The Woman Rebel "No Gods, No Masters"

'OWS camps banned - where do we convene?'

2012-01-31T17:25:00.000-06:00

German trans girl ‘to be institutionalised’

2012-01-31T17:10:00.000-06:00

Reparative Therapy aimed at curing transkids is a crime against humanity and a gross violation of both the human and civil rights of trans-children.

From Pink News: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/31/german-trans-girl-to-be-institutionalised/

by Jane Fae

31 January 2012

News that an 11 year old trans girl in Berlin, Germany, is about to be committed to a mental institution by local authorities – following intervention by her absent father – has prompted grave concern by the International LGBTQ Youth and Student Organisation (IGLYO).

A petition has also been started on change.org.

According to a statement released by IGLYO yesterday, the girl, elsewhere identified only as “Alex” (Alexandra) lives with her mother, who supports her gender expression. However, the girl’s father, divorced and separated from her mother, strongly rejects this view of his daughter’s gender identity and wants to force her to grow up as a boy.

If all else fails, there is a real and present possibility that pressure from her father, supported by the Youth Welfare Office in Berlin, means that Alex will shortly be confined in a closed ward of a psychiatric institution to ensure that “he” returns to “normality”.

This is despite the fact that Alex claims, in an interview published earlier this month in online lifestyle magazine taz.de, that she has identified as female for as long as she can remember. She is accepted as female at school, and has been registered as such from her earliest days there.

This led to conflict with her father, who insisted on calling her “Alexander” and forcing her to wear boy’s clothes. When Alex reacted negatively, he accused her of being badly behaved. Her parents split over the matter of Alex’s gender.

Continue reading at: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/31/german-trans-girl-to-be-institutionalised/

Pregnant, and Pushed Out of a Job

2012-01-31T16:25:00.000-06:00

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/pregnant-and-pushed-out-of-a-job.html?_r=1

By DINA BAKST

Published: January 30, 2012

FEW people realize that getting pregnant can mean losing your job. Imagine a woman who, seven months into her pregnancy, is fired from her position as a cashier because she needed a few extra bathroom breaks. Or imagine another pregnant employee who was fired from her retail job after giving her supervisors a doctor’s note requesting she be allowed to refrain from heavy lifting and climbing ladders during the month and a half before her maternity leave: that’s what happened to Patricia Leahy. In 2008 a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that her firing was fair because her employers were not obligated to accommodate her needs.

We see this kind of case in our legal clinic all the time. It happens every day to pregnant women in the United States, and it happens thanks to a gap between discrimination laws and disability laws.

Federal and state laws ban discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. And amendments to the Americans With Disabilities Act require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees (including most employees with medical complications arising from pregnancies) who need them to do their jobs. But because pregnancy itself is not considered a disability, employers are not obligated to accommodate most pregnant workers in any way.

As a result, thousands of pregnant women are pushed out of jobs that they are perfectly capable of performing — either put on unpaid leave or simply fired — when they request an accommodation to help maintain a healthy pregnancy. Many are single mothers or a family’s primary breadwinner. They are disproportionately low-income women, often in physically demanding jobs with little flexibility.

Thankfully, State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, a Democrat from Sullivan County, have introduced legislation to fill this gap in New York. Their bills — S. 6273 and A. 9114 — would require employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant women whose health care providers say they need them, unless doing so would be an undue hardship for the employer.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/pregnant-and-pushed-out-of-a-job.html?_r=1

Belgium Hit by General Strike Over Austerity Measures

2012-01-31T00:32:00.000-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/30

"You don’t get growth when you suck the oxygen out of the economy by austerity"

- Common Dreams staff
Published on Monday, January 30, 2012 by Common Dreams

Unions staged a general strike in Belgium today in protest of austerity measures. The strike coincides with a summit by EU leaders in Brussels.

The issues behind the strike are the same as those on the agenda for the summit. Greece's desperate plight hovers over the meeting, although formally there is no mention of Greece on the agenda or in the statements drafted for the meeting.

Instead the leaders of the 27 governments will discuss how to underpin an EU recovery – of which there is absolutely no sign – with "smart growth" policies, which would entail medium-term structural reforms, cutting labour costs, reshaping labour markets and redirecting surplus EU budget funds towards the eurozone periphery, where the debt crisis is hitting hardest.

The leaders are also to finalise two new treaties directly dealing with the euro crisis.

The first is the German-led "fiscal compact" which supersedes the currency's rulebook, the stability pact, by enshrining debt and deficit ceilings across the eurozone, giving Brussels greater powers to enforce compliance and penalise offenders, and making the fines imposed on delinquents more automatic and less open to political abuse.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/30

Occupy DC protesters in standoff with police as eviction deadline passes

2012-01-31T00:28:00.000-06:00

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/30/occup-dc-protesters-standoff-police

Demonstrators in Washington refuse to comply after National Park Service orders the camp to be cleared on hygiene grounds

Ryan Devereaux guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012

Occupy demonstrators in Washington DC have chosen to stand their ground in the face of newly-enforced anti-camping regulations – but protesters worry the authorities could move in at any moment.

The National Park Service in Washington announced it would enforce existing anti-camping rules – which bar demonstrators from holding camping gear, bedding and cooking supplies – at two parks that have served as a home to Occupy DC protesters since the fall. In response, demonstrators have turned the central feature of McPherson Square, a statue of General James B McPherson, into a makeshift tent, and have refused to comply with the orders.

The regulations have largely gone unenforced since the occupation of McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza began in October, but from noon on Monday, the NPS said that would no longer be the case. Critics of the protest camps cite health concerns and an alleged rat infestation as grounds to remove the demonstrators, but some see the sudden vigour to enforce the regulations as a pretext for eviction. Legba Carrefour of Occupy DC described the renewed enforcement of the anti-camping rules as "death by a thousand bureaucratic cuts."

By noon, the confrontation that many expected had not come, and a standoff began. Protesters in McPherson Square had draped a so-called "tent of dreams" over the statue and people quickly gathered inside.

Protester Caty McClure said there were "at least 50" people gathered inside the giant tent. A speaker explained that the tent represents the protesters' dreams of a America where corporations could not guide the democratic process, and where housing existed for all. Gathered around the statue the protesters chanted: "Let us sleep so we can dream." Protesters have surrounded the statue with smaller personal tents.

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/30/occup-dc-protesters-standoff-police

Clashes in Oakland: 400 Arrests, Tear Gas, Flash-Bang Grenades

2012-01-31T00:25:00.000-06:00

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153936/clashes_in_oakland%3A_400_arrests%2C_tear_gas%2C_flash-bang_grenades/

Police once again ratcheted up the tension by using force against an entire crowd of protesters.

By Joshua Holland
January 29, 2012

Downtown Oakland turned ugly once again on Saturday, as Occupy activists attempting to squat in a long-abandoned city building were met by lines of heavily-armored riot police. Police officials said that 400 arrests followed – a number that may represent as much as 30 percent of everyone who participated in the day's actions, according to police estimates of the crowd's size.

Occupy Oakland organizers said some protesters were hospitalized, but the exact number of injuries is unknown as if this writing. According to organizers, four journalists were swept up by police, including AlterNet contributor Susie Cagle and Mother Jones correspondent Gavin Aronsen. Cagle was reportedly cited and released; organizers say Aronsen was jailed overnight (update: Aronsen tells us that he was released last night).

It was, once again, a tale of two protests. Accounts in the corporate media relied primarily on police statements to paint protesters as wild animals running amok in the city, while those following the day's events via a small group of “citizen-journalists” broadcasting raw, unedited footage from their cell-phones and flip-cams got a wildly divergent view of exactly how things escalated.

A livestream offered by Occupy Oakland's Mark Mason and Chris Krakauer showed protesters approaching the Henry Kaiser Convention Center in the early afternoon, where they were greeted by skirmish lines of police clad in riot gear. At one point, Mason, narrating as he moved through the crowd, could be heard saying, “uh-oh, some people are throwing things at the cops,” before moving away from the front-lines. Later, an Occupier visiting from Los Angeles told Mason of confronting one of the protesters who had thrown an object at police. “That's just stupid, you know,” said the young woman. “And she threw it from the middle of the crowd, which just puts people in the front in danger.”

Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153936/clashes_in_oakland%3A_400_arrests%2C_tear_gas%2C_flash-bang_grenades/

Quan says she'll call national Occupy leaders

Will Kane,Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writers

Monday, January 30, 2012

(01-30) 13:55 PST OAKLAND -- Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said today that she is going to call national leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement and implore them to disown Oakland's protest movement.

Quan said Saturday's demonstration, where 400 protesters were arrested and City Hall was vandalized, showed that the contingent of protesters who have targeted Oakland were not as non-violent as they claim they are.

"I plan to call some of the national leadership of Occupy this week to say that the Oakland group is not nonviolent and has not agreed to be nonviolent," Quan said in an interview on KCBS. "The national Occupy movement has said they are nonviolent."

Saturday's protest involved protesters throwing objects at police, breaking into buildings and vandalizing property. Some officers were injured in the melee.

According to jail records, many of those arrested were cited for remaining at the scene of a riot. Some were cited and released at the scene and others were taken to jail and booked on the misdemeanor count. Some posted $2,500 bail after being booked.

President Obama's Pro-Choice Birth Control Decision Draws Praise From Religious Leaders

2012-01-31T00:16:00.002-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/obama-birth-control-religious_n_1242680.html

Amanda Terkel

01/30/2012

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A group of religious organizations Monday thanked President Obama for his administration's recent decision on contraception, hoping to bring attention to religious pro-choice voices and to show that not all people of faith disagree with the new law.

Seven religious leaders from the Jewish, Unitarian, Baptist and other faiths addressed a letter to Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. All are members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a which includes more than 40 denominations and faith groups to promote education and issues of reproductive choice

"We believe that all women deserve access to affordable birth control, regardless of their employer, and we hope that, in the future, HHS will expand the same preventive coverage to women across the board," they wrote in the letter, obtained by The Huffington Post.

"As clergy, we are committed to upholding the important goals of reproductive justice and health, empowering women and men to make decisions about whether and when to have and bear children within their own moral and religious tradition, and assuring them the means and ability to raise their children in a safe and healthy environment. Access to reproductive health services recognizes a moral value embraced across the religious spectrum. We thank you for your decision supporting the fundamental value of reproductive health to women and families."

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/obama-birth-control-religious_n_1242680.html

The Austerity Debacle

2012-01-31T00:15:00.002-06:00

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-debacle.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 29, 2012

Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a British think tank, released a startling chart comparing the current slump with past recessions and recoveries. It turns out that by one important measure — changes in real G.D.P. since the recession began — Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.

Nor is Britain unique. Italy is also doing worse than it did in the 1930s — and with Spain clearly headed for a double-dip recession, that makes three of Europe’s big five economies members of the worse-than club. Yes, there are some caveats and complications. But this nonetheless represents a stunning failure of policy.

And it’s a failure, in particular, of the austerity doctrine that has dominated elite policy discussion both in Europe and, to a large extent, in the United States for the past two years.

O.K., about those caveats: On one side, British unemployment was much higher in the 1930s than it is now, because the British economy was depressed — mainly thanks to an ill-advised return to the gold standard — even before the Depression struck. On the other side, Britain had a notably mild Depression compared with the United States.

Even so, surpassing the track record of the 1930s shouldn’t be a tough challenge. Haven’t we learned a lot about economic management over the last 80 years? Yes, we have — but in Britain and elsewhere, the policy elite decided to throw that hard-won knowledge out the window, and rely on ideologically convenient wishful thinking instead.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-debacle.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

Monsanto petition tells Obama: ‘Cease FDA ties to Monsanto’

2012-01-31T00:13:00.000-06:00

From The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/monsanto-petition-tells-obama-cease-fda-ties-to-monsanto/2012/01/30/gIQAA9dZcQ_blog.html

A two-year-old Food and Drug Administration appointment is stirring up online protests once more.

By Elizabeth Flock

01/30/2012

A two-year-old Food and Drug Administration appointment is stirring up online protests once more.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA. Consumer groups protested the appointment because Taylor had formerly served as a vice president for Monsanto, the controversial agricultural multinational at the forefront of genetically modified food.

In recent days, a petition calling for the former Monsanto VP’s ouster is gaining steam.

“President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor,” the petition on Signon.org reads. “Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when genetically modified organisms were allowed into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty.”

Over the weekend, the petition was signed by thousands of people. At this writing, it has around 60,000 signatures of its 75,000 goal.

Requests for comment from Monsanto and the FDA were not immediately returned.

Continue reading at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/monsanto-petition-tells-obama-cease-fda-ties-to-monsanto/2012/01/30/gIQAA9dZcQ_blog.html

HUD SECRETARY DONOVAN ANNOUNCES NEW REGULATIONS TO ENSURE EQUAL ACCESS TO HOUSING FOR ALL AMERICANS REGARDLESS OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY

2012-01-31T00:12:00.000-06:00

HUD Press Release: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=%2Fpress%2Fpress_releases_media_advisories%2F2012%2FHUDNo.12-014

HUD No. 12-014
Charmion Kinder
(202) 708-0980

FOR RELEASE
Monday
January 30, 2012

HUD SECRETARY DONOVAN ANNOUNCES NEW REGULATIONS TO ENSURE EQUAL ACCESS TO HOUSING FOR ALL AMERICANS REGARDLESS OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION OR GENDER IDENTITY

New regulations, published as final in the Federal Register next week, will go into effect in 30 days

WASHINGTON – U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan announced today new regulations intended to ensure that HUD's core housing programs are open to all eligible persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Donovan previewed the announcement at the 24^th National Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Equality – Creating Change. View the final rule here.

“The Obama Administration has viewed the fight for equality on behalf of the LGBT community as a priority and I’m proud that HUD has been a leader in that fight,” said Secretary Shaun Donovan. “With this historic rule, the Administration is saying you cannot use taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from choosing where they want live on the basis sexual orientation or gender identity – ensuring that HUD’s housing programs are open, not to some, not to most, but to all.”

The new regulations, published as final in the Federal Register next week, will go into effect 30 days after the rule is published.

U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) also expressed support for the publishing of final LGBT housing guidelines, “I am grateful to the Obama administration for instituting this important policy.”

The final rule, published as Equal Access to Housing in HUD Programs – Regardless of Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity, makes the following provisions:

Requires owners and operators of HUD-assisted housing, or housing whose financing is insured by HUD, to make housing available without regard to the sexual orientation or gender identity of an applicant for, or occupant of, the dwelling, whether renter- or owner-occupied. HUD will institute this policy in its rental assistance and homeownership programs, which include the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance programs, community development programs, and public and assisted housing programs.
Prohibits lenders from using sexual orientation or gender identity as a basis to determine a borrower’s eligibility for FHA-insured mortgage financing. FHA’s current regulations provide that a mortgage lender’s determination of the adequacy of a borrower’s income “shall be made in a uniform manner without regard to” specified prohibited grounds. The rule will add actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity to the prohibited grounds to ensure FHA-approved lenders do not deny or otherwise alter the terms of mortgages on the basis of irrelevant criteria.
Clarifies that all otherwise eligible families, regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, will have the opportunity to participate in HUD programs. In the majority of HUD’s rental and homeownership programs the term “family” already has a broad scope, and includes a single person and families with or without children. HUD’s rule clarifies that otherwise eligible families may not be excluded because one or more members of the family may be an LGBT individual, have an LGBT relationship, or be perceived to be such an individual or in such relationship.
Prohibits owners and operators of HUD-assisted housing or housing insured by HUD from asking about an applicant or occupant’s sexual orientation and gender identity for the purpose of determining eligibility or otherwise making housing available. In response to comments on the proposed rule, HUD has clarified this final rule to state that this provision does not prohibit voluntary and anonymous reporting of sexual orientation or gender identity pursuant to state, local, or federal data collection requirements.

Other actions HUD has taken for LGBT Americans include:

HUD conducted the first-ever national study of discrimination against members of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing. Every ten years, HUD does a study of the impact of housing discrimination on the basis of race and color. HUD undertook this important research in 1977, 1989 and 2000 and is currently undertaking this study again. It is believed that LGBT individuals and families may remain silent because in many local jurisdictions, they may have little or no legal recourse. While there are no national assessments of LGBT housing discrimination, there are state and local studies that have shown evidence of this sort of bias. For example, a 2007 report by Michigan’s Fair Housing Centersfound that nearly 30 percent of same-sex couples were treated differently when attempting to buy or rent a home.
HUD currently requires its recipients of discretionary funds to comply with local and state non-discrimination laws that cover sexual orientation or gender identity.
In 2011 HUD issued new guidance that treats discrimination based on gender nonconformity or sex stereotyping as sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act, and instructs HUD staff to inform individuals filing complaints about state and local agencies that have LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination laws.
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in rental, sales and lending on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability and familial status. Approximately 20 states, and the District of Columbia, and more than 150 cities, towns and counties across the nation have additional protections that specifically prohibit such discrimination against LGBT individuals. Under the guidance issued in June 2010, HUD will, as appropriate, retain its jurisdiction over complaints filed by LGBT individuals or families but also jointly investigate or refer matters to those state, district and local governments with other legal protections.
HUD, HHS and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) hosted the first ever federal government summit addressing issues for LGBT seniors in December 2011.

View the final rule here.

###

HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.
HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the
need for quality affordable rental homes: utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build
inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business.
More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov and
http://espanol.hud.gov. You can also follow HUD on twitter @HUDnews, on facebook at
www.facebook.com/HUD, or sign up for news alerts on HUD's News Listserv.

Why New Birth Control Benefits are the Right Choice and Why Religious Conservatives Have it Wrong

2012-01-31T00:10:00.000-06:00

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153924/why_new_birth_control_benefits_are_the_right_choice_and_why_religious_conservatives_have_it_wrong/

In a country of alarmingly high unplanned pregnancy, American women need access to affordable birth control for economic and health reasons.

By June Carbone and Naomi Cahn

January 29, 2012

The Obama administration’s recent decision to require most religious-affiliated employers to cover birth control for their employees is good news for the women who work for religious employers and do not share the male hierarchy’s opposition to birth control. It is also good news for a country with the one of the highest unplanned pregnancy rates in the developed world.

More Than Just Using Condoms

Contraception, as every woman knows, is a system that depends on developing the right habits and getting consistent reinforcement from partners, parents and/or friends. In other words, effective contraception takes more work than simply remembering to use condoms. As a result, many women are more devoted to their gynecologists than other doctor in their lives – and gynecologists can be expensive. One of us visited hers after the birth of a third child. By the late thirties, pregnancy becomes riskier for mother and child and few families feel they can afford a fourth even on a law professor’s income. The gynecologist explained that methods of contraception that work for young women often don’t work as well after childbirth. The solution: an IUD. There was only one problem, the doctor sheepishly explained: It cost $400 and insurance wouldn’t cover it for an employee of a Catholic university. For a professional, $400 is not out of reach; for many women it is.

Conservatives insist that women know about contraception, condoms are cheap and available, and the high rate of unplanned pregnancies reflects conscious decisions not to bother with protection. What this argument overlooks is that the use of birth control is the result of a system – a system that encourages use, makes it easy to get access, and promotes a culture that associates responsibility with contraception. Middle class communities have that. The trip to Planned Parenthood is a rite of passage in many suburban high schools. Many knowledgeable parents drive their daughters to doctors’ appointments soon after puberty explaining that the pill helps control menstrual camps. In European countries with low teen birth and abortion rates, the government provides free birth control to anyone who wants it with information in public schools making it easy to understand and obtain. Widespread use, however, follows not just from access but from the development of a culture that says taking the pill is the right thing to do (which is why the notion that the pill alleviates menstrual cramps is even more prevalent in Holland than here) and the accidental pregnancy is a mark of failure.

Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153924/why_new_birth_control_benefits_are_the_right_choice_and_why_religious_conservatives_have_it_wrong/

Hershey’s targeted in Super Bowl ad for alleged African child-slave labor

2012-01-31T00:08:00.002-06:00

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/30/hersheys-targeted-in-super-bowl-ad-for-alleged-african-child-slave-labor/

By Eric W. Dolan

Monday, January 30, 2012

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) plans to use the Super Bowl in Indianapolis this year to pressure Hershey’s into taking action over forced labor practices that continue to plague the West African cocoa industry.

The ad, titled “Hershey’s Chocolate: Kissed by Child Labor,” will appear on a jumbotron screen immediately outside Lucas Oil Stadium during the Super Bowl.

“In West Africa, where Hershey’s sources much of its cocoa, over 200,000 children are forced to harvest cocoa beans every year,” said Judy Gearhart, Executive Director of the ILRF. “Hershey prides itself on its commitment to supporting underserved children in the United States, yet it lags behind when it comes to putting policies in place to end the exploitation of children in the cocoa industry.”

Mars and Nestlé have both committed to begin sourcing cocoa that is independently certified to comply with labor rights standards, but Hershey’s has not.

Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/30/hersheys-targeted-in-super-bowl-ad-for-alleged-african-child-slave-labor/

In Bad Faith: New Study Further Underscores Lack of Truth in Anti-Choice Claims

2012-01-31T00:07:00.000-06:00

From RH Reality Check: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/30/new-study-demonstrates-anti-choice-bad-faith

by Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check

January 30, 2012

One of the most frustrating parts of dealing with the modern conservative movement is their incredibly practiced disingenuousness. From a bunch of white people denying racism while pushing racist policies to a bunch of straight people claiming that they want to ban gay marriage not because they hate gays, but because they love “traditional marriage,” the constant pose of the modern right winger is one of bad faith.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the anti-choice movement. Despite arsons, vandalism and occasional assassinations, anti-choice activists demand the right to label their movement “non-violent.” And despite the fact that the movement is organized by religious people whose religion teaches that women should be constrained to traditional gender roles and that sex outside of marriage (or for pleasure instead of procreation) is wrong, anti-choicers cry foul if you suggest that their activism against women’s liberation or sexual freedom somehow is rooted in opposition to women’s liberation or hostility to sex.

All this means that liberals have to spend a lot of time collecting evidence that conservatives are arguing in bad faith. Some times that takes the form of catching them in moments of honesty when they’re only speaking to their fellow travelers, and their relaxed state allows racist or sexist language to fly. And some times that means proving that it’s literally impossible for someone who claims to be accepting of liberal value like anti-sexism or anti-racism to hold the views that conservatives do.

Continue reading at: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/30/new-study-demonstrates-anti-choice-bad-faith

Corporations Have No Use for Borders

2012-01-31T00:05:00.002-06:00

From Truth Dig: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/corporations_have_no_use_for_borders_20120130/

By Chris Hedges

Posted on Jan 30, 2012

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”

“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”

Continue reading at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/corporations_have_no_use_for_borders_20120130/

The Party People of Wall Street

2012-01-31T00:04:00.000-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/30-8

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Published on Monday, January 30, 2012 by Common Dreams

A week or so ago, we read in The New York Times about what in the Gilded Age of the Roman Empire was known as a bacchanal – a big blowout at which the imperial swells got together and whooped it up.

This one occurred here in Manhattan at the annual black-tie dinner and induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi. That’s the very exclusive Wall Street fraternity of billionaire bankers, and private equity and hedge fund predators. People like Wilbur Ross, the vulture capitalist; Robert Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, the insurance giant that received tens of billions in bailout money; and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former chairman of Bear Stearns, the failed investment bank bought by JPMorgan Chase.

They got together at the St. Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue to eat rack of lamb, drink and haze their newest members, who are made to dress in drag, sing and perform skits while braving the insults, wine-soaked napkins and petit fours – those fancy little frosted cakes — hurled at them by the old guard. In other words, a gilt-edged Animal House, food fight and all.

This year, the butt of many a joke were the protesters of Occupy Wall Street. In one of the sketches, the bond specialist James Lebenthal scolded a demonstrator with a face tattoo, “Go home, wash that off your face and get back to work.” And in another, a member — dressed like a protester – was told, “You’re pathetic, you liberal. You need a bath!”

Pretty hilarious stuff. The whole affair’s reminiscent of the wingdings the robber barons used to throw during America’s own Gilded Age a century and a half ago, when great wealth amassed at the top, far from the squalor and misery of working stiffs. Guests would arrive in the glittering mansions for costume balls that rivaled Versailles, reinforcing the sense of superiority and the virtue of a ruling class that depended on the toil and sweat of working people.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/30-8

Why No Responsible Democrat Should Want Newt Gingrich to Get the GOP Nomination

2012-01-30T13:46:00.000-06:00

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/16529074860

By Robert Reich

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Republicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich’s ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.

Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.

The Republican worry is understandable. “The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handling the election over to Obama,” says former Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty, a leading GOP conservative. “I think that’s shared by a lot of folks in the Republican party.”

Pawlenty’s views are indeed widely shared in Republican circles. “He’s not a conservative – he’s an opportunist,” says pundit Joe Scarborough, a member of the Republican Class of 1994 who came to Washington under Gingrich’s banner. Gingrich doesn’t “have the temperament, intellectual discipline or ego control to be either a successful nominee or president,”says New York Republican representative Peter King, who hasn’t endorsed any candidate. “Basically, Newt can’t control himself.”

Gingrich is “an embarrassment to the party,” says New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, and “was run out of the speakership” on ethics violations. Republican strategist Mike Murphy says “Newt Cingrich could not carry a swing state in the general election if it was made of feathers.”

Continue reading at: http://robertreich.org/post/16529074860

Angels We Have Heard On High: Activist Priest, 83, In Solitary Confinement

2012-01-30T12:11:00.000-06:00

This Priest is a Real Christian... Unlike the Anti-Christian Right Wing Scum that call themselves "Born-Again"

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/01/27-1

by Abby Zimet

01.27.12

Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill "Bix" Bichsel, 83, is in his second week of a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement at Washington's SeaTac Federal Detention Center, where he'd been held for an earlier action against a proposed nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. A member of Disarm Now Plowshares, Bichsel has been arrested several times for nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. He is currently being punished - including having to wear shackles at his hearing - for an "unauthorized" visit by two Buddhist monks who drummed and prayed outside for him. Despite cold and health problems, Father Bichsel says he sings to himself in his cell. His resolve remains strong to fight against nuclear weapons and other US policies "that are without conscience." He has alot of work ahead of him.

Addresses:

William J. Bichsel, S.J

# 86275-020 SHU

P.O. Box 13900

Seattle, WA 98198 – 1090

Here is list of people to contact:

Charles E. Samuels, Jr.

Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons

320 First St., NW,

Washington, DC 20534

Office hours: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Eastern time

Monday through Friday

For general information, call 202-307-3198.

Marion Feather, Warden

Federal Detention Center SeaTac

P.O. Box 13901

Seattle, WA 98198

Phone: 206-870-5700

Fax: 206-870-5717

E-mail: mxfeather@bop.gov

Terry McGuire

The Catholic Northwest Progress

710 9th Avenue

Seattle, WA 98104

Terry.McGuire@seattlearch.org

Phone: 206-382-4560

Fax: 206-382-4840

The News Tribune

P.O. Box 11000, Tacoma, WA 98411

Phone: 253-597-8742

Matt Misterek

(253) 597-8472

matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com

The Seattle Times

PO Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111

Newsroom: (206) 464-2200

Newsroom fax: (206) 464-2261

Newsroom and Seattletimes.com staff

Main: (206) 464-2111

Accepts letters of up to 200 words at opinion@seattletimes.com

Contact your government representatives

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Patty Murray– www.murray.senate.gov/email/index.cfm

Tacoma Office

950 Pacific Avenue, Ste. 650

Tacoma, Washington 98402

Phone: (253) 572-3636

Fax: (253) 572-9488

Maria Cantwell – www.cantwell.senate.gov/contact/

Gov. Christine Gregoire

www.governor.wa.gov/contact/

Norm Dicks

www.house.gov/dicks/email.shtml

Archbishop Sartain

Archdiocese of Seattle, 710 9th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104

Phone: 206-382-4560 | Fax: 206-382-4840

Islamophobia Has No Place in the United States of America

2012-01-30T00:52:00.002-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-j-blumenfeld/islamophobia_b_1225226.html

Warren J. Blumenfeld

Posted: 01/26/2012

Recently speaking at a town hall meeting at an American Legion Hall in Lady Lake, Florida, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum fielded a question, or rather, a comment from a woman in the audience who forcefully proclaimed: "I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not. He constantly says that our constitution is passé, and he ignores it as you know and does what he darn well pleases. He is an avowed Muslim, and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president!"

Though Santorum opposes President Obama on many of the issues, he had a magnificent opportunity to take an ethical stand when addressing this woman, but he chose instead to virtually play into her obvious Islamophobic statements by merely responding to issues she raised related to the Constitution.

"Well look, I'm doing my best to get him out of the government right now, and you're right about how he uniformly ignores the constitution," Santorum responded. "He did this with these appointments over the recess that was not a recess, and if I was in the United States Senate I would be drawing the line."

As the old truism goes, "If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem." By not standing up to this woman's obvious Islamophobia, Santorum was complicit in the demonization, marginalization,, and victimization of Muslims and those perceived as Muslim.

Islamophobia can be defined as prejudice and discrimination toward the religion of Islam and Muslims who follow its teachings and practices. Like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, for example, Islamophobia is much more than a fear, for it is a taught and often learned attitude and behavior, and, therefore, falls under the category of oppression.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-j-blumenfeld/islamophobia_b_1225226.html

Remember Rousseau: Property Rights and Human Rights Are Still At War

2012-01-30T00:48:00.000-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/29

by Danny Schechter

Published on Sunday, January 29, 2012 by Common Dreams

The conflict between property rights and human rights has entered a new chapter. It is a debate that goes back to the challenge by landowners and merchants behind the American Revolution’s war on British control over the colonial economy.

Only today, as those speaking in the name of the 99% challenge the super wealthy of the 1% (actually the .001 %) there is a new battleground in what’s known as the housing market with as many as 14 million Americans in or facing foreclosure.

The defense of property rights is the holy of the holies for the propertied classes with a whole industry set up to enforce their claims of ownership.

We have seen how this plays out with the courts, run by often bought off and complicit judges rubber-stamping claims by banks and realty interests even when laws are disregarded amidst fraudulent filings, biased contracts, and phony robot signings. They control the marshals who seize your property, and constantly denigrate the real victims as “irresponsible.”

It’s not surprising any more to read about banks foreclosing on properties they don’t even own.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau who postulated the “social contract” that gives property rights a moral claim would be turning in his grave if he knew of the many abuses that homeowners in the US face daily.

According to one scholarly presentation I read, “In order to clearly present Rousseau's views on property in the Social Contract, we must first define what he means by property. Property according to Rousseau is that which is obtained legally thereby purporting legitimate claim to ones holdings. Now we must consider what gives an individual the right to openly claim ownership.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/29

GOP race-baiting masks class warfare

2012-01-30T00:44:00.002-06:00

From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/gop_race_baiting_masks_class_warfare/singleton/

By demonizing some, the Republicans seek to discredit the safety net for the 99 percent

By Daniel Denvir
Friday, Jan 27, 2012

It’s commonplace to note that Newt Gingrich’s dog-whistle appellation that Barack Obama is the “food stamp president” is both racist and politically cynical. But the stereotyping of black government dependency also serves the strategic end of discrediting the entire social safety net, which most Americans of all races depend on. Black people are subtly demonized, but whites and blacks alike will suffer.

Gingrich persists because it’s a dependable applause line, and because his political fortunes keep rising. Compare that to September, when Mitt Romney attacked then-candidate Rick Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Perry backtracked, insisting that he only wanted to bolster the program and ensure its solvency. But in his 2010 book “Fed Up,” Perry made his opposition to Social Security clear, calling it “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” Scrapping entitlements is a core tenet of contemporary fiscal conservatism, but most of the time politicians only get away with attacking the most vulnerable ones: Medicaid, food stamps and welfare cash assistance, which are means-tested and thus associated with the black (read: undeserving) poor, although whites make up a far greater share of food stamp recipients. Government welfare programs with Teflon political defenses — Medicare and Social Security — are nearly universal entitlements and thus associated with “regular” (read: white) Americans.

“Ending welfare as we know it,” as Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans did in 1996, is one thing. “Ending Medicare,” Republicans were last year reminded, is something else altogether. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” declared a 2009 Tea Party town hall attendee who today might very well be an ardent supporter of Gingrich’s assault on food stamps. It is a political lesson that free-market fundamentalists have to relearn with some frequency. It was only 2005, after all, when President George W. Bush launched his ill-fated proposal to privatize Social Security — a setback he later called his greatest failure.

Yet as more government programs of any sort are framed as pernicious, laissez-faire ideologues are again emboldened to get rid of everything.

As recently as November 2009, the New York Times reported that stigma around food stamps had faded; the program received strong bipartisan support as millions of newly impoverished Americans reached out for food assistance. But temporarily cautious politicians had only stashed the old playbook on the top shelf, and the revival of welfare queen demagoguery made for quick political results. Nationwide, state legislatures are moving to impose drug testing of welfare, and even unemployment insurance, recipients.

“If you go apply for a job today, you are generally going to be drug-tested,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in October 2010. “The people that are working are paying the taxes for people on welfare. Shouldn’t the welfare people be held to the same standard?”

Continue reading at: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/gop_race_baiting_masks_class_warfare/singleton/

Yes Some People Can Choose To Be Straight or Gay. They are Called Bisexuals

2012-01-30T00:40:00.000-06:00

A few days ago Cynthia Nixon created a controversy when she said that for her lesbianism is a choice. It is for me too. You see like Cynthia I've loved both men and women over the course of my lifetime. Bisexuality doesn't mean someone can't make up their mind as to be either straight or lesbian/gay. It certainly doesn't mean we are unfaithful to the person we love or over the course of a life time the people we love.

For some bisexual people there is a gravitation to one or the other either straight or gay. For me that direction has been towards lesbianism. This is encouraged by the greater equality one can find in a same sex marriage/partnership.

Cynthia Nixon’s Comments Prove We Still Don’t Know How To Talk About Sexual Identity

From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412318/cynthia-nixons-comments-prove-we-still-dont-know-how-to-talk-about-sexual-identity/

By Zack Ford

on Jan 27, 2012

The LGBT blogosphere has been wrestling with comments made by actress Cynthia Nixon (immortally Sex in the City‘s ”Miranda”) to the New York Times that she chose to be a lesbian:

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

She doubled down in an interview with the Daily Beast, but in a way that helped clarify where she’s really coming:

I don’t pull out the “bisexual” word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals… but I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.

Continue reading at: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412318/cynthia-nixons-comments-prove-we-still-dont-know-how-to-talk-about-sexual-identity/

Is It a Choice to Be Gay? It Depends on the Meaning of 'It'

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathaniel-frank/is-it-a-choice-to-be-gay_b_1231126.html

Nathaniel Frank

Posted: 01/25/2012

When Cynthia Nixon, who became famous for her role on Sex and the City, recently told The New York Times that being a lesbian was, for her, "a choice," her words lit up the LGBT listservs, angering many who believe that Nixon is giving comfort to the enemy. Those who believe sexual orientation is a choice are far more likely to oppose our equality, while folks who think we are "born that way" are more likely to support us. If we can't help it, goes the thinking, we shouldn't be punished for it; and the corollary to that: if you can't choose to be gay, there's no need to stigmatize it as a way to discourage people from making the wrong choice.

Those angered with Nixon's comments felt they were both unhelpful and incorrect. They say that research, along with so many of our own experiences, make clear that being gay or lesbian is not a choice. And what Nixon was really describing, although she refused to apply the term, was the fact of being bisexual, since she had previously been partnered with a man (Nixon later said, "I don't pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals").

But many have also defended her words, particularly lesbian and bisexual women. They say she was only speaking of her own experiences and that if she feels it was a choice for her, it's not for anyone else to say otherwise.

The problem is that this is not just about what Cynthia Nixon "feels." It requires more rigorous thinking about what identity and choice really entail. Nixon's comments further muddy a matter that sometimes seems to stem from a vast but rather simple confusion in American thinking. To paraphrase President Clinton, the question depends on what the meaning of "it" is. When I hear "it's a choice" (or "it's not a choice"), I can only make sense of the statement if I know if we're discussing same-sex attraction or same-sex action. I can't say it better than the blogger John Aravosis: "It's only a choice among flavors I already like." That is, I don't choose to like chocolate ice cream, but I choose whether, when, and how much to eat it. The idea that one can choose to be attracted to one type of person over another is nonsensical, just as no one is accused of choosing to prefer chocolate over strawberry. The question is what someone will choose to do with those feelings (eat chocolate or strawberry, partner with this person or that), and whether any particular choice is morally good, bad, or neutral.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathaniel-frank/is-it-a-choice-to-be-gay_b_1231126.html

Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/bruni-gay-wont-go-away-genetic-or-not.html?_r=2

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: January 28, 2012

That has long been one of the rallying cries of a movement, and sometimes the gist of its argument. Across decades of widespread ostracism, followed by years of patchwork acceptance and, most recently, moments of heady triumph, gay people invoked that phrase to explain why homophobia was unwarranted and discrimination senseless.

Lady Gaga even spun an anthem from it.

But is it the right mantra to cling to? The best tack to take?

Not for the actress Cynthia Nixon, 45, whose comments in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday raised those very questions.

For 15 years, until 2003, she was in a relationship with a man. They had two children together. She then formed a new family with a woman, to whom she’s engaged. And she told The Times’s Alex Witchel that homosexuality for her “is a choice.”

“For many people it’s not,” she conceded, but added that they “don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

They do get to fume, though. Last week some did. They complained that she represented a minority of those in same-sex relationships and that she had furthermore handed a cudgel to our opponents, who might now cite her professed malleability as they make their case that incentives to change, not equal rights, are what we need.

But while her critics have good reason to worry about how her words will be construed and used, they have no right to demand the kind of silence and conformity from Nixon that gay people have justly rebelled against. She’s entitled to her own truth and manner of expressing it.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/bruni-gay-wont-go-away-genetic-or-not.html?_r=2

Occupy Oakland: Police Teargas Protesters, Use Flash Grenades

2012-01-30T00:19:00.000-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/occupy-oakland-police-tea_n_1239232.html?ref=san-francisco

01/28/12

OAKLAND, Calif. — Police were in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters for failing to disperse Saturday night, hours after officers used tear gas on a rowdy group of demonstrators who threw rocks and flares at them and tore down fences.

Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of them entering a YMCA building.

Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others were swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in.

More help from other police agencies was also on the way, with busloads of Alameda County sheriff's deputies arriving in the downtown area late Saturday.

The nighttime arrests came after 19 people were taken into custody in Occupy Oakland protests hours earlier.

Police used tear gas and "flash" grenades on the group Saturday afternoon after some demonstrators threw rocks and other objects at them. Police said three officers were hurt, but they released no details.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/occupy-oakland-police-tea_n_1239232.html?ref=san-francisco

Journalists—Myself Included—Swept Up in Mass Arrest at Occupy Oakland

From Mother Jones: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/journalists-arrested-occupy-oakland

By Gavin Aronsen

Sun Jan. 29, 2012

On Saturday, Occupy Oakland re-entered the national spotlight during a day-long effort to take over an empty building and transform it into a social center. Oakland police thwarted the efforts, arresting more than 400 people in the process, primarily during a mass nighttime arrest outside a downtown YMCA. That number included at least six journalists, myself included, in direct violation of OPD media relations policy that states "media shall never be targeted for dispersal or enforcement action because of their status."

After an unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center, the more than 1,000 protesters elected to return to the site of their former encampment outside city hall. On the way, they clashed with officers, advancing down a street with makeshift shields of corrogated metal and throwing objects at a police line. Officers responded with smoke grenades, tear gas, and bean bag projectiles. After protesters regrouped, they marched through downtown as police pursued and eventually contained a few hundred of them in an enclosed space outside a YMCA. Some entered the gym and were arrested inside.

As soon as it became clear that I would be kettled with the protesters, I displayed my press credentials to a line of officers and asked where to stand to avoid arrest. In past protests, the technique always proved successful. But this time, no officer said a word. One pointed back in the direction of the protesters, refusing to let me leave. Another issued a notice that everyone in the area was under arrest.

I wound up in a back corner of the space between the YMCA and a neighboring building, where I met Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle and Kristin Hanes of KGO Radio. After it became clear that we would probably have to wait for hours there as police arrested hundreds of people packed tightly in front of us, we maneuvered our way to the front of the kettle to display our press credentials once more.

Continue reading at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/journalists-arrested-occupy-oakland

What really happened at Occupy Oakland on Saturday January 28 - Read my firsthand account, not the news. Please Spread.

From Boogie Man Journal: http://nameigoob.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-really-happened-at-occupy-oakland.html

by baked420

For the internet, here's a first-hand account of Occupy Oakland on 1/28/2012, because the news never tells the full story. I'll tell you about the street battle, the 300+ arrests, the vandalism, the flag burning, all in the context of my experience today. This is deeper than the headlines. No major news source can do that for you.

The stated goal for the day was to "move-in" to a large, abandoned, building to turn it into a social and political center. It is a long vacant convention center - the only people ever near there are the homeless who use the space outside the building as a bed. The building occupation also draws attention to the large number of abandoned and unused buildings in Oakland. The day started with a rally and a march to the proposed building. The police knew which building was the target, surrounded it, and used highly mobile units to try and divert the protest. After avoiding police lines, the group made it to one side of the building. Now, this is a very large building, and we were on a road with construction fences on both sides, and a large ditch separating us from the cops. The police fired smoke grenades into the crowd as the group neared a small path around the ditch, towards the building. They declared an unlawful assembly, and this is when the crowd broke down the construction fence. A few people broke fences to escape the situation, others because they were pissed. A couple more fences were taken down then necessary, but no valuable equipment was destroyed. They only things broken were fences.

The crowd decided to continue moving, and walked up the block to a more regular street. We decided to turn left up the street, and a police line formed to stop the march. They again declared an unlawful assembly. The protesters challenged the line, marching towards the police with our own shields in front. The shields, some small and black and a few large metal sheets. The police fired tear-gas as the group approached, and shot less-than-lethal rounds at the crowd. The protesters returned one volley of firecrackers, small projectiles, and funny things like balloons. A very weak attack, 3 officers may have been hit by something but none of them got injured. Tear gas forced many people back. The protesters quickly regrouped, and pressed the line again. This time the police opened fire with flash-grenades, tear gas, paint-filled beanbag shotguns, and rubber bullets.

After the police fired heavily on the protesters, they pushed their line forward and made a few arrests. The protesters regrouped down the block and began to march the other way (followed by police), back to Oscar Grant Plaza.

All of this occurred during the day, but it was that street battle that set the tone for the police response later in the evening. After taking a break in Oscar Grant Plaza, feeding everyone and resting, the group headed out for their evening march. Around 5pm, the group took to the street at 14th and Broadway and began a First-amendment sanctioned march around the city. The police response was very aggressive.

About 15 minutes into the march, the police attempted to kettle the protesters. This march was entirely non-violent; nobody threw shit at the cops and an unlawful assembly was never declared. . This is a very important detail. The march was 1000+ strong, conservatively. The police were very mobile, using 25+ rented 10seater vans to bring the 'troops' to the march.

For their first attempt at a kettle, the cops charged the group with police lines from the front and back. They ran towards us aggressively. Us being 1000+ peaceful marching protesters. The group was forced to move up a side street. The police moved quickly to surround the entire area; they formed a line on every street that the side street connected to. Police state status: very efficient. They kettled almost the entire protest in the park near the Fox theater. AFTERWARDS, as in after they surrounded everyone, they declared it to be an unlawful assembly BUT OFFERED NO EXIT ROUTE. Gas was used, could of been tear or smoke gas.

The crowd then broke down a fence that was on one side of the kettle, and 1000 people ran across a field escaping a police kettle and embarrassing the entire police force. It was literally a massive jailbreak from a kettle. The group re-took Telegraph ave. and left the police way behind.

At this point, I was on edge because I knew the police were not fucking around tonight. Because of the incident earlier in the day, I realized they were effectively treating the peaceful march as a riot. There was not rioting, or intentions to riot, just dancing, optimism, hope, and walking. But clearly the police thought differently, and I knew they would try to trap us again without warning. From the moment I saw riot police running towards are march from both directions, I knew the constitution would not apply in Oakland tonight.

The police made that very clear. My friends thought differently, thinking that they would not be arrested for marching. They are currently in jail.

The second, and successful, kettle occurred as the protest was headed back up Broadway, at Broadway and 24th. Again, the police appeared quickly in front of the crowd, as well as a line behind the crowd. This time there was no side street. A few people attempted to escape into the YMCA; some mis-infonformed news reports claim that the YMCA got 'occupied'. Around 300 people were trapped, mostly young people. At this point I had fallen behind the line of riot police in back of the crowd, and when the kettle was sprung I was on the other side of the police line. I have a policy of avoiding arrest, but I feel like I've been striped of some dignity. I've seen some shit go down in oaktown, but I've always avoided arrest because it was easy. Most mass arrests occur when people choose to break the law (like occupying Bank of America in downtown SF and pitching a tent to send a statement to UC Regent Monica Lozano on BofA's board - respect). At 'unlawfully assemblies', people are usually extracted by a quick attack of 5+ cops, and their often 'targets' (previously-identified and profiled protesters). If the crowd is too large, they use tear-gas.

Tonight was different. When I fell behind the group, I knew they were going to arrest a very large number of peaceful protesters without declaring an unlawful assembly at the location. And then they did. I thought this shit was reserved for G20's and WTO meetings. I felt shame for being intimidated away from my rights. 'Unlawful assemblies' feel like a boot stomp on the first amendment, but this was like them wiping their ass with the constitution and force feeding it to me.

300+ were arrested, corralled below the YMCA @ 23rd and Broadway. The only announcement that was made was one I've never heard before:

"You are under arrest. Submit to your arrest."

The 300 protesters were then arrested, one by one. They were ziptied and sat in rows while they waited to be processed. OPD set up an entire processing station behind police lines, where they searched and identified every protester. They were slowly loaded onto buses, including local public AC transit buses. This took about 4 or 5 hours.

Outside the police lines, things were still happening. A group that escaped the trap decided to head back to Oscar Grant Plaza. I do not know how, but they opened the front door to city hall and occupied the building. Opened, as in no window smashing. The move was not meant to be an occupation but more of a show of solidarity to the 300 arrested protesters down the street. When all the people being arrested heard the news, they let out a big cheer...

..At this point I ran to Oscar Grant Plaza. When I arrived there were only 8 riot cops guarding the open front door, but more arrived very quickly. No one was inside the building anymore, but many had gathered in the Plaza. Someone burned an American Flag in front of city hall. I've seen the same guy do it before; frankly he's weird and it's kind of his thing.

One thing to note is the police arrested to wrong part of the protest. Most people arrested were young peaceful types. Aggressive protesters, and anyone with a record, are usually very good at avoiding arrest. Point being, back at the plaza opportunists began their work. I saw some young 'jugalos' spray-painting a wall with "jugalos for life" shit and then take photos next to it. They were just young and stupid kids; some good protesters cleaned it up later in the night. Some CBS and FOX news crews forced to leave the scene, with people spanking their van. They had already gotten the footage of someone burning an American Flag in front of city hall, so their work was done. The crowd was angry about what happened, and milling around the plaza and downtown area. At one point, the first of the 9 busloads of protesters drove past 14th and Broadway. People cheered for the ones inside, and chased it down, slamming on the sides of the bus. None of the other buses came past the plaza. There is about 30 police in the immediate area, 20 in front of city hall and 10 near 14th and broadway. Clearly they were stretched thin, and did not expect the city hall incident. Mutual aid been called it; I saw cops from Oakland, Alameda County Sheriff, Pleasanton, and Berkeley.

I walked back down to the 300 arrests in progress to try and get some information or spot my friends, but all I could do was wait and watch from behind the police line. My phone died. Not much happened, a lot of waiting and talking with people who also had friends on the other side. People included one French women who talked about how in France this would never be tolerated, and a teacher of one of Oakland's 10 schools being closed who was out on his birthday 'for the kids'. Eventually, I decided I needed to charge my phone, get on the internet, and figure out where and when my friends will be released. Siting down on BART was great after a long day of walking.

I got home and viewed OakfoSho and PunkboyinSf on Ustream to stay posted. OakFoSho filmed the entire arrest from above, I was able to look for my friends from his stream. All props to that guy. I saw that with the new development at Oscar Grant Plaza, they had to call in mutual aid from San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo. They declared the 14th and Broadway an unlawful assembly and slowly dispersed the dwindling crowd. No tear gas this time!

Now that this incident is on-record, I'm gonna get a little sleep, then go pick up my friends from jail.

If you only remember one detail be it this: Tonight's mass arrest occurred without a dispersal order. No law was broken. The only order given was: "You are under arrest. Submit to your arrest." 300 peaceful protesters walking down a street were trapped and arrested unlawfully.

A note about police militarization: I saw some big guns and scary gear tonight. Alameda County Sheriff seems to have an endless budget for that shit. But tonight I saw something much scarier, that I've never seen before. First, I saw that the police have a printed profile books of protesters. I saw a cop flipping through pictures with descriptions, talking about who on their list they've seen today. When resting in Oscar Grant Plaza, a cop was filming the plaza from a rooftop in an adjacent building. They're always filming, some have cameras on their bodies now, but this was clear spying and sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis. Second, a very large tank on wheels, with a water cannon on top, rolled on scene. Someone said it was called a "grizzly", but I can't find a photo anywhere. help? It was massive, and I stood right next to it before they brought it behind police lines. It was a hardcore, modern urban tank. The police are funded and prepared to use a water cannon on protesters, if need be. Know that.

The thing about Occupy, and especially Occupy Oakland, is it refuses to exclude. We are the 99%, and we mean it. The homeless and disenfranchised were welcome in the camp from day 1. The crime rate in Downtown Oakland went down, and some people finally had a safe place to sleep. Idealistic youth, google techies, students, teachers, parents, children, poor, homeless, workers, all coming together. It rekindled hope for a lot of people. Occupy changed the conversation. The idea is more important than any one protest. An idea cannot be stopped. It is no longer about occupations; instead, it's about bringing people together. The 99%, all with their own problems and concerns, have brought their collective attention to the root of the forces preventing them from making a better world.

A lot of the people arrested today were my peers...a lot of young people and students. For us, the occupy movement can't be diminished or co-opted...it's bigger than occupy. I will seek the changes I marched for tonight until I win or die. It is the task of my generation, worldwide, to return power to the people. Governments around the world are quickly realizing that our generation will not back down. This is bigger than 'occupy', this is bigger than one country, one problem, or one protest. The people want their world back. We are fighting for our future, and we are winning.

Edit: Forgot to add this context - The Oakland PD will soon be taken over by the Feds because of their poor conduct and inability to change: http://www.baycitizen.org/policing/story/judge-strips-power-oakland-police/

Posted by Boogie Man at 10:10 AM

Shale-shocked: Fracking gets its own Occupy movement

2012-01-30T00:14:00.002-06:00

From Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/20121239716551183.html

Strong opposition to "fracking" in New York State has resulted in a "little revolution".

Ellen Cantarow

27 Jan 2012

Boston, MA - This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: There is no life without it. New York is what you might call a "water state". Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen's lore.

Far below this rippling wealth there's a vast, rocky netherworld named the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967, when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bomb to unleash it. That idea died, but it's been reborn in the form of a technology exploited by energy giants such as Halliburton Corporation: High-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing - "fracking" for short.

Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale.

Up comes the methane - along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States. Surrounded by rumbling machinery, serviced by tens of thousands of diesel trucks, this nightmare technology for energy release has turned rural areas in 34 US states into toxic industrial zones.

Shale gas isn't the conventional kind that lit your grandmother's stove. It's one of those "extreme energy" forms so difficult to produce that merely accessing them poses unprecedented dangers to the planet. In every fracking state but New York, where a moratorium against the process has been in effect since 2010, the gas industry has contaminated ground water, sickened people, poisoned livestock, and killed wildlife.

Fears that 'fracking' causes Ohio earthquakes

At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal. And with the greatest water crisis in human history underway, fracking injects mind-numbing quantities of purposely poisoned fresh water into the Earth. As for the trillions (repeat: trillions) of gallons of wastewater generated by the industry, getting rid of it is its own story. Fracking has also been linked to earthquakes: Eleven in Ohio alone (normally not an earthquake zone) over the past year.

Continue reading at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/20121239716551183.html

The Siren Call of Austerity

2012-01-30T00:13:00.002-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/28-8

by David Cay Johnston

Published on Saturday, January 28, 2012 by Reuters

The World Economic Forum opened in Davos amid choruses of central bankers and economists calling for governments to cut spending.

This message of austerity is like the call of the ancient Sirens, whose music lured sailors to shipwreck.

We should take a lesson from Odysseus, who poured wax into the ears of his crew and had himself lashed to the mast of his ship to resist the Siren call.

Austerity supporters are selling the idea that governments, like families, must cut back when income shrinks. But economically, governments are not like families.

Firing teachers, cops and government clerks will, for sure, reduce public spending. But budgets, like the song of the Sirens, are only part of the story. Listen only to the alluring lyrics and, like the many voyagers before Odysseus, we will suffer disastrous consequences - in our case falling incomes and worsening economies.

The full economic story begins with this principle taught to every economics student: spending equals income and income equals spending. Cut spending and incomes must fall; cut incomes and spending must fall.

Those who disagree with this say that only private spending can create wealth and that government spending is inefficient. I think the first argument is wrong, but the second is often true, which is why citizens need to pay close attention to their government.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/28-8

Dept. of Eating: I, Vegan

2012-01-30T00:12:00.002-06:00

From Boston.com: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/health_stew/2011/12/dept_of_eating_i_vegan.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed7

Posted by John McDonough

December 26, 2011

Those of you who have been trying to figure out if I'm a kook -- here is your answer.

This coming Sunday, January 1, will be the third anniversary since my wife and I switched to fairly strict "whole grain/plant based" diet, also known as "vegan." I am as surprised as anyone.

On the one hand, so what? It's just what we eat. Nobody's business but our own. And yet, as I have gotten more knowledgeable about this nutritional choice, the meaning and implications keep growing. In my first post here at boston.com, I disclosed my interest in the intersection of nutrition, food policy, and health policy. During this coming week or so, I will put up a few posts laying out my thinking in various ways. This first one presents a bit of my personal story.

Until age 55, my life involved the standard American diet of sugar, fat and salt adorned with flavors and spices. By 2008, I needed a change. My weight had climbed to about 195 and my body mass index showed that I was officially overweight. My health provider, Harvard Vanguard, sent me a note warning that my cholesterol was climbing to 200 and I should do something – diet, exercise, something.

"Vegan" appeared on my radar screen in several ways. My step-daughter, Jax, had gone vegan six years before. She was good about it, not preachy or judgmental – sometimes called “vegan-gelical.” In 2007, I learned from another blog, “Life as a Health Care CIO,” that Beth Israel Deaconess Chief Information Officer John Halamka had been vegan for nearly 10 years with dramatically positive results. I read a few books on the topic, notably “The Face on Your Plate” by Jeffrey Masson. I also discovered that the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine had started a program called their 21-day vegan “Kickstart” which provides online help to try a vegan diet for just three weeks (next one starts on January 2^nd).

Continue reading at: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/health_stew/2011/12/dept_of_eating_i_vegan.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed7

A Few Bad Apples from Apple Computer

2012-01-30T00:10:00.000-06:00

I've never been all that enthralled with Apple's product line. I was a line tech and service tech in the 1980s and though their approach to building a PC was pretty lame. I also thought pointing at pictures and having to push a variety of keys instead of just typing a command after the command prompt was over rated.

BTW I just checked and even with Windows 7 I can pull up that command prompt. I can also build a custom PC from off the shelf parts and you can't do that with a Mac.

But mostly Apple has always had a scummy corporate attitude. When it comes to abuses of off-shore techno slaves their treatment of workers is worse than Nike.

Their attitudes towards American workers is contemptible.

Perhaps it is time to consider letting Apple lose the American Market.

I don't need a fucking iPod, iPhone, or iPad to make my life complete and besides I don't think owning them makes you cool. It just sort of makes you a stupid slave to fashion like those people who stand in line to buy the latest Air Jordans.

Apple's Foreign Suppliers Demonstrate Widespread Scamming and Horrific Abuse of Employees

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/153824/apple%27s_foreign_suppliers_demonstrate_widespread_scamming_and_horrific_abuse_of_employees?akid=8162.304909.4RcCZs&rd=1&t=8

Apple's bombshell report on its suppliers shows anti-employee practices as common as iPods. White collar criminologist William K. Black investigates.

By William K. Black

January 20, 2012

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories, highlighting a form of control fraud (fraud in which the head of a company subverts it for personal gain) that criminology has identified but rarely discussed. I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it drives our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. The primary intended victims of accounting control frauds are the shareholders and the creditors. Other private sector control frauds target customers (e.g., George Akerlof’s 1970 article on “lemons”), and the public (e.g., the unlawful disposal of toxic waste, illegal logging, and tax fraud).

Anti-employee control frauds most commonly fall into four broad, but not mutually exclusive, categories – illegal work conditions due to violation of safety rules, violation of child labor laws, failure to pay employees’ wages and benefits, and frauds based on goods and loans provided by the employer to the employee that lock the employee into quasi-slavery. Apple has just released a report on its suppliers that shows that anti-employee control fraud is the norm. Remember, fraud is hidden and is often not discovered and Apple did not have an incentive to make an exhaustive investigation. Apple calls its inquiries “audits” and it is apparent that most of its information comes from reviewing written and electronic records at its suppliers. That is exceptionally revealing. The suppliers know that they can defraud their employees with such impunity that they don’t even bother to get rid of records that prove their frauds. Apple has resisted making public its suppliers and the report refused to identify which suppliers committed which violations – often for years despite repeated, false promises to end their anti-employee control frauds. Two other facts are evident (but not reported). First, Apple rarely terminates suppliers for defrauding their employees – even when the frauds endanger the lives and health of the workers and the community – and even where Apple knows that the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about these fraudulent and lethal practices. Second, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Apple makes criminal referrals on its suppliers even when they commit anti-employee control frauds as a routine practice, even when the frauds endanger the worker’s and the public’s health, and even when the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about the frauds. Apple’s report, therefore, understates substantially the actual incidence of fraud by the 156 suppliers (accounting for 97% of its payments to suppliers). From the New York Times:

Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153824/apple%27s_foreign_suppliers_demonstrate_widespread_scamming_and_horrific_abuse_of_employees?akid=8162.304909.4RcCZs&rd=1&t=8

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER

Published: January 21, 2012

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in Californialast February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement

From Ziff Davis Net: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=nl.e539

By Ed Bott

January 19, 2012

Summary: Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

Follow-up: How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books

I read EULAs so you don’t have to. I’ve spent years reading end user license agreements, EULAs, looking for little gotchas or just trying to figure out what the agreement allows and doesn’t allow.

I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program.

Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.

Continue reading at: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mind-bogglingly-greedy-and-evil-license-agreement/4360?tag=nl.e539

Monsanto Admits Defeat in France, Biotech Corn Contaminates

2012-01-29T17:46:00.000-06:00

From Earth First News: http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/monsanto-admits-defeat-in-france-biotech-corn-is-banned/

by Gordon Davis

The Scottish Farmer

January 26, 2012

FRANCE HAS held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.

Monsanto had been putting legal pressure on the French government to lift its 2008 cultivation ban on MON 810, firstly with a successful appeal to the European Court of Justice, then with a follow-up case heard in France’s own highest court, the Council of State.

But despite both these institutions ruling that the ban was “insufficiently justified in law”, the French Government, backed by President Sarkozy, has insisted that it will still not allow cultivation of the biotech maize.

Now Monsanto has announced that it would not be selling seeds for MON810 in France this year.

France’s stand – and Monsanto’s capitulation – has been warmly welcomed by anti-GM lobbyists GM Freeze, whose campaign director Pete Riley said: “The decision by Monsanto not to market MON810 seeds in France in 2012 is yet another sign that Monsanto has failed to convince the public or policy makers that there is any benefit to growing to growing GM crops.

“This needs to be acknowledged by industry and politicians and there should be a big shift to agricultural research and development which addresses the future sustainability of farming in Europe. EU policy needs to forget about the bottom line of biotech corporations and focus on developing agro-ecological farming which provides for the needs of farmers, consumers, the environment and future generations.”

Continue reading at: http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/monsanto-admits-defeat-in-france-biotech-corn-is-banned/

Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China

2012-01-29T00:27:00.000-06:00

Boycotting Apple is as easy for me as forever boycotting Coors. I've never owned an Apple product and don't care to own one although the iPod has come close to seducing me at times.

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/29/apple-faces-boycott-worker-abuses

US writers attack conditions at Foxconn plant and call for consumers to act

Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Saturday 28 January 2012

Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPads.

The company's public image took a dive after revelations about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers. The allegations, reported at length in the New York Times, build on previous concerns about abuses at firms that Apple uses to make its bestselling computers and phones. Now the dreaded word "boycott" has started to appear in media coverage of its activities.

"Should consumers boycott Apple?" asked a column in the Los Angeles Times as it recounted details of the bad PR fallout.

The influential Daily Beast and Newsweek technology writer Dan Lyons wrote a scathing piece. "It's barbaric," he said, before saying to his readership: "Ultimately the blame lies not with Apple and other electronics companies – but with us, the consumers. And ultimately we are the ones who must demand change."

Forbes magazine columnist Peter Cohan also got in on the act. "If you add up all the workers who have died to build your iPhone or iPad, the number is shockingly high," he began an article that also toyed with the idea of a boycott in its headline.

The New York Times's revelations, which centred on the Foxconn plant in southern China that has repeatedly been the subject of accusations of worker mistreatment, have caused a major stir in the US. Although such allegations have been made before in numerous news outlets, and in a controversial one-man show by playwright Mike Daisey, this time they have struck a chord.

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/29/apple-faces-boycott-worker-abuses

Corporate Personhood: Goldman Sachs Gets Married

2012-01-29T00:25:00.002-06:00

Occupy Oakland: Police Teargas Protestors, Use Flash Grenades

2012-01-29T00:24:00.002-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/occupy-oakland-police-tea_n_1239232.html

01/28/12

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Oakland police used tear gas and "flash" grenades Saturday to break up hundreds of Occupy protesters after some demonstrators started throwing rocks and flares at officers and tearing down fencing.

Three officers were hurt and 19 people were arrested, the Oakland Police Department said. No details on the officers' injuries were released.

The protest continued into Saturday evening. A four-block area near downtown was closed off with police in the street facing hundreds of protesters, while a second group of dozens of protesters headed toward City Hall. No additional clashes were reported.

"We're going to be out here as long as they are," said protester Christopher Moreland, 23.

Police said the group started assembling at a downtown plaza Saturday morning, with demonstrators threatening to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center. The group then marched through the streets, disrupting traffic.

The crowd grew as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/occupy-oakland-police-tea_n_1239232.html

11 Yr Old Exposes Monsanto

2012-01-29T00:23:00.002-06:00

How conservatives lie about government

2012-01-29T00:21:00.000-06:00

From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/how_conservatives_lie_about_government/singleton/

From Social Security hysteria to "Obamacare" madness, right-wing propaganda is increasingly divorced from reality

By Michael Lind

Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012

One benefit of the prolonged campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been the revelation that most of the 20 or 30 percent of Americans who describe themselves as conservatives live in a fantasy world. In their imaginations, Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat with roots in Eisenhower Republicanism rather than Rooseveltian liberalism, is a radical figure trying to take America down the path of “European socialism.” The signature healthcare reform of Obama and the Democratic Congress, modeled on Mitt Romney’s insurance-friendly Massachusetts healthcare program and closely resembling a proposal by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is described as “statist,” “socialist” or “fascist” (as though Hitler came to power with the goal of providing subsidies to private health insurance companies).

How can otherwise sane people believe such lunacy? The answer is that members of the right-wing counterculture are brainwashed — that is the only appropriate term — by the apocalyptic propaganda ground out constantly by the conservative media establishment. A perfect example is a recent essay by Philip Klein, a senior editorial writer of the Washington Examiner, the right-wing newspaper owned by the billionaire Philip Anshutz: “The Welfare State Is Destroying America.”

Klein begins, typically, with the fall from grace of America under the sinister Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the establishment of Social Security: “But Roosevelt was dead wrong that the program would help the nation avoid deep debt. Social Security and the entitlement programs that followed its legacy of seeking to protect citizens from the ‘hazards and vicissitudes of life,’ turned out to be fiscal disasters.”

In the real world, of course, today’s national debt has nothing to do with Social Security, whose trust fund has a surplus that will last for decades, with the precise date of the trust fund’s exhaustion depending on the rate of general economic growth. True, the federal government has to raise the tax revenue to repay the money it borrowed from the trust fund — but then, the federal government has to repay all of its creditors, domestic and foreign. What’s wrong with that?

Continue reading at: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/how_conservatives_lie_about_government/singleton/

Boy pulled from class due to red hair

2012-01-29T00:15:00.000-06:00

The idea that children should be bullied for any sort of reason is an obscenity. Further it should be the bullies who are pulled from classes and isolated not the bullied.

From Yahoo Australia: http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/12715951/boy-pulled-from-class-due-to-red-hair/7/

Yahoo!7

January 25, 2012

A 12-year-old boy will be taught in isolation at his UK school because he is constantly bullied about his red hair.

Tyler Walsh has been the victim of extreme bullying at Yate International Academy in Bristol, all because of his fiery red hair.

The bullies have even been visited by police in an attempt to stop them from taunting Tyler and chasing him into the school's toilets – but to no avail.

Now the school says it has no choice but to remove Tyler from his class and place him in their 'pupil inclusion unit', meaning he will be separated from the rest of his classmates.

Tyler's mother Emma says the school is targeting the wrong student.

"It should be the bullies who are excluded from school, not their victim," she told The Sun.

"Tyler is a bright boy, and he wants to learn. He always works hard, and that, along with the colour of his hair, makes him a target for bullies."

Mrs Walsh now says she has no choice but to pull her son from the school because it has failed to end Tyler's ordeal.

Continue reading at: http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/12715951/boy-pulled-from-class-due-to-red-hair/7/

Christian Parenti, Big Storms Require Big Government

2012-01-29T00:13:00.000-06:00

From Tom Dispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175494/tomgram:_christian_parenti,_big_storms_require_big_government/

by Christian Parenti

January 26, 2012

At some basic level, climate change shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Fossil-fuel burning -- the essence of our civilization since the industrial revolution -- dumps prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. As it happens, 2010 was another banner year for carbon dioxide production; the 5.9% rise in CO2 emissions was the “biggest jump ever recorded.” That greenhouse gas, in turn, traps heat and so warms the planet. The results are clear enough for anyone to see. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. Last year was the ninth warmest on record, despite an expected cooling effect from a strong La Niña temperature pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

More heat means more turbulence, which means more extreme weather events, which have clearly been on the rise -- more wetness, more droughts, fiercer storms. In that category, 2011 was definitely a year for the record books, with an unprecedented 14 weather events that each caused $1 billion or more in damage. More extreme weather means more human misery, relatively predictable globally, but reasonably unexpected when it actually hits locally.

The urge not to believe that we are despoiling our own planet has meant that we’ve been slow to develop alternate energy sources, but not slow to grow economically. What that means, of course, is that the search only intensifies for more fossil fuels, ever tougher to get as time goes on and ever “dirtier” (in greenhouse gas terms) to produce.

It’s the definition of a nasty feedback loop, made worse because the changing planet is itself setting off other phenomena that only increase the warming trend. Arctic sea ice, now melting at prodigious rates, reflects the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere. Less ice, in other words, isn’t just a sign of the planet getting hotter, but a factor in heating up the planet. In addition, the more iceless the oceans, the more their waters absorb carbon emissions, which only puts further pressure on many of the life forms living in them. Similarly, the melting of the permafrost in the northern reaches of the planet, which contains vast frozen reservoirs of another greenhouse gas, methane, might -- no one is yet sure -- sooner or later release enormous amounts of methane into the atmosphere, only increasing the overheating effect. It’s creepy. It’s happening. And Ma Nature really doesn’t give a damn whether we’re in denial or not.

Continue reading at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175494/tomgram:_christian_parenti,_big_storms_require_big_government/

Baltimore's Catholic head uses atrocious "blacks vs. gays" argument against marriage rights

2012-01-29T00:11:00.002-06:00

From Metro Weekly: http://www.metroweekly.com/news/last_word/2012/01/baltimores-catholic-head-uses-atrocious-blacks-vs.html

Posted by duy

January 28, 2012

Edwin O'Brien, Baltimore's soon-to-be Cardinal, used a speech this week to denounce marriage rights for Maryland's gay and lesbian couples. He angrily attacked the pending passage of marriage bills in the House and Senate. Maryland's Governor, Martin O'Malley, is a strong supporter of marriage equality and he helped to introduce the bills this past Tuesday.

On Wednesday, O'Brien put his own spin on one of the most heinous arguments put forth by social and religious conservatives -- that gay people's civil rights are an affront to black people and the rights of black people. He stammered through his divisive proclamation, saying (Catholic Review):

"We are going to be strong in upholding the institution of marriage as a bond between one man and one woman, open to life. It's been not only our teaching, but it's been the core of our Western culture for as long as anybody can remember. And to think that a fiat of a legislature can turn that over without damage being done is naive and highly political.

"So, we will do everything that we can on our own, in conjunction with other religious groups --. Our African-American community, I think, is very strong on this issue as we are. And I think, to some degree, they're a little concerned to call this a matter of discrimination.

"Racial discrimination is discrimination because of the pigment of the skin [rubs back of hand]. And it can't be tolerated. But marriage goes far deeper than the pigment of the skin. It goes to the very roots of our culture. And we are in it to -- for keeps.

Continue reading at: http://www.metroweekly.com/news/last_word/2012/01/baltimores-catholic-head-uses-atrocious-blacks-vs.html

Girl Guides of Canada considering transgender members

2012-01-29T00:10:00.003-06:00

From The Toronto Sun: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/25/girl-guides-of-canada-considering-transgender-members

By Kris Sims ,Parliamentary Bureau

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

OTTAWA – The historic Girl Guides of Canada is wrestling with a very modern question: Whether to allow transgender girls — children who were born male but identify as girls — into their troops.

“Our board is seeking advice from medical and law professionals, and will deal with requests on a case-by-case basis,” said Deborah Del Duca, CEO of Girl Guides of Canada.

“Girl Guides of Canada strives to ensure environments where girls and women from all walks of life, identities and lived experiences feel a sense of belonging and can fully participate.”

The volunteer service organization was recently asked if they would allow transgender girls into their organization.

The Canadian request was made after a Colorado Girl Scouts troop was asked to include a transgender girl into their ranks.

The American group eventually agreed to admit the child.

“Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members,” the Girl Scouts of Colorado said on its website. “If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Continue reading at: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/25/girl-guides-of-canada-considering-transgender-members

NC Nazi (GOP) lawmaker calls for public hangings, including for abortion providers

2012-01-29T00:10:00.000-06:00

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/28/nc-gop-lawmaker-calls-for-public-hangings-including-for-abortion-providers/

By Andrew Jones

Saturday, January 28, 2012

A Republican lawmaker from North Carolina is seeking a return to the days of public hangings, according to WRAL-TV.

Rep. Larry Pittman delivered an email this week to every member of the state’s General Assembly, describing that hangings needed to be reinstated as a “deterrent to crime,” including those who provide abortions.

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out,” Pittman wrote. “Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner. If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/28/nc-gop-lawmaker-calls-for-public-hangings-including-for-abortion-providers/

Chris Gregoire, Washington State Governor, Discusses Gay Marriage, Chris Christie, And More

2012-01-29T00:07:00.000-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/chris-gregoire-washington-governor-gay-marriage_n_1239058.html

Michelangelo Signorile

01/28/2012

Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington wishes she'd supported marriage equality for gays and lesbians years ago -- and she hopes President Obama evolves in his thinking soon. But she respects the president’s “personal journey” and asked people to “give him the time” to see it through.

Having introduced a marriage equality bill several weeks ago that now reportedly has the votes in the state legislature to pass, Gregoire, in an interview on my radio program on Sirius XM OutQ, also criticized Governor Christie of New Jersey for urging marriage equality be voted on at the ballot without a vote of the elected representatives.

The governor also spoke of the heartfelt and emotional response she’s received from the public to her decision, including from a gay teen who was contemplating suicide.

Regarding her own journey Gregoire said: “I wished I could have come to the point that I am today six years ago, seven years ago, five years ago. But it took me a journey and for that, I’m sorry that it took me as long as it did. But it’s genuine. It’s not about politics. It’s very heartfelt. it’s about my [Catholic] faith and I have struggled with it.”

She’s enormously moved by the response she’s received. “Probably the most moving -- I’ve received thousands of emails and letters and telephone calls,” she said. “And the one that just hit my heart was a sixteen year old who said, ‘I’ve thought about suicide, and now that you’ve come out as strong as you have, I feel good about myself. And one day I will not go on bended-knee and ask someone to join me in a domestic partnership -- I’ll ask them to marry me.’ That’s the exact thing that moved me to where I am and that’s only right for our children in this state and for their parents.”

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/chris-gregoire-washington-governor-gay-marriage_n_1239058.html

The GOP's Racist Politics

2012-01-28T17:41:00.000-06:00

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers

2012-01-28T15:11:00.000-06:00

I think we should have mandatory drug testing and constant surveillance of all Wall Street Market Traders, Brokers, Vulture Capitalists, Accountants, Bankers and CEOs.

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

Arthur Delaney

01/27/2012

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

"There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill," said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.

The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.

"I've only withdrawn it temporarily," he told HuffPost, stressing he carefully crafted his original bill so that it could survive a legal challenge. Last year a federal judge, citing the Constitution's ban on unreasonable search and seizure, struck down a Florida law that required blanket drug testing of everyone who applied for welfare.

McMillin's bill would overcome constitutional problems, he said, by setting up a tiered screening scheme in which people can opt-out of random testing. Those who decline random tests would only be screened if they arouse "reasonable suspicion," either by their demeanor, by being convicted of a crime, or by missing appointments required by the welfare office.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

Shit New Yorkers say when they move to Hollywood

2012-01-28T00:31:00.002-06:00

Max Blumenthal: Washington Post Scrubs Quote Smearing Iran War Critics, But Ex-Camp Guard Jeffrey Goldberg Runs With It Anyway

2012-01-28T00:22:00.002-06:00

From Exiled: http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-washington-post-scrubs-quote-smearing-iran-war-critics-but-ex-camp-guard-jeffrey-goldberg-runs-with-it-anyway/

By Max Blumenthal

January 24, 2012

For nearly a month, a group of foreign policy researcher-bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP), an influential liberal think tank based in Washington DC, have faced an unrelenting smear campaign. The smears, initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, focused on a few sardonic tweets by CAP bloggers that raised the ire of the pro-Israel and neoconservative political community. One tweet that included the term “Israel Firster” received special attention.

“This kind of demagoguery, anti-Israel invective, and in some cases actual hate speech, is absolutely wrong whether it comes from the extreme Right or Left, and like cancer, it has to be cut out before it metastasizes and destroys the whole body,” Block complained to Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post who has accused CAP of “anti-Semitism” and who was recently scolded by the paper’s ombudsman for endorsing a screed advocating the slaughter of Palestinians.

Block’s campaign was transparently designed to force the Democratic establishment to disown a group of researchers who had generated an effective and factually solid counter narrative to the case for a military strike on Iran. And it was well orchestrated, receiving robust and sustained amplification from the right-wing of the pro-Israel community. By January 19, after a who’s who of neoconservative writers and right-leaning Jewish American groups called for the firing of the researchers, and weeks after the small handful of “controversial” tweets had been deleted and apologized for, the smears graduated onto the pages of the Washington Post.

A report by Washington Post staff writer Peter Wallsten summarized the attacks on CAP in a relatively uncritical fashion. In the original edition of the story (uploaded here to Josh Block’s Scribd account), Wallsten featured remarks by Jeffrey Herf, whom he presented as an academic expert on anti-Semitism:

Continue reading at: http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-washington-post-scrubs-quote-smearing-iran-war-critics-but-ex-camp-guard-jeffrey-goldberg-runs-with-it-anyway/

Being Prepared to Preserve Food

2012-01-28T00:21:00.003-06:00

From Grit: http://www.grit.com/a-wanna-be-pioneer/being-prepared-to-preserve-food.aspx

By Cheryl in Texas

1/23/2012

You've got to be ready to strike when the iron is hot – a future jam story.

Right before Christmas, my wonderful hubby and I stopped in at our local grocery store on the way to our homestead to pick up some lunch for later that day. Immediately inside the door, I spotted half pints of blackberries on sale for 67 cents! And I had thought the $1 I paid two weeks before was a great deal. The more we booted it around, we decided that this is part of what being self-reliant is about. We may not be able to grow our own berries (yet), but when you find something like that on a super good deal, you have to be prepared to take advantage and stock up. So we bought five flats! We saved $2.30 per half pint. Now that's some power bargain shopping. They're really good, ripe, tasty berries too.

I wish we had time that weekend to just make them all into jam. But alas, being the last weekend before Christmas, that just wasn't going to happen. And I think we're low on jelly jars too. So I washed them all up and got them into the freezer in 6 cups portions. But first I froze them spread out on trays so that they're individually frozen and don’t just become a big frozen blob. Now they're ready to be turned into jam or syrup or a cobbler whenever we want. It helps that we have an extra freezer. But I really like having things canned, because they won't ruin in the event of a power outage. And if our previous attempts at making jam are any indication, the blackberry should be pretty darn tootin good too.

So far, since this summer, we've made peach jam and canned peaches from a half bushel we bought at the farmers market, plum jam when we found plums on a really good sale at the grocery store and raspberry jam when we found raspberries for a really good price. Other than the peaches, which were a planned purchase, all the others were spur of the moment decisions when we found a good deal on some produce.

Supreme Court Building Covered in Giant Dollar Signs

2012-01-28T00:21:00.000-06:00

Return to a Darker Age

2012-01-28T00:19:00.002-06:00

Perhaps it might be good to have less artificial light out in the world at night. I remember being able to look up at night and see a sky filled with stars instead of a sky filled with a wash of neon and street lights.

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

By A. ROGER EKIRCH

Published: January 7, 2012

Blacksburg, Va.

IN the wake of widespread violence during the New York City blackout of 1977, a newspaper columnist quipped that just one flick of a light switch separated civilization from primordial chaos.

Leaving the hyperbole aside, artificial illumination has arguably been the greatest symbol of modern progress. By making nighttime infinitely more inviting, street lighting — gas lamps beginning in the early 1800s followed by electric lights toward the end of the century — drastically expanded the boundaries of everyday life to include hours once shrouded in darkness. Today, any number of metropolitan areas in the United States and abroad, bathed in the glare of neon and mercury vapor, bill themselves as 24-hour cities, open both for business and pleasure.

So it is all the more remarkable that, in what appears to be a spreading trend, dozens of cities and towns across America — from California and Oregon to Maine — are contemplating significantly reducing the number of street lamps to lower their hefty electric bills. In some communities, utility companies have already torn posts from the ground. Faced with several million dollars in unpaid bills, Highland Park, Mich., has lost two-thirds of its lamps, whereas officials in Rockford, Ill., have extinguished as many as 2,300, or 16 percent of all the city’s streetlights.

Municipal officials, mindful of the winter darkness enveloping residential neighborhoods, have vainly tried to relieve public anxiety. Denials that crime rates will rise are met with skepticism by the public, as are programs to encourage homeowners to install private security lamps or to “adopt a light” for a monthly fee. Street lighting is now at risk of being restricted, as it was in earlier ages, to residences and neighborhoods able to afford it.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

Mayor Booker Responds to Question about NJ Marriage Equality Referendum

2012-01-28T00:18:00.002-06:00

New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bills That Prevent Police From Protecting Domestic Abuse Victims

2012-01-28T00:17:00.002-06:00

From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/26/411865/new-hampshire-republicans-propose-bills-that-prevent-police-from-protecting-domestic-abuse-victims/

By Marie Diamond

Jan 26, 2012

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policyfor handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime.

Continue reading at: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/26/411865/new-hampshire-republicans-propose-bills-that-prevent-police-from-protecting-domestic-abuse-victims/

Remembering Howard Zinn

2012-01-28T00:16:00.002-06:00

From Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212382259755885.html

The historian and activist dedicated his life to "the countless small actions of unknown people".

Noam Chomsky

27 Jan 2012

Editor's note: Today, January 27, is the second anniversary of the death of Howard Zinn. An active participant in the Civil Rights movement, he was dismissed in 1963 from his position as a tenured professor at Spelman College in Atlanta after siding with black women students in the struggle against segregation. In 1967, he wrote one of the first, and most influential, books calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. A veteran of the US Army Air Force, he edited The Pentagon Papers, leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and was later designated a "high security risk" by the FBI.

His best-selling A People's History of the United States spawned a new field of historical study: People's Histories. This approach countered the traditional triumphalist examination of "history as written by the victors", instead concentrating on the poor and seemingly powerless; those who resisted imperial, cultural and corporate hegemony. Zinn was an award-winning social activist, writer and historian - and so who better to share his memory than his close friend and fellow intellectual giant, Noam Chomsky?

Cambridge, Mass - It is not easy for me to write a few words about Howard Zinn, the great American activist and historian. He was a very close friend for 45 years. The families were very close too. His wife Roz, who died of cancer not long before, was also a marvellous person and close friend. Also sombre is the realisation that a whole generation seems to be disappearing, including several other old friends: Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and others, who were not only astute and productive scholars, but also dedicated and courageous militants, always on call when needed - which was constant. A combination that is essential if there is to be hope of decent survival.

Howard's remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was "the countless small actions of unknown people" that lie at the roots of "those great moments" that enter the historical record - a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma. His life was always closely intertwined with his writings and innumerable talks and interviews. It was devoted, selflessly, to empowerment of the unknown people who brought about great moments. That was true when he was an industrial worker and labour activist, and from the days, 50 years ago, when he was teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, a black college that was open mostly to the small black elite.

While teaching at Spelman, Howard supported the students who were at the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in its early and most dangerous days, many of whom became quite well-known in later years - Alice Walker, Julian Bond and others - and who loved and revered him, as did everyone who knew him well. And as always, he did not just support them, which was rare enough, but also participated directly with them in their most hazardous efforts - no easy undertaking at that time, before there was any organised popular movement and in the face of government hostility that lasted for some years. Finally, popular support was ignited, in large part by the courageous actions of the young people who were sitting in at lunch counters, riding freedom buses, organising demonstrations, facing bitter racism and brutality, sometimes death.

Continue reading at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212382259755885.html

Obama Hits GOP Candidates on Gay Rights

2012-01-28T00:15:00.002-06:00

Ever Broken a Textbook Beyond Repair? Now, with iBooks, You Can!

2012-01-28T00:14:00.002-06:00

From Tree Hugger: http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/ever-broken-textbook-beyond-repair-now-ibooks-you-can.html?campaign=daily_nl

Elizabeth Chamberlain and Kyle Wiens of iFixit

January 23, 2012

I've dropped a lot of textbooks during my time in school. Usually, it's not a big deal: maybe a corner gets bent, maybe the spine cracks, maybe a page or two tears. Even dropping a textbook in the bathtub isn't such a problem—if you lay it out to dry, it's readable again in a day or so. Maybe I'm clumsier than the average person. But based on the state of used textbooks I've purchased, I don't think I'm the only one who occasionally drops textbooks.

That's why Apple's announcement of iBooks Textbooks worries me, as a graduate student, English teacher, and advocate of user repair.

On Thursday, Apple announced iBooks 2 (a new version of their iPad e-book software) along with two new projects: iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author. They've made an agreement with three of the largest textbook publishers—Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—to begin publishing interactive textbooks for the iPad. Right now, they only have seven K-12 textbooks available, but more are promised soon. iBooks Author, drag-and-drop self-publishing software, should allow professors to create interactive iBooks textbooks with ease.

We're excited for iBooks Textbooks. But we have concerns about the durability of the only device on which they can be viewed. Most devices made with the classroom in mind are designed to last forever (brick-like TI calculators, for example), or at least are modular enough to be repairable. We know repair technicians who successfully maintain a school's worth of MacBooks. Apple can make repairable modular devices; the iPad 2 isn't one of them.

Continue reading at: http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/ever-broken-textbook-beyond-repair-now-ibooks-you-can.html?campaign=daily_nl

Free-Market Medicine: A Personal Account

2012-01-28T00:13:00.002-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/27-0

by Michael Parenti

Published on Friday, January 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

When I recently went to Alta Bates hospital for surgery, I discovered that legal procedures take precedence over medical ones. I had to sign intimidating statements about financial counseling, indemnity, patient responsibilities, consent to treatment, use of electronic technologies, and the like.

One of these documents committed me to the following: “The hospital pathologist is hereby authorized to use his/her discretion in disposing of any member, organ, or other tissue removed from my person during the procedure.” Any member? Any organ?

The next day I returned for the actual operation. While playing Frank Sinatra recordings, the surgeon went to work cutting open several layers of my abdomen in order to secure my intestines with a permanent mesh implant. Afterward I spent two hours in the recovery room. “I feel like I’ve been in a knife fight,” I told one nurse. “It’s called surgery,” she explained.

Then, while still pumped up with anesthetics and medications, I was rolled out into the street. The street? Yes, some few hours after surgery they send you home. In countries that have socialized medicine (there I said it), a van might be waiting with trained personnel to help you to your abode.

Not so in free-market America. Your presurgery agreement specifies in boldface that you must have “a responsible adult acquaintance” (as opposed to an irresponsible teenage stranger) take you home in a private vehicle. I kept thinking, what happens to those unfortunates who have no one to bundle them away? Do they languish endlessly in the hospital driveway until the nasty weather finishes them off?

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/27-0

Thom Hartmann: Can Republican get elected without fraud & treason?

2012-01-28T00:12:00.000-06:00

Occupy activists attempt to take over Davos debate

2012-01-28T00:11:00.000-06:00

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/27/occupy-movement-davos-capitalism-debate

Movement tries to stage its own debate on 'remodelling capitalism' at World Economic Forum venue

Jill Treanor in Davos

guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012

Activists from the Occupy movement attempted to disrupt a debate in Davos attended by the Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, calling on him and the other delegates to leave the stage and join them on the floor of the packed debate on "remodelling capitalism".

The event, which was open to the public as part of a 10-year programme by the organisers of the World Economic Forum to engage with a wider audience, was eventually brought back under control when other public participants refused to support the efforts of Occupy activists.

Eyewitnesses said about 30 activists had strategically placed themselves in the large auditorium in the local Swiss Alpine High School and had attempted to conduct the debate on their own terms.

A representative of Occupy – who started the proceedings and gave her name only as Maria – had already been scheduled to take part in the debate, in which Juan Somavía, director general of the International Labour Organisation, was also a speaker.

After the event Miliband told the Guardian: "Occupy wanted us to do the debate in a different way."

But, he said, they had been outnumbered by other members of the public. He had argued: "This is a big moment of opportunity. There are real opportunities to show there are solutions that can be moved forward. I understand why people are angry."

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/27/occupy-movement-davos-capitalism-debate

Active duty cop: ‘The war on drugs is a war on people’

2012-01-28T00:10:00.000-06:00

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/27/active-duty-cop-the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-people/

By Stephen C. Webster

Friday, January 27, 2012

Speaking to Raw Story recently, an active duty police officer who asked not to be named threw down the gauntlet over the part of his job he hates most: the drug war.

“I did not get in law enforcement to destroy a person’s future because that person had marijuana or a pill in their pocket,” the officer explained. “Why would you want to destroy that person’s future and cause them great harm because of that? It’s not worth it.”

Like many Americans, the reality of the drug war was was nothing like what he’d been taught to believe in his youth. But statistics like a citizen being arrested for drugs every 19 seconds in 2010, and 1.6 million people incarcerated over drugs in 2009, were nothing compared to what he actually experienced in the front lines of the drug war on America’s users.

But for those officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect the public from dangerous, violent criminals, the drug war isn’t always just another part of the job. For this officer in particular, it’s much more than that: “The war on drugs is a war on people,” he claimed.

Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/27/active-duty-cop-the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-people/

Military Sexual Abuse: A Greater Menace Than Combat

2012-01-28T00:08:00.002-06:00

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/military-sexual-abuse-greater-menace-combat/1327533957

by: H. Patricia Hynes

Thursday 26 January 2012

"A woman who signs up to protect her country is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire," stated former California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman in testimony before a July 2008 House panel investigating the military's handling of sexual assault reports. The Congresswoman added that her "jaw dropped" when she learned from military doctors that 4 of 10 women in a local veterans hospital had been raped by fellow soldiers.What's equally startling, though, is that Harman - a reputed national security insider and a strong supporter of women in the military - was in the dark about rampant military sexual assault.

Not long after the hearing, one of the most eye-opening accounts of the sexual torment of women soldiers, "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq," was published. The author, Columbia professor and journalist Helen Benedict, had interviewed more than 40 soldiers and vets, mostly women, who came from all branches of the military except the Coast Guard. They included active-duty soldiers as well as reserves and National Guard, and held a variety of ranks, from privates up to a general. Most served in Iraq, a few in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Of these, Benedict chose five whose war lives most reflected the diverse experiences of female soldiers in Iraq, and she followed them over the course of years, uncovering "the universal stories of war" in their individual experiences. They elected to have their stories told because they "wanted people to know what it was like to be a woman at war."

The common motif threading through their narratives is, in the words of one, that "The mortar rounds that came in daily did less damage to me that the men with whom I shared my food." Most of the women she followed were pushed to and beyond the limits of their substantial emotional and physical resilience, and, ultimately, the sexually abusive environments shattered them. The military inculcates into recruits that their comrades are their family in order to assure loyalty on the battlefield. Benedict concludes that the pervasive and constant sexual assault by "brothers in arms" has left many women veterans ashamed, terrified, blaming themselves irrationally and without trust in others. "Many turn to drugs or drink to numb the pain, losing control of their lives."

Continue reading at: http://www.truth-out.org/military-sexual-abuse-greater-menace-combat/1327533957

Friday Night Fun and Culture: The Wailin' Jennys

2012-01-27T20:21:00.000-06:00

2012-01-27T17:36:00.002-06:00

Nazi (GOP) Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield Blood Libels Gay Men

2012-01-27T17:35:00.000-06:00

Just when you thought it was impossible for the Nazis formerly known as Republicans to stoop much lower in their denigrating, scapegoating and abuse of LGBT/T people along comes yet another storm trooper/concentration camp guard wannabee to drag the discourse even lower.

The right wing Nazi scum have turned LGBT/T people into their Jews, second class citizens to be blamed for their own immorality and short comings.

But Muslims, Jews and people of color shouldn't rest comfortably, thinking, "Oh it's only the queers and not our concern." You see the lesson history teaches is that when the Nazis come to power it may start with the queers or another chosen targeted group but eventual it comes down to minority ethnic, racial or religious groups.

As an Anti-Fascist I do not hesitate to call a Nazi a Nazi. I don't give a shit if they don't match the German Nazis of the 30s-40s exactly. After all left wingers in this country are called communists and compared to Pol Pot for suggesting equality between the races, an end to the abuse of women, equality for LGBT/T people and a Public Health Insurance option. They should have considered that not all left wingers are sniveling pacifists who respond to right wing threats by chanting, "Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama."

So Nazi Boy... I'm calling you on your filthy lie. Your Blood Libel.

You are not only unfit for office. You are unfit to be an American.

Tenn. Pol: AIDS Came From Gay Guy Having Monkey Sex

From Newser: http://www.newser.com/story/138400/tenn-pol-aids-came-from-gay-guy-having-monkey-sex.html

Stacey Campfield does himself no favors while defending 'Don't Say Gay' bill

By Kate Schwartz, Newser Staff
Posted Jan 26, 2012

Newser) – The Tennessee lawmaker behind the "Don't Say Gay" bill that cleared the state Senate earlier this year is getting a lot of attention for comments he made in defense of the legislation. And it's not good attention. In a SiriusXM interview with Michelangelo Signorile published on the Huffington Post, state Sen. Stacey Campfield justified his bill by, among other things, explaining that AIDS came from "one guy screwing a monkey." The interview covers more of Campfield's thoughts on AIDS, bullying, and homosexuality, which Tennessee schools would not be able to discuss under his bill:

Complete article at: http://www.newser.com/story/138400/tenn-pol-aids-came-from-gay-guy-having-monkey-sex.html

Tennessee Rep. Says It’s ‘Virtually Impossible’ To Contract AIDS Through Heterosexual Sex

From Addicting Info: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/26/tennessee-rep-says-its-virtually-impossible-to-contract-aids-through-heterosexual-sex/

By Wendy Gittleson
January 26, 2012

Rarely a day goes by anymore when we don’t read a particularly bigoted comment aimed toward the LGBT community. It fills so many headlines that if it wasn’t so terrifying, especially to those who are bullied, it would almost be boring. Just today, our own Mitch Gilbert reportedthat a Tennessee Rep., John Ragan told him that:

“A person is a heterosexual because of the presence of genitalia of one sex or the other. No one except a very few with an exceedingly rare congenital deformity have both kinds of genitalia.”

Apparently, biology isn’t required study in Tennessee’s high schools, because another Tennessee GOP lawmaker, Sen. Stacey Campfield said this today (from Raw Story):

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community,” he told Michelangelo Signorile, who hosts a radio program on SiriusXM OutQ. “It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.”

“My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”

Continue reading at: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/26/tennessee-rep-says-its-virtually-impossible-to-contract-aids-through-heterosexual-sex/

Shit San Franciscans Say

2012-01-27T00:55:00.002-06:00

Zombie banks are dragging Ireland into the ground

2012-01-27T00:53:00.000-06:00

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/24/zombie-banks-ireland-debts-cancelled

Just like many African nations, Ireland's debts must be cancelled or a 'financial bomb' will go off in its most deprived communities

Nick Dearden guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 January 2012

Activists more accustomed to campaigning against the debts of countries like Zimbabwe, Egypt, Ecuador and Indonesia were instead outside the Irish embassy this morning. Dressed as zombies, we hoped to shed some light on the so-called "zombie banks" whose debts continue to drain resources from an Irish public sector that is being slashed to the bone.

Ireland's financial crisis has much in common with scores of countries across the developing world. The country has been brought to its knees by an enormous debt, which originated not with excessive public spending, but a footloose financial sector that gambled with the future of the country. Without so much as a vote, Ireland's people found themselves on the hook for tens of billions of euros of reckless investments.

The ultimate symbol of this form of crony capitalism in Ireland is Anglo Irish, the bank that started Ireland's slide into the abyss. Anglo Irish lent vast sums of money to fuel Ireland's property bubble, in the process making fortunes for rich speculators. Anglo is believed to have 15 customers who owe the bank more than €500m each.

When the bubble burst, the Irish government stepped in to underwrite the bank – ultimately being forced to nationalise it. This disastrous decision was not based on any assessment of the use of Anglo to the economy. Economics professor Morgan Kelly said at the time that Anglo – as well as Irish Nationwide, which was also brought into public ownership – "were purely conduits for property speculation. They fulfil no role in the Irish economy." He said it would be "better to incinerate €1.5bn than squander it on Anglo Irish Bank".

Today Anglo Irish, rebranded as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, is a zombie bank – a bankrupt institution that exists to channel government money to a group of bondholders who the Irish people can't know anything about, and who themselves were fuelling Ireland's increasingly speculative economy.

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/24/zombie-banks-ireland-debts-cancelled

'There will be riots on streets of America': George Soros predicts class war in U.S. as euro triggers collapse of global economy

2012-01-27T00:49:00.002-06:00

From The Daily Mail UK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091190/George-Soros-predicts-U-S-riots-insists-Euro-saved-global-economy-collapse.html

Billionaire New York investor warns of impending economic meltdown
Backs euro and buys Italian bonds from Jon Corzine's failed MF Global
Warns it's 'difficult to know right decisions to make' after boom years
Supports Occupy Wall Street, Democrats and Obama re-election efforts

By Mark Duell
25th January 2012

Billionaire investor George Soros has warned the global economic system could collapse and riots on the streets of America are on the way.

The 81-year-old said he’d rather survive than stay rich as the world faces an ‘evil’ period and Europe fights a ‘descent into chaos and conflict’.

He has backed the euro, bought $2billion in European bonds and insisted the economic climate is similar to the 1930s Great Depression.

‘The euro must survive because the alternative - a breakup - would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can’t afford,’ he told Newsweek.

‘The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world.’

A Ballot Push to Legalize Marijuana, With Alcohol as the Role Model

2012-01-27T00:48:00.002-06:00

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/a-ballot-push-to-legalize-marijuana-with-alcohol-as-the-role-model.html

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: January 26, 2012

DENVER — Proponents of marijuana have argued for years that the drug is safer than alcohol, both to individuals and society. But a ballot proposal to legalize possession of marijuana in small amounts in Colorado, likely to be on the November ballot, is putting the two intoxicants back into the same sentence, urging voters to “regulate marijuana like alcohol,” as the ballot proposition’s title puts it.

Given alcohol’s long and checkered history — the tens of thousands of deaths each year, the social ravages of alcoholism — backers of the pro-marijuana measure concede there is a risk of looking as if they have cozied up too much, or are comparable, to old demon rum.

“Why add another vice, right?” said Mason Tvert, a co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which has led the ballot drive. “But we’re not adding a vice; we’re providing an alternative.”

The goal of legalization, Mr. Tvert added, is not to make access to marijuana easier, but rather, “to make our communities safer by regulating this substance, taking it out of the underground market, controlling it and better keeping it away from young people.”

The debate here and in Washington State — where members of a pro-legalization group have also submitted what they say are more than enough signatures to secure a spot on the ballot — is premised on the idea that marijuana has become, if not quite mainstream, then at least no longer alien to the average voter. Medical marijuana is already legal in both states.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/a-ballot-push-to-legalize-marijuana-with-alcohol-as-the-role-model.html

Rick Santorum Says The Left Uses Colleges For 'Indoctrination'

2012-01-27T00:41:00.000-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/rick-santorum-says-the-le_n_1233820.html?1327598453&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

01/26/2012

According to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, America has lost not only its entertainment industry, but also its higher education system. "Higher education was the first to go, a long time ago," he said.

While speaking at the First Baptist Church in Naples, Florida on Wednesday, Santorum claimed that the Left uses universities to "indoctrinate" young people for the end purpose of maintaining power. "It's no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college," he said.

He also argued that colleges and universities would receive no funding if they taught Judeo-Christian principles, but by teaching radical secular ideology, these schools are given government backing. He then asserted that 62 percent of young people who enter college with a set of religious beliefs leave without one. The presidential candidate concluded his speech by urging his audience not to give their money to universities that are undermining that country by spreading left-wing ideology.

Complete article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/rick-santorum-says-the-le_n_1233820.html?1327598453&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Why Evangelicals Don't Care When Rich White Conservatives Defile Marriage

2012-01-27T00:37:00.000-06:00

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/sex/153893/why_evangelicals_don%27t_care_when_rich_white_conservatives_defile_marriage/

Gingrich doesn’t live by the strict sexual rules laid out by conservatives, because those rules are meant for other people: the poor, Democrats, gays, and minorities.

By Amanda Marcotte
January 25, 2012

Newt Gingrich’s win in the South Carolina primary looks like it may not be an outlier; Gingrich’s poll numbers are rising rapidly in Florida, and he has a good chance of beating Romney there as well. Gingrich is doing well in no small part because he has so much support amongst evangelical Christians; so much so that many evangelical leaders refused to go along with an attempt to unify the Christian right behind Santorum.

In South Carolina, evangelical Christians voted for Gingrich 2-to-1 over boring family man Mitt Romney. For anyone who takes seriously the notion that evangelical Christians actually care about things like family and fidelity, this support for Gingrich is baffling, since he has a history of serial adultery that he barely bothers to disavow. But a closer examination of the situation makes clear what’s going on: for the Republican base, “family values” don’t actually matter, but are just a gloss painted over what really motivates them: reactionary rage. They love Gingrich because he’s a flaming ball of rage they can wield against everyone they hate.

The sexual double standard is the most obvious way the us vs. them mentality works. There’s nothing the modern American conservative loves more than to decry our country's supposedly declining sexual morals. Once the Republicans swept state legislatures and the House of Representatives, punishing sexual freedom became their number one priority, which manifested in nearly 1,000 bills restricting reproductive rights in state legislatures and a bill attacking private insurance funding of abortion in the House. Eventually, House Republicans threatened to shut down the federal government in order to defund family planning clinics, basically because they’re in the business of providing contraception and STD prevention and treatment. All this while the base continues to push abstinence-only and reject gay marriage on the grounds that it’s not “traditional.” But when it comes to a serial adulterer like Gingrich, he gets a pass. After all, he’s one of theirs, and if you’re in the tribe, you get a lot more leeway.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the reaction to Marianne Gingrich sticking her head out, as she periodically does, to remind the world of what a terrible man her ex-husband is. This time she added the juicy detail that Newt basically demanded that he get to have both his wife and his mistress at the same time. It was a reminder that while this flagrant cheating was going on, Gingrich was repeatedly moralizing in public over President Clinton’s adultery. To this day, the GOP base still regards Clinton as some kind of perverted sex maniac. But Gingrich? Well, during the South Carolina debate when Marianne’s interview with ABC was brought up, the audience loudly booed the mere mention of her name. For the Republican base, Gingrich not only gets to cheat, he also gets to flaunt it in his wife’s face; but a Democrat like Clinton’s more secretive and brief affairs are unforgivable.

Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/sex/153893/why_evangelicals_don%27t_care_when_rich_white_conservatives_defile_marriage/

The Newt is a cold-blooded creature

2012-01-27T00:29:00.000-06:00

From Socialist Worker: http://socialistworker.org/2012/01/23/a-cold-blooded-creature

How many times will he be exposed as a fraud and fanatic, only to rise, zombie-like, from the political grave?

Nicole Colson and Alan Maass are afraid to guess.
January 23, 2012

NEWT GINGRICH and his toxic brew of bigotry and reaction are back in the limelight following a resounding victory in the January 21 Republican primary in South Carolina.

Despite trailing in the polls by double-digit margins less than a week before, Gingrich handily beat frontrunner Mitt Romney, with 40.4 percent of the vote to Romney's 27.8 percent. Now Romney, who hoped to sew up the nomination with a win in South Carolina, will have to continue on to Florida at the end of the month, and perhaps other primary contests as well.

So how did a man who was so universally despised in the late 1990s that he was forced to resign as Speaker of the House--and whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination once before shot to the front of the pack, only to collapse--claw his way back one more time?

Part of the answer lies in the weakness of the other candidates for the GOP nomination. The field of contenders vying for the affections of the Republican Right has been crowded, but one after another--Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Rick Santorum--has scrambled into the spotlight, only to crumble after a few weeks. Ron Paul has a fanatical following among libertarians, but nothing more. That leaves Romney, who is generally despised by large numbers of conservatives for being "too liberal"--even though he is nothing of the sort, as he has sought desperately to prove.

Continue Reading at: http://socialistworker.org/2012/01/23/a-cold-blooded-creature

Gingrich: Gay Marriage a 'Perfect Example of What I Mean by the Rise of Paganism'

2012-01-27T00:26:00.000-06:00

America: Whose "Moral Enterprise?"

2012-01-27T00:25:00.000-06:00

From RH Reality Check: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/25/america-doesnt-want-gops-god-in-office-1

by mycultlife, My Cult Life

January 26, 2012

I'm part of a growing movement of men and women who've left Christian fundamentalism. Yes, it's possible to leave Crazy Town and we are absolutely enjoying all that life has to offer outside of a movement that controlled our lives, but most importantly controlled our minds.

Lately I've been writing about the abuse that I experienced in my fundamentalist group, which is a group my therapist labeled a"cult"(The politically correct and academic term is 'new religious group' although I feel that term doesmoreto protect the abusive and destructive groups from the government than it does to protect victims. More on that later.). Along with leaving a cult, or destructive group, comes many challenges: immersion into "normal" society, behaviors and media;ostracism from old friends and the loneliness that comes from that process; and a struggle to maintain faith in God that often comes from duty, obligation and fear. For those who depart from their faith in God, like me and many of us (perhaps because our spiritual abusers convinced us that theywereGod; perhaps because we've seen the inside of a dark temple), the road to labeling yourself atheist or agnostic is riddled with fear of judgement, secrecy and finally gaining your own footing with your new set of beliefs.

To me, it's less important whether I'm labeled an atheist or agnostic or spiritual because none of those labels accurately describe me. What is important to me is that I'm not labeled a Christian, and there's a clear distinction between my ethics and beliefs and those of modern day fundamentalism. Because I don't endorse gay bashing, homophobia, removing women's rights/voices or controlling women's bodies, I've become sort of staunchly liberal. I'm that annoying political friend on Facebook who's always sharing her liberal news articles with you. The one I'd be tempted to delete, if she were Conservative. There you have it--I'm a hypocrite but a happy one.

All joking aside, upon recent examination of the rhetoric and ideologies of the GOP candidates, I realized that they have been spouting some of the same ideology as my old abusive spiritual leaders. The other day, as I was watching Newt Gingrich accept his win in South Carolina he began bashing a judge for making a secular decision, calling him an "anti-religious bigot." Many of the candidates beliefs stem from a faith in God that's more similar to fundamentalism than to anything else. For example, Rick Santorum, who's been known to say some off-the-wall things lately,recently said:

Continue reading at: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/25/america-doesnt-want-gops-god-in-office-1

By Axing Parks, Politicos Are Stealing the People's Property

2012-01-27T00:24:00.000-06:00

From Creators.com: http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/by-axing-parks-politicos-are-stealing-the-people-s-property.html

Jim Hightower

January 23, 2012

"Sorry, we're closed." In one of the saddest signs of the times, this message is popping up all across the country, as governors and legislators are cutting off funds (and shutting off access) to one of the finest, most popular assets owned by the people of our country: state parks.

More than 6,600 of these jewels draw some 700 million visitors a year to their grand vistas, historic sites, abundant wildlife, majestic forests, cascading waters, expansive beaches, nature trails, campgrounds, educational centers and lodges. Parks are a tangible expression of America's democratic ideals, literally a common ground for every man, woman and child to enjoy, learn, absorb ... or just be. Especially for the middle class and the poor — the great majority of our people who can't jet off to luxury resorts for a getaway for vacation — these spaces offer a form of real wealth, something of great value that each of us literally "owns," knitting us together as a community and nation.

Yet so many spiritually shriveled, small-minded and short-sighted state officials are snuffing out this invaluable, uniting social force. They are stupidly treating parks as nothing but a budget number or a piece of the "nanny state" to be axed in the name of ideological purity. Worse, they are sacrificing parks in order to keep the tax-dodging moneyed elites who pay for their campaigns from paying even a dime more in taxes.

The majority of states have been closing many of their parks, slashing hours and services at others or simply handing the public's asset to profiteering corporations. Idaho's governor has proposed eliminating the entire parks department; California shut the gates of a fourth of the state's parks last year; officials in Arizona and Florida intend to privatize their parks; Washington state has cut off most of its park funding; and Ohio has okayed oil drilling in its parks to replace state financing.

Continue reading at: http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/by-axing-parks-politicos-are-stealing-the-people-s-property.html

Occupy is back -- with horns and glitter

2012-01-27T00:23:00.000-06:00

From San Francisco Bay Guardian: http://www.sfbg.com/2012/01/24/occupy-back-horns-and-glitter?page=0%2C0

An energetic day of action shows that the movement is very much alive

Yael Chanoff

01.24.12

On Jan. 20, hundreds of activists converged on the Financial District in a day that showed a reinvigorated and energized Occupy movement.

The day of action was deemed "Occupy Wall Street West." Despite pouring rain, the numbers swelled to 1,200 by early evening.

Critics have said that the Occupy movement is disorganized and lacks a clear message. Some have decried its supposed lack of unity. Others have even declared it dead.

But the broad coalition of community organizations that came together to send a message focused on the abuses of housing rights by corporations and the 1 percent sent a clear message:

The movement is very much alive.

Continue reading at: http://www.sfbg.com/2012/01/24/occupy-back-horns-and-glitter?page=0%2C0

Occupy Wall Street West shuts down banks!

2012-01-27T00:22:00.000-06:00

From Liberation: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/occupy-wall-street-west-shuts.html

Militant protest targets capitalism

By William West

January 26, 2012

In response to the coordinated assaults on the Occupy encampments, the Bay Area Occupy movement declared Jan. 20 to be “Occupy Wall Street West”—a shutdown of San Francisco's financial district. Due to a large turnout, the San Francisco headquarters of three of the largest banks in the nation were forced to close for the day.

Despite pouring rain, protesters were already busy as early as 6 a.m. when activists, including members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, blocked the entrance to the Goldman Sachs building in downtown San Francisco. A breakfast of grilled squid was served, as the company has been described as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”

Between 7 and 9 a.m., hundreds of Occupy protesters set up camps in front of the downtown headquarters of Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America, making it impossible for employees to enter and for the banks to open. They remained closed the entire day. At times, police attempted to break up the occupations but were met with militant resistance and driven back.

At 8 a.m., the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), of which PSL is a member, organized a shutdown of a Bank of America branch at Powell Square, one of the busiest intersections in the city.

Outside the bank, ANSWER speakers noted how the 2008 bailouts of the largest banks, overseen by both the Bush and Obama administrations, had handed over billions in taxpayer money to parasitic financial institutions, when that money could have been paid back to the workers in the form of investments in education, housing and jobs.

Continue reading at: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/occupy-wall-street-west-shuts.html

World Economy on the Brink of Disaster?

2012-01-27T00:20:00.000-06:00

How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’

2012-01-27T00:15:00.002-06:00

From Waging Non-Violence: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

by George Lakey

January 25, 2012

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.

Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.

Continue reading at: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

Male Rape Victims: Men Struggle for Rape Awareness

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000-06:00

It is time to retire the practice of making jokes about men being subjected to rape in prison.

Rape is wrong and a horrible crime. It doesn't matter if the person being raped is male or female, gay, adult or child, straight, lesbian or trans. It is a monstrous violation of a person's being and should never ever be wished upon another person.

The recent rewriting of the rape laws should expand the definition of rape to include forms of rape that were previously classified as "sexual assault", a charge with a history of being treated less seriously than rape.

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/health/as-victims-men-struggle-for-rape-awareness.html?_r=4

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: January 23, 2012

Keith Smith was 14 when he was raped by a driver who picked him up after a hockey team meeting. He had hitchhiked home, which is why, for decades, he continued to blame himself for the assault.

When the driver barreled past Hartley’s Pork Pies on the outskirts of Providence, R.I., where Mr. Smith had asked to be dropped off, and then past a firehouse, he knew something was wrong.

“I tried to open the car door, but he had rigged the lock,” said Mr. Smith, of East Windsor, N.J., now 52. Still, he said, “I had no idea it was going to be a sexual assault.”

Even today, years after the disclosure of the still-unfolding child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the arrest of a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing boys, rape is widely thought of as a crime against women.

Until just a few weeks ago, when the federal government expanded its definition of rape to include a wider range of sexual assaults, national crime statistics on rape included only assaults against women and girls committed by men under a narrow set of circumstances. Now they will also include male victims.

While most experts agree women are raped far more often than men, 1.4 percent of men in a recent national survey said they had been raped at some point. The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that when rape was defined as oral or anal penetration, one in 71 men said they had been raped or had been the target of attempted rape, usually by a man they knew. (The study did not include men in prison.)

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/health/as-victims-men-struggle-for-rape-awareness.html?_r=4

Breast Cancer Behind Bars: How a Prison Sentence Can Become a Death Sentence

2012-01-26T12:45:00.001-06:00

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/breast-cancer-behind-bars-how-prison-sentence-can-become-death-sentence/1326504683

by: Victoria Law

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Imagine finding a lump in your breast. Imagine that your efforts to schedule a medical check-up are stymied and you have to wait weeks, if not months, for that initial exam. In the meantime, the lump continues to grow. Imagine that, when you finally do see a doctor, you are told that you have breast cancer. When you walk out of the office, you are locked into your prison cell with no more information or sympathy than when you walked in. This is the daily reality for women in prison.

In 2006, a Department of Justice (DOJ) study found that women in prison are at significantly greater risk for cancer than their male counterparts. Out of every 10,000 incarcerated women, 831 had cancer, compared to 108 per 10,000 men. Of those, 91 of every 10,000 women behind bars reported having had or currently having breast cancer. Given that 114,979 women were behind bars at the end of 2009, this would mean that over 1,000 women have had or currently have breast cancer.

Despite these numbers, prevention, screening, diagnosis, care, pain alleviation and rehabilitation for breast cancer remain virtually nonexistent in prisons. In 1998, a study at an unnamed Southern prison found that, although many were at high risk because of family histories, women were not provided with a clinical breast exam, information or basic education on self-examination upon admittance. Seventy percent of women who should have had mammograms under standard medical procedure had never been tested. [Williams, Roma D, Terry D. Mahoney, and R. M. Williams, Jr, "Breast Cancer Detection Among Women Prisoners in the Southern United States," Family & Community Health 21.3 (1998): 32.] Even women who enter prison already diagnosed with cancer must fight to receive lifesaving medical care.

Fifty-two-year-old Margaret DeLuca had already been diagnosed with stage 3A breast cancer and undergone a left-breast mastectomy before arriving at Clinton Correctional Facility in New Jersey. "She knew exactly what she needed, but was unable to get it," stated Bonnie Kerness, a human rights advocate and coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) Prison Watch Project, who helped DeLuca fight for proper medical care. Their advocacy resulted in incremental improvements in DeLuca's medical care but did not change the prison's health care system. [Interview with Bonnie Kerness, December 28, 2011]

Continue reading at: http://www.truth-out.org/breast-cancer-behind-bars-how-prison-sentence-can-become-death-sentence/1326504683

Shit People Say In LA

2012-01-26T00:41:00.002-06:00

A Milestone Birthday for Planet Earth

2012-01-26T00:39:00.000-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-10

by Peter Bosshard

Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams

Milestone birthdays are opportunities to take stock of our family, health and financial situation. So how is Planet Earth doing 20 years after the Earth Summit, the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro? The planet’s economic output has more than doubled since 1992. Some members of the global family are doing extremely well, but the number of hungry people is increasing. And the planet’s health is steadily deteriorating, with vital ecosystems nearing the point of collapse.

We can celebrate milestone birthdays with empty rhetoric, or we can use them to change course. Twenty years ago, governments adopted resolutions that aimed to bring the global community into social, environmental and economic balance. They resolved to follow basic rules of global housekeeping such as the precautionary principle, the internalization of environmental costs, and the polluter-pays principle. They prepared a specific roadmap of global change in the Agenda 21. And most of them made binding commitments by signing the conventions on biodiversity and climate change.

Looking back, we have failed to live up to our resolutions and commitments as a global community. We can’t relive the past, but as we prepare for the Rio+20 summit in June, we have another chance to take stock and change course. Unfortunately world leaders have so far not risen to the challenge. The draft document for the Rio+20 summit, which governments are currently discussing in New York, is devoid of substance and ambition. Entitled, The Future We Want, it contains no honest analysis, few specific recommendations, and no binding commitments. Instead, it tries to hide its lack of ambition with vague concepts such as a new Green Economy.

In the water sector – the area I know best – there are indeed measures that could improve the planet’s economic and ecological health at the same time. We could start by dramatically improving the water efficiency of our existing infrastructure and agriculture. We could safeguard vital ecosystems and the services that they provide by protecting free-flowing rivers and restoring environmental flows. We could phase out public funding for unsustainable agricultural practices, polluting industries and destructive dams. And we could redirect development aid towards the decentralized, small-scale technologies that strengthen the food, water and energy security of the poorest without destroying the environment.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-10

Earth First! and Occupy protesters blockade bridge in front of GAIM conference

2012-01-26T00:33:00.000-06:00

From Earth First: https://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/earth-first-and-occupy-protestors-blockade-bridge-in-front-of-gaim-conference/

January 24, 2012

More arrests underway as conference is disrupted by activists inside the resort as well

Palm Beach County, Florida—Protesters from the Occupy movement and Everglades Earth First! blockaded a Boca Raton bridge yesterday, snarling rush hour traffic during a cocktail party of corporate investors at the GAIM USA 2012 conference. Among them was Ana Rodriguez, an editor of the Earth First! Journal, which is also published in Palm Beach County.

Using colorful lockboxes, three activists, laid on the bridge effectively stopping rush hour traffic from 5-6:30. Special operations police teams were called to the site to remove the lockdown devices that were linking the protesters together. The blockaders were cited with three charges, including: resisting without violence; obstructing a highway and violation of a municipal ordinance banning what the Boca police called “sleeping dragons.”

Two of the three arrested, Kevin Young and Don Carter from Occupy Miami, were released on their own recognizance. Ana Rodriguez was released today on a $1,500 bond, with the state attorney alleging that she was a flight risk to Venezuela, her country of origin.

“Every day we see corporate power destroying our communities. From environmental disasters to private prisons, corporations are operating with impunity,” said Ana Rodriguez before being arrested. “While the bank leaders drink cocktails and toast to increased profits, people across the globe are being hurt by corporate greed.”

Continue reading at: https://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/earth-first-and-occupy-protestors-blockade-bridge-in-front-of-gaim-conference/

Ralph Shortey, Oklahoma State Senator, Introduces Bill Banning Aborted Fetuses In Food

2012-01-26T00:29:00.002-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/ralph-shortley-oklahoma-aborted-fetuses-food_n_1230414.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Laura Bassett

01/25/2012

A Republican state senator in Oklahoma has introduced a bill banning aborted human fetuses in food, despite the fact that there are no known foods or food products that actually contain aborted fetuses.

Sen. Ralph Shortey of Oklahoma City introduced on Tuesday Senate Bill 1418, which prohibits "the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses." He says he based the bill on an article he read online about an anti-abortion group boycotting companies that allegedly use embryonic stem cells to research and develop artificial sweeteners.

“People are thinking that this has to do with fetuses being chopped up and put in our burritos,” Shortey told NewsOK. "“That's not the case. It's beyond that.

“There are companies that are using embryonic stem cells to research and basically cause a chemical reaction to determine whether or not something tastes good or not,” he said. “As a pro-life advocate, it kind of disturbed me that we would use aborted embryos or aborted human fetuses to extract stem cells and use them for research to basically make things taste better.”

PepsiCo did partner with food product development company Senomyx to develop a new low-calorie sweetener, but the company denied using fetal tissue in its research in an April 2011 email to Children of God for Life.

"Unfortunately, there is some misinformation being circulated related to research techniques that have been used for decades by universities, hospitals, government agencies, and private companies around the world. These claims are meant to suggest that human fetal tissue is somehow used in our research," wrote Margaret Corsi, a spokesperson for PepsiCo. "That is both inaccurate and something we would never do or even consider. It also is inaccurate to suggest that tissue or cells somehow are being used as product ingredients. That’s dangerous, unethical and against the law. Every ingredient in every one of our products is reviewed and approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/ralph-shortley-oklahoma-aborted-fetuses-food_n_1230414.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Billionaire Bill Gates Calls For Increasing Taxes On The Rich: ‘That’s Just Justice’

2012-01-26T00:28:00.000-06:00

From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/25/411283/bill-gates-taxes-justice/

By Tanya Somanader

Jan 25, 2012

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama once again urged Congress to pass the Buffett rule, noting that 25 percent of American millionaires pay less in taxes that millions of families in the middle-class. Republicans were quick to dismiss his request as “the politics of envy and division.” However, multi-billionaire Bill Gates called his policy something else entirely: “That’s just justice.”

In an interview with the BBC, Gates noted “taxes are going to have to go up” and thus he’d prefer that they “go up more on the rich than everyone else.” There needs to be “a sense of shared sacrifice,” he said, adding, “right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should”:

GATES: Well the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice.

Complete article at: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/25/411283/bill-gates-taxes-justice/

The Keystone Myth

2012-01-26T00:23:00.000-06:00

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/the-keystone-myth_b_1228060.html

Al Gore

Chairman, Current TV

01/24/2012

President Obama made the right call last week when he decided to reject the tar sands pipeline. The State Department, in its Congressional Report, debunked the myth that this disastrous project would benefit the US:

Regarding economic, energy security, and trade factors, the economic analysis in the final EIS indicates that, over the remainder of this decade, even if no new cross-border pipelines were constructed, there is likely to be little difference in the amount of crude oil refined at U.S. refineries, the amount of crude oil and refined products such as gasoline imported to (or exported from) the United States, the cost of crude oil or refined products in the United States, or the amount of crude oil imported from Canada. . . .

"The analysis from the final EIS, noted above, indicates that denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term." Source: Climate Progress

Complete article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/the-keystone-myth_b_1228060.html

Gingrich’s Anti-Semitic Dog Whistle: Saul Alinsky

2012-01-26T00:18:00.000-06:00

From The Jewish Daily Forward: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/150178/

By Gal Beckerman

January 24, 2012

When Newt Gingrich is called out for using the phrase “food stamp president,” he fiercely defends the idea that he is simply pointing out the obvious: that under Obama more people signed up for food stamps. Simple as that. He is not gently plucking racist tropes for the benefit of his base, but just telling it like it is. The man has plausible deniability. He can wink and then say he was just blinking.

So I’m sure that will be the case when I bring up Gingrich’s fondness for mentioning a certain Saul Alinsky. The former speaker is just stating a fact.

And boy does he bring Alinsky up. I’ve heard Alinsky’s name mentioned by Gingrich in a handful of debates, usually by way of characterizing the president, as in Obama is a “Saul Alinsky radical” or “the centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” But what really struck me was the number of times Gingrich brought up Alinsky in his victory speech when he won the South Carolina primary: three.

Now if you aren’t in that subsection of the “east coast liberal elite” that is closely following every twist and turn of this primary season, you might be asking yourself at this point, “Who the hell is Saul Alinsky?”

I’m willing to bet that has been the reaction of the vast majority of Americans, even for those who have really been tuning in to this race.

Before we go into who Alinsky is, just think about what his name sounds like spit out of the mouth of Gingrich with not a small measure of disdain. It sounds like a Jewish name — and to be even more specific, like a Russian Jewish name with that “sky” at the end. Perhaps I’m being too sensitive. Perhaps Gingrich is simply drawing our attention to what he thinks Alinsky’s influence on Obama is, but I am willing to say that the effect is something like this: Obama’s ideological mentor is a Jew and somehow foreign. Even if this is working on a subconscious level and more subtle than “food stamp president,” I believe it’s there.

Will the Young Rise Up and Fight Their Indentured Servitude to the Student Loan Industry?

2012-01-26T00:15:00.000-06:00

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/education/153879/will_the_young_rise_up_and_fight_their_indentured_servitude_to_the_student_loan_industry/

The solution to class exploitation and abuse is always the same: Get conscious, get angry, get energized, and get organized.

By Bruce E. Levine
January 24, 2012

In October 2011, the White House announced, “Currently, more than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt.” By the end of 2011, student loan debt had exceeded $1 trillion. Two-thirds of college seniors graduate with student loans, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. According to the Project on Student Loan Debt, they carried an average of $25,250 in debt in 2010, but many have far greater debt than that average. And nowadays, with high unemployment, even higher underemployment, the inability to pay bills, and accumulating interest and penalties, the lives of student loan debtors can quickly turn into financial nightmares.

Indentured Servitude? I’ll be paying for my student loans for the rest of my life....A large portion of my earnings goes to the Wall Street elites that have commoditized and securitized my loans....I knew at the time I signed the student loans (again and again) that I would be responsible...what I didn’t figure was the cost to my children —Jeff Vincent, AlterNet

How outlandish is it to say that the spirit of indentured servitude has been revived in the United States? What can young people and their parents do to prevent student loan debt servitude, and what can all of us do to help liberate student loan debtors who are currently doomed to decades of financial misery?

Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/education/153879/will_the_young_rise_up_and_fight_their_indentured_servitude_to_the_student_loan_industry/

Who is Sheldon Adelson and What Has Newt Promised Him?

2012-01-26T00:11:00.000-06:00

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/16409529548

Robert Reich
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner, is now the poster boy for what’s terribly wrong with our campaign-finance system. Adelson, you may recall, had, before the South Carolina Republican primary, donated $5 million to the pro-Gingrich Super Pac “Winning Our Future” – giving Newt a pile of money for negative advertising against Mitt Romney in South Carolina.

Adelson has done it again. He and his wife Marian have cut another $5 million check for Gingrich to go negative on Romney in Florida. The money won’t go as far as it did in South Carolina – TV ads cost a lot more in Florida – but it’s enough to give the Grinch a solid footing.

And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich’s Super Pac. The point is, there’s no limit.

Do you know who Sheldon and Marian Adelson are? Do you know what Gingrich has promised them, or what they think they’ll get out of a Grinch presidency? I don’t. But if Newt becomes President of the United States, they’ll be singularly responsible. And we better find out, because Newt will owe them big time.

Forget the Lincoln Bedroom. The Adelsons and their kids will have the run of the White House, including the Oval Office. Hey, they’ll take over the Old Executive Building next door and turn it into a casino.

Continue reading at: http://robertreich.org/post/16409529548

Power is cut during live broadcast from Davos, Switzerland

2012-01-26T00:07:00.002-06:00

Fidel Castro attacks 'idiocy and ignorance' of US Republican race

2012-01-26T00:06:00.002-06:00

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/fidel-castro-idiocy-us-republicans

Retired Cuban leader says Republican primaries are 'the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been'

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012

Fidel Castro has lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest competition of "idiocy and ignorance" the world has ever seen, and also criticised the news media and foreign governments for seizing on the death of a Cuban prisoner to demand greater respect for human rights.

Castro's comments came in a long opinion piece carried by official media two days after a Republican debate in Florida presented mostly hardline stances on what to do about the Communist-run island.

Cuba has become an important issue as the candidates court Florida's influential Cuban-American community in an effort to win the biggest electoral prize so far in the primary season.

Castro said he had assumed the candidates would try to outdo each other on the issue of Cuba, but nonetheless he was appalled by the level of debate.

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalised and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," he wrote.

Castro disputed accounts of the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, a 31-year-old prisoner, saying he had not been a dissident and had not been on a 50-day hunger strike, as human rights and opposition groups claimed. The retired leader said Villar had been a common criminal sent to prison for domestic violence, and he had received the best medical attention possible.

Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/fidel-castro-idiocy-us-republicans

Occupying Libido: Negotiating a Landscape of Hypocrisy and Hungry Ghosts

2012-01-26T00:02:00.000-06:00

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-7

by Phil Rockstroh

Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by Common Dreams

When Bill Clinton and his scary, scary libido stalked the public realm, Republicans warned his presence was so anathema to all things holy that his hot breath served to salt the wings of choirs of angels.

Yet Newt Gingrich's booty calls are forgivable. Stones shall not be cast. His transgressions humanize him and the balms of forgiveness of Christian believers rising from this sin-buffeted earth cause the Baby Jesus to coo into the dawn of a coming golden age.

When Bush/Cheney sat at the helm of empire and plundered foreign lands and breached the rule of law, Democratic partisans insisted that constitutional order be reestablished by having Bush et al marched in shackles from the halls of power. To do anything short of this was to risk the foundation of the republic being crushed to rubble and silt beneath the boot of tyranny.

Yet, we critics of duopoly are accused of being impractical sorts who don't dwell in this world, the world of the possible. Although, it seems that political partisans give themselves permission to dwell, simultaneously, in two worlds: This one, as well as a Bizarro World--the parallel universe limned in comic books--where all things are done in reverse, where true is false and false is true, as well as, apparently, a realm where Newt Gingrich is a shining standard bearer of moral rectitude and a defender of faith and family and President Obama is a protector of constitutional law and a friend of the downtrodden.

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 77% of the citizens of the U.S. expressed the belief that the massive power imbalance in place in the nation is a direct result of the vast wealth inequity between the 1% and the 99%. In addition, according to a poll by Time Magazine, 86% of Americans held the conviction that Wall Street and its lobbyists exert undue influence over the U.S. political class.

Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-7

Julian Assange to launch show on RT this March

2012-01-25T18:24:00.002-06:00

Watch President Obama Deliver the 2012 State of the Union Address

2012-01-25T01:13:00.000-06:00

Ultra-Orthodox Jews attack woman in Israeli town

2012-01-25T00:26:00.002-06:00

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/24/ultra-orthodox-jews-attack-woman-in-israeli-town/

By Agence France-Presse

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

JERUSALEM — A group of ultra-Orthodox men attacked a woman on Tuesday as she put up posters in an Israeli town that has become a flashpoint for tensions between religious and secular Jews, police said.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the incident occurred in Beit Shemesh, which lies 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Jerusalem, as the woman was trying to put up posters for Israel’s national lottery.

“A woman was driving in Beit Shemesh and putting up posters for the Israeli lottery when she was surrounded by a group of ultra-Orthodox men,” Rosenfeld told AFP.

“They threw stones at her and slashed the tyres of her car. They also stole her car keys. She was slightly injured in the head. Police arrived and took her to a safe place. Three suspects were arrested.”

Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/24/ultra-orthodox-jews-attack-woman-in-israeli-town/

Sat., Feb. 4 Day of Action: No Sanctions, No War Against Iran!

2012-01-25T00:24:00.002-06:00

From ANSWER: http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/no-war-on-iran.html

January 23, 2012

The ANSWER Coalition is calling on everyone to join a demonstration or to organize one on the National Day of Action on Saturday, February 4, to demand: “No War on Iran, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations.”

The U.S.-led campaign to bring about regime change is escalating. Just today, the European Union announced a complete embargo of Iranian oil. Taken together with the other economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, this is a campaign meant to impose maximum suffering on the people of Iran by destabilizing and destroying the country’s economy. At the same time, covert action inside the country, including assassinations, sabotage and drone over flights, is intensifying. U.S. military bases surround Iran, while nuclear-armed U.S. aircraft carriers and Trident submarines sit right off its cost.

The pretext for this aggression against another country in the strategic Persian Gulf region is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, an assertion that Iranian leaders have denied. The utter hypocrisy of this charge by the world’s leading nuclear weapons power and its nuclear-armed allies, including Israel, Britain and France, could not be clearer.

U.S. seeks to repeat history

Sixty years ago, the U.S. and British imposed a worldwide embargo on Iranian oil in response to the nationalization of the country’s petroleum resources by the Mossadegh government, the first democratically elected government in Iran’s history. The embargo weakened the government enough so that in 1953 the U.S. CIA was able to carry out a coup, and place the Shah (king) back on the throne. For the next 25 years, the Shah served a extremely brutal agent of the U.S., killing up to 100,000 Iranians in the regime’s notorious torture chambers, and turning the country’s resources over to U.S. oil companies and banks.

Twenty-one years ago the U.S. pushed the UN Security Council a total blockade of Iraq. Thirteen years of sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis and severely weakened the country, paving the way for the 2003 invasion and an occupation which killed a million more Iraqis and killed and wounded tens of thousands of U.S. and other occupying troops.

Now is the time to take action to stop the war that has already started against Iran before it escalates. We hope that you will join us in cities where demonstrations are already scheduled, or organize a protest if one is not yet planned in your city, town or campus.

Partial list of scheduled events:

If you or someone in your area is organizing an event on or around Feb. 4, please provide us with the event details by clicking here so we may publicize it on our website and future emails.

Washington, DC
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
White House

Albuquerque, NM
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
Assemble at UNM Bookstore
Corner of Central and Cornell

Chicago, IL
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
Federal Plaza for march and rally
50 W Adams (Adams and Dearborn)

Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
Location to be announced - call ANSWER at 213-251-1025

Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 3pm
Mayday Plaza
301 Cedar Ave. South (at 3rd Street)

Nashville, TN
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 2pm
Gather at Legislative Plaza
6th Ave. between Charlotte & Union

New York City, NY
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 1pm
Duffy Square
47th St. and 7th Ave.

Richmond, VA
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12pm
Gather at Federal Courthouse
701 East Broad Street

San Francisco, CA
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
Gather at Powell and Market for march and rally
(BART to Powell St. Station)

Seattle, WA
Wednesday, Feb. 1
Rally at Westlake Park at 3:30pm
March to the Federal Building at 4:30pm

Tampa, FL
Saturday, Feb. 4 at 12 noon
March on MacDill Air Force Base CENTCOM
7115 S Boundary Blvd.

If you or someone in your area is organizing an event on or around Feb. 4, please provide us with the event details by clicking here so we may publicize it on our website and future emails.

ENDORSED BY: American Iranian Friendship Committee • ANSWER Coalition • Antiwar.com • Bail Out The People Movement (BOPM) • Cindy Sheehan, National Co-ordinator of Peace of the Action • CODEPINK Women for Peace • ComeHomeAmerica.us • David Swanson, Author, “When the World Outlawed War” • Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality-Virginia • Delegation’s Journey through the Islamic Republic” • George Phillies, Editor for Liberty for America • Granny Peace Brigade • International Action Center (IAC) • Karla Hansen, Producer/Director “Silent Screams” • Malcolm X Center for Self Determination • Minnesota Peace Action Coalition • Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) • Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) • Peace of the Action • Phil Wilayto, Author, “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace • Ramsey Clark, Former US Attorney General, awarded UN Human Rights Award • Ray McGovern, Veterans for Peace • Refugee Apostolic Catholic Church • SI! Solidarity with Iran • St. Pete for Peace • Twin Cities Peace Campaign • United National Anti-War Committee (UNAC) • Veterans for Peace – NYC Chapter 034 • Waco Friends of Peace • WAMM, Women Against Military Madness • We Won’t Fly • WESPAC Foundation • Workers World Party • World Can’t Wait