the real killer or killers while at the same time desiring to execute an innocent man.

It is funny that when presented with this evidence, “fry Mumia” fanatics counter that if it was indeed a frame-up, why was it so sloppy. Why would Giordano have included that the shooter was running away in his original report? The irony is that if the frame-up wasn’t so sloppy we’d be asked why the case is so airtight. Yet I think that answers to the question of why there are so many loose ends lies in the fact that the police were accustomed to being sloppy and getting away with it. Even though the truth of the shooter running away was included in the original report, this was no problem for the police or prosecution, since the judge did not allow the original report into court anyway. All that was allowed was the lie that Chobert saw the shooting and that it was Mumia that did it.

The deeper irony is that when the “fry Mumia” fanatics admit that there are so many loose ends, they are admitting that Mumia is innocent by the essential legal standard of “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Essential Eyewitness Despised By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number Five, Dessie Hightower

College student Dessie Hightower saw someone running from the scene. This is what Hightower told police 80 minutes after the shooting, and Dessie Hightower has never changed his story. Hightower’s report of one or more people running is the same as eyewitnesses William Singletary, Veronica Jones, Robert Chobert, Arnold Beverly, and William Cook. This corroborates William Cook when he said, “Freeman ran from the scene after Officer Faulkner was shot”. It also corroborates William Singletary when he says, “The passenger [Freeman] in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen got out of the car and shot him [Faulkner]” and ran. Hightower also said that he saw no gun in Mumia’s hand.

Supposed Witness To Mumia Shooting Faulkner Number Five, Robert Harkins

Harkins was not seen as a credible witness by the prosecution at the trial. Harkins was never called to testify at the trial against Mumia by the prosecution. Yet in “fry Mumia” literature the name of Robert Harkins has begun to occasionally pop up as an additional supposed eyewitness to Mumia shooting Faulkner. Like other supposed eyewitnesses of the “fry Mumia” crowd that “saw Mumia shoot Faulkner”, Harkins did not identify Mumia as the shooter.

The Harkins testimony is at odds with the physical evidence and that of all of the other eyewitnesses, including prosecution witnesses. Harkins, a known child molester, could have easily been manipulated by the police and prosecution, as was done with other eyewitnesses. If so, the police and prosecution succeeded in destroying a potential defense witness, but did not produce a useful witness for their frame-up.

Essential Eyewitness Despised By “Fry Mumia” Fanatics Number Six, Terri Maurer-Carter

Terri Maurer-Carter, an official court stenographer in the courts where Mumia was framed, has come forward stating in a signed affidavit,

“Judge Sabo and another person were engaged in conversation. Judge Sabo was discussing the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. During the course of that conversation, I heard Judge Sabo say, ‘Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger.’ There were three people present when Judge Sabo made that remark, including myself.”

These words Maurer-Carter heard from Sabo sum up the blatant nature of the racist and political crime carried out by Sabo, the prosecution, and the police against Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Conclusion

There are a large number of other important eyewitnesses that will be looked at in future articles, but let us review a few key points of what has already been established.

“Fry Mumia” fanatics claim that Mumia shot Faulkner. Yet, not a single eyewitness saw Mumia shoot Faulkner. Cynthia White and Robert Chobert claimed they saw Mumia shoot Faulkner, but neither saw the shooting. Michael Scanlon, Robert Harkins, and Robert Magiltan, despite “fry Mumia” lies, never claimed they saw Mumia shoot Faulkner.

Four eyewitnesses say in no uncertain terms that Mumia did not shoot Faulkner. These are William Singletary, William Cook, Arnold Beverly, and Mumia Abu Jamal.

Five eyewitnesses contradict the prosecution’s version of events by saying they saw men running from the scene. These would have been the real shooters or shooter. Those eyewitnesses are Dessie Hightower, William Singletary, Veronica Jones, Robert Chobert, and William Cook. The prosecution version of events denies anyone running from the scene.

Five eyewitnesses have stated that they were threatened, coerced, or otherwise offered favors for testimony against Mumia. These are Veronica Jones, William Singletary, Pamela Jenkins, Cynthia White, and Robert Chobert.

The prosecution’s version of events denies anyone on the scene wearing a green army jacket. Yet all evidence points to one or two men on the scene wearing green army jackets shooting Faulkner. Seven eyewitnesses saw a green army jacket. Those that saw green army-jackets were William Singletary, William Cook, stake out Officer Forbes (the putative first officer to arrive), Officer Stephen Trembetta, Michael Scanlan, Robert Magiltan, and Arnold Beverly.

Kenneth Freeman, the real killer, or one of the real killers, was linked to the crime scene by physical evidence that was illegally suppressed by the prosecution for 13 years.

Not only did nobody see Mumia shoot Faulkner, the body of evidence shows overwhelming prosecutorial, police, and judicial misconduct pointing to a clear frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and backing Mumia’s claim that he is innocent.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, with what could be the final decision on his legal appeals possibly coming down this summer. That decision could give Mumia his freedom, life in prison, or execution. It is time to turn up the heat against this injustice. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

This is the first in a series of ten articles on the top ten “fry Mumia” myths that will be published at Liberation News.

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Copyright Liberation News, noncommercial verbatim distribution of this article in its entirety, including this notice, is allowed without special permission. Publication in any commercial form may require payment and requires special permission.

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Lesbians sentenced for self-defense. FREE THEM NOW!

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:26:16 GMT

FREE THEM NOW!
Lesbians sentenced for self-defense
All-white jury convicts Black women

By Imani Henry
New York

Published Jun 21, 2007 2:58 AM
On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.

Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them—all because they are lesbians.

The mere fact that any victim of a bigoted attack would be arrested, jailed and then convicted for self-defense is an outrage. But the length of prison time given further demonstrates the highly political nature of this case and just how racist, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-youth and anti-worker the so-called U.S. justice system truly is.

The description of the events, reported below, is based on written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera.

The attack

On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.

As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.

“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.

Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.

The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.

Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.

There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.

After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.

Even with Buckle’s admission and the video footage proving that he instigated this anti-gay attack, the women were relentlessly demonized in the press, had trumped-up felony charges levied against them, and were subsequently given long sentences in order to send a clear resounding message—that self-defense is a crime and no one should dare to fight back.

Political backdrop of the case

Why were these young women used as an example? At stake are the billions of dollars in tourism and real estate development involved in the continued gentrification of the West Village. This particular incident happened near the Washington Square area—home of New York University, one of most expensive private colleges in the country and one of the biggest employers and landlords in New York City. The New York Times reported that Justice Edward J. McLaughlin used his sentencing speech to comment on “how New York welcomes tourists.” (June 17)

The Village is also the home of the Stonewall Rebellion, the three-day street battle against the NYPD that, along with the Compton Cafeteria “Riots” in California, helped launch the modern-day LGBT liberation movement in 1969. The Manhattan LGBT Pride march, one of the biggest demonstrations of LGBT peoples in the world, ends near the Christopher Street Piers in the Village, which have been the historical “hangout” and home for working-class trans and LGBT youth in New York City for decades.

Because of growing gentrification in recent years, young people of color, homeless and transgender communities, LGBT and straight, have faced curfews and brutality by police sanctioned by the West Village community board and politicians. On Oct. 31, 2006, police officers from the NYPD’s 6th Precinct indiscriminately beat and arrested several people of color in sweeps on Christopher Street after the Halloween parade.

Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase in anti-LGBT violence in the area, with bashers going there with that purpose in mind.

For trans people and LGBT youth of color, who statistically experience higher amounts of bigoted violence, the impact of the gentrification has been severe. As their once-safe haven is encroached on by real estate developers, the new white and majority heterosexual residents of the West Village then call in the state to brutalize them.

For the last six years the political LGBT youth group FIERCE has been at the forefront of mobilizing young people “to counter the displacement and criminalization of LGBTSTQ [lesbian, gay, bi, two spirit, trans, and queer] youth of color and homeless youth at the Christopher Street Pier and in Manhattan’s West Village.” (www.fiercenyc.org) FIERCE has also been the lead organization supporting the Jersey Seven and their families.

The trial and the media

Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)

Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.

Ironically, Johnson, who was singled out by the judge as the “ringleader,” is the more feminine of the four. According to the New York Times, in his sentencing remarks, “Justice McLaughlin scoffed at the assertion made by ... Johnson, that she carried a knife because she was just 4-foot-11 and 95 pounds, worked nights and lived in a dangerous neighborhood.” He quoted the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” (June 15)

All of the seven women knew and went to school with Sakia Gunn, a 19-year-old butch lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in May 2003. Paralleling the present case, Gunn was out with three of her friends when a man made sexual advances to one of the women. When she replied that she was a lesbian and not interested, he attacked them. Gunn fought back and was stabbed to death.

“You can’t help but wonder that if Sakia Gunn had a weapon, would she be in jail right now?” Bran Fenner, a founding member and co-executive director of FIERCE, told Workers World. “If we don’t have the right to self-defense, how are we supposed to survive?”

National call to action

While racist killer cops continue to go without indictment and anti-immigrant paramilitary groups like the Minutemen are on the rise in the U.S., The Jersey Four sit behind bars for simply defending themselves against a bigot who attacked them in the Village.

Capitalism at its very core is a racist, sexist, anti-LGBT system, sanctioning state violence through cops, courts and its so-called laws. The case of the Jersey Four gives more legal precedence for bigoted violence to go unchallenged. The ruling class saw this case as a political one; FIERCE and other groups believe the entire progressive movement should as well.

Fenner said, “We are organizing in the hope that this wakes up all oppressed people and sparks a huge, broad campaign to demand freedom for the Jersey Four.”

FIERCE is asking for assistance for these young women, including pro-bono legal support, media contacts and writers, pen pals, financial support, and diverse organizational support. For details, visit www.fiercenyc.org.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Distributed by Steven Argue of Liberation News (not affiliated with Workers World):
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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new tribe: dems and friends stopping hillary

breindl — Tue, 08 May 2007 02:46:18 GMT

if it's clear to you that Candidate Hillary = Republican victory. Join this tribe.

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A Brief History of Disbelief - Tonight on PBS

Rocky — Fri, 04 May 2007 15:44:57 GMT

I thought that this might be helpful for some democrats to see...

A Brief History of Disbelief - Tonight on PBS

PBS will be airing A Brief History of Disbelief starting Fri. 5/4. Two of our coalition members, the American Humanist Association and the Institute for Humanist Studies, are among the sponsors of this documentary. Don't miss it!

Also be sure to check out the, "Find an Atheist, Humanist, Freethinker Elected Official" Contest, launched to explore visibility and respectability challenges for nontheists in public office.

http://www.secular.org

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Articles of Impeachment To Be Filed On Vice President Dick Cheney

Rocky — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:22:14 GMT

Articles of Impeachment To Be Filed On Vice President Dick Cheney

Supporting Documents for H Res 333

Synopsis of Resolution

Text of Resolution as Introduced in the House of Representatives

Letter to Vice President Cheney

Brief summary of impeachment procedure

Supporting Documents for Article I

Article I (1)(A): Transcripts of March 17, 2002 Press Conference by Vice President Dick Cheney and His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain at Shaikh Hamad Palace.

Article I (1)(B): Transcripts of March 19, 2002 Press Briefing by Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem.

Article I (1)(C): Transcripts of March 24, 2002 Wolf Blitzer interview of Vice President Cheney on CNN’s Late Edition.

Article I (1)(D): Transcripts of May 19, 2002 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (1)(E): Speech of Vice President Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention on August 26, 2002.

Article I (1)(F & G): Transcripts of September 8, 2002 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (1)(H): Transcripts of March 16, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article I (2)(A): Pincus, Walter and Priest, Dana. “Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits.” Washington Post 5 June 2003: A01.

Article I (2)(B): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Stovepipe.” The New Yorker 27 October 2003.

Article I (3)(A): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 9

Article I (3)(B): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 84

Article I (3)(C): National Intelligence Estimate, October 1, 2002. pg. 9

United States service member deaths: Department of Defense Casualty Report

Iraqi civilian deaths: Lancet Report

Cost of the war: CRS report RL33110

Loss of military readiness: Korb, Lawrence. “A troop readiness crisis.” Boston Globe 11 April 2007.

Supporting Documents for Article II

Article II (1)(A): Speech of Vice President Cheney at the Air National Guard Senior Leadership Conference on December 2, 2002.

Article II (1)(B): Speech of Vice President Cheney to 30th Political Action Conference in Arlington, Virginia on January 30, 2003.

Article II (1)(C): Transcripts of March 16, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article II (1)(D): Transcripts of September 14, 2003 Tim Russert interview with Vice President Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Article II (1)(E): Speech of Vice President Cheney at Bush-Cheney '04 Fundraiser in Iowa on October 3, 2003.

Article II (1)(F): Speech of Vice President Cheney to the Heritage Foundation on October 10, 2003.

Article II (1)(G): Hayes, Stephen. “Cheney v. Powell.” The Weekly Standard 13 January 2004.

Article II (1)(H): Transcripts of January 22, 2004 Juan Williams interview with Vice President Cheney on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Article II (1)(I): Transcripts of June 17, 2004 Gloria Borger interview with Vice President Cheney on CNBC’s Capital Report.

Article II (2)(A): Waas, Murray. “Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel.” National Journal 22 November 2005.

Article II (2)(B): Jehl, Douglas. “Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts.” New York Times 6 November 2005.

Article II (2)(C): “Leaked Report Rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link.” BBC News 5 February 2003.

United States service member deaths: Department of Defense Casualty Report

Iraqi civilian deaths: Lancet Report

Cost of the war: CRS report RL33110

Loss of military readiness: Korb, Lawrence. “A troop readiness crisis.” Boston Globe 11 April 2007.

Supporting Documents for Article III

Article III (1)(A): Speech of Vice President Cheney to American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2006 Policy Conference on March 7, 2006.

Article III (1)(B): Transcripts of January 24, 2007 Wolf Blitzer interview with Vice President Cheney on CNN’s Situation Room.

Article III (1)(C): Transcripts of January 28, 2007 Richard Wolffe interview with Vice President Cheney for Newsweek Magazine.

Article III (1)(D): Transcripts of February 24, 2007 Press Briefing with Vice President Cheney and Australian Prime Minister in Sydney, Australia.

Article III (2)(A): Transcripts of February 19, 2007 Daniel Dombey interview with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for the Financial Times.

Article III (2)(B): International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors Report, February 22, 2007.

Article III (2)(C): Transcripts of February 19, 2007 Daniel Dombey interview with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei for the Financial Times.

Article III (3)(A): Hirsh, Michael. “Hirsh: A Failed Shot at Peace with Iran?” Newsweek 8 February 2007.

Article III (3)(B): Abramowitz, Michael. “Cheney Says U.S. Is Sending ‘Strong Signal’ to Iran.” Washington Post 29 January 2007: A02.

Article III (3)(C): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Iran Plans.” The New Yorker 17 April 2006.

Article III (3)(D): Londono, Ernest and al-Izzi, Saad. “Iraq Intensifies Efforts to Expel Iranian Group.” Washington Post 14 March 2007: A10.

Article III (3)(E): Hersh, Seymour M. “The Iran Plans.” The New Yorker 17 April 2006.

Article III (4)(A): Article VI of Constitution of the United States of America.

Article III (4)(B): Chapter I, Article 2 of Charter of the United Nations

Article III (4)(C): Chapter VII, Article 51 of Charter of the United Nations

http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm

http://impeachforpeace.org/impeach_bush_blog/?p=1290

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

American Kleptocracy Video

Rocky — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:59:56 GMT

American Kleptocracy Video

Lou Dobbs discusses the SPP and North American Union. With Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Xs8bposCc

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posted in Democrats - 0 replies

3rd Border Patrol Agent has been jailed for protecting the border

Rocky — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:53:51 GMT

A 3rd Border Patrol Agent has been jailed for protecting the border between Texas & Mexico.

"Federal prosecutor Johnny Sutton has targeted another law enforcement officer who was just going his job. Former Texas Sheriff's Deputy Guillermo Hernandez will be sentenced today. Deputy Hernandez was convicted of violating the civil rights of an illegal alien in a 2005 incident. He could face 10 years in prison. We'll have a special report.

And, we'll be joined by the attorney for Guillermo Hernandez, Jimmy Park, Jr. He'll explain why his client has been wrongly convicted. And he'll discuss the growing movement to petition President Bush for a pardon. "

"Do you believe the Mexican government is influencing the cases being brought against U.S. law enforcement agents?"

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52545

Report Illegals & Employers that hire them Toll Free 866-347-2423 - http://www.reportillegals.com/

posted in Democrats - 0 replies

Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani Lead N.H. 2008 Poll

hillaryclinton — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:45:05 GMT

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is the early frontrunner among candidates in New Hampshire for the Democratic presidential nomination, and among Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are tied, according to a new Granite State poll.

Taken from
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/2/8/85440.shtml?s=ic

posted in Democrats - 5 replies

Antiwar Protests Against Obama, Clinton, McCain, Farr, and Others

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:54:04 GMT

In this mailing:
1. Santa Cruz, California action against Sam Farr
2. Antiwar Protests Against Obama, Clinton, McCain and Others

Protest To Bring The Troops Home Now!

Friday Feb. 16,
Santa Cruz County Building, 701 Ocean Street

Sit in at Representative Sam Farr’s Office to Demand:

Cut Off The War Funds!

Sam Farr has voted a number of times for the billions of dollars that have been used to wage war and murder hundreds of thousands in Iraq. He has promised to vote against the $93 billion emergency war appropriations bill that Bush has forwarded to congress, but Farr still consistently supports and votes for massive general appropriations for the military budget. These are votes for war.

The People of Santa Cruz Demand No Money For War!

This protest is part of the growing national movement demanding that representatives, like Sam Farr, that claim to oppose the war stop funding it.

Money For Jobs, Healthcare, Housing, and Education! Not a cent for war!

People holding all political philosophies in opposition to the war are welcome. This includes those that think that Democrats like Sam Farr can be persuaded or pressured into opposing the war as well as others that want to expose the Democrats as useless and put forward mass action, strike action, direct action, green, anarchist, and socialist alternatives towards ending the war.

This is being organized as a nonviolent event, but we cannot guarantee the conduct of the Santa Cruz Police.

Friday Feb. 16, Santa Cruz
Meet 1:00 PM on the front steps of the county building, 701 Ocean Street.

Sponsored by Liberation News
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

******
Project Occupation has been staging protests/sit-ins/demonstrations nationwide targeting the offices congresspersons that support the Iraq war by funding it.

In addition the Troops Out Now Coalition will be marching on the offices of Hillary Clinton on March 17 starting at Times Square (43rd and Broadway) at 1 PM. For more on Hillary Clinton's pro-war record see: Pro-War Hillary Clinton, What Are The Alternatives?
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77262.html
Here are some actions that have already happened or are underway:

St. Louis has an feature about an action at Rep Russ Carnahan's office:
http://www.stlimc.org/newswire/display/2840/index.php

Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) DC Offices
http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/display/1711/index.php

Barrak Obama’s and Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) offices in Chicago
(which resulted in 8 arrests)
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/82702.shtml

The San Francisco offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). For more on Senator Diane Feinstein's pro-war record read: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/28/18302034.php

The Portland office of Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR). More actions are planned (or underway)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/353477.shtml

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Seattle, WA
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2007/02/257544.shtml

Rep. Mike Honda in the South Bay (by Raging Grannies!)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/08/18359668.php

Rep Matsui in Sacramento, CA
http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2007-01-28-22-10-01-news.php

De Moines, IA
http://www.kcci.com/news/10965748/detail.html (very brief)

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