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What Obama Actually Said About Health Reform
(Left) 1965 - President Lyndon Johnson signs Medicare bill while President Harry Truman looks on. Truman signed up for Medicare right away. Image
Address to Congress
President Obama closed his address to the joint session of Congress by scolding those who have raised the absurd charges regarding his health care initiative. It was well timed and diverted attention from fundamental flaws in his proposal.
Reviewing David Swanson's "Daybreak"
by Stephen Lendman
David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com. He's also a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace as well as a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice.
Subtitled "Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming A More Perfect Union, Daybreak" is Swanson's first book, a timely and impressive account of presidential extremism, congressional complicity, the urgency for progressive change, and how to do it.
Swanson exposes what was wrong under George Bush and provides a compelling prescription for real change.
In his book "Cracks in the Constitution," Ferdinand Lundberg explained that the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, never deterred presidents or sitting governments from doing what they wished, then inventing justifications for their actions. During eight years in office, George Bush personified it and said so in his own words. In 2005, he told congressional Republican leaders:
68.4% of weapons sold to foreign powers are supplied by the United States: “Quit arming the fuck’n world Man!”
by chycho
The business of death and destruction is booming for weapons manufacturers operating in the United States of America.
As reported in the New York Times, according to a new Congressional study, “the United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar.” This is 10-times more than their closest rival, Italy, at $3.7 billion.
Keep in mind that this boom in business is occurring during a global economic meltdown which has been compared to the Fall of Rome by the former Comptroller General of the United States.
Latin America and the End of Social Liberalism
James Petras
The current world recession and the potential recovery of some countries reveals all the weaknesses of the traditional “export market” – free trade - comparative advantage doctrines. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent experience of Latin America.
Despite recent popular upheavals and the ascent of center-left regimes in most of the countries in the region, the economic structures, strategies and policies pursued, followed in the footsteps of their predecessors particularly in relation to foreign economic practices.
The Myth of Inevitability, Using Our Emotions Against Us
By: Peter Chamberlin
The world is awash in news and other daily revelations that all point in the direction of an encroaching police state. The war, the ongoing economic collapse, global epidemics and collapsing environmental systems bombard us from all sides with apparent proof that the end is near and that we are all helpless to avoid it. The world’s richest men have spent a sizeable portion of their vast personal fortunes to convince us that a “new order” is mankind’s only defense against the inevitable.
The finest minds available have studied the human psyche, in particular, instincts and reactions, in order to use fear as a way to preempt reason. The idea was to instill a feeling of helplessness within the minds of the people, in order to convince them to give-up, short-circuiting their innate instincts for self-defense. They are trying to make us drop our guard.
Branches of Olive Trees
Ayman T. Quader
Gaza City, Sept. 9, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) It has been 9 months since the devastating War on the Gaza Strip, which left thousands of people either killed or wounded.
Today I was invited to take a Ramadan breakfast in my friend Jumaa’s house. He lives in Al Maghzi Refugee Camp where people still are suffering miserably from the impacts of the War on their houses and streets. Basically, most of the residents of the Gaza Strip are already refugees and during the War they were once again forced to evacuate their houses and flee. I asked my friend to take me around in the camps small pass-ways, as I wanted to be closer to the people actually living there. Indeed, this made me feel strongly how much the people in the Refugee Camp are still in real pain. In the middle of the Al Maghzi Refugee Camp there is still a completely destroyed building – impossible to ignore by the people living in the Camp. I found little children playing on the rubbles of this building which really made me sad. But THEY didn’t mind and seemed to be really happy.
TOO MANY 9-11 COMMISSION QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED
Allen L Roland
When Pandora's Box is finally fully opened on the deceptions and abuses of power by the Cheney/Bush administration ~ the 9/11 conspiracy and cover-up will stand alone as the most treasonous act in American history. Here are 40 experts, including Commission members, who share their misgivings about the 9/11 Commission and the questions left unanswered:
The resignation Sunday of longtime Bay Area activist Van Jones as a White House environmental adviser left many progressives, including myself, rightfully angry at the Obama administration for crumbling to conservative criticism of Jones' controversial past comments and actions ~ particularly regarding 9/11. Jones resigned amid a furor over his signature on a 2004 petition rightfully questioning the government's actions around the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A petition that I and many other Progressive leaders proudly signed and still support.
A Bum Wrap- Burying Ted Kennedy with the Israeli flag
Franklin Lamb Beirut
Madonna wrapped in an Israeli flag, Ted Kennedy's funeral
Being wrapped in an Israeli flag this past week has caused Madonna, our Lady of Miracles, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC some flak.
First the simple case.
Strutting underdressed across the concert stage in Tel Aviv wrapped in an Israel flag on 9/2/09, as her partner, the Brazilian model ‘Jesus’ shouted ‘Viva! Viva!’ off stage was probably just the Material Girl doing her material thing. And anyhow, the late Michael Jackson could have been mistaken when he made his snide remark a while back, “She can’t sing. She can’t dance. I don’t understand her success!”
Palestinian embassy in London strangely silent as Israeli terror-strikes and land-grabs continue
Stuart Littlewood
As if they didn’t have enough problems, tormented Palestinians suffer the added misfortune of being represented here in London - the media capital of the western world - by the most invisible and silent embassy it is possible to imagine.
A year ago, campaigners urged the ambassador to get his act together or go home. He angrily retorted that he had "a plan of how to influence British Media to give us the Palestinians more exposure".
Whatever the plan was, it hasn’t worked. Press releases and briefings are non-existent. It is many months since I last heard the ambassador on radio or TV, while his Israeli opposite number pops up on the national airwaves with nauseating regularity. And the Palestinians' precious shop window - their embassy website – never functioned properly and has now been taken down.
Questioning the Police State, Not Just the Tactics
By: Peter Chamberlin
The torture debate focuses on the wrong issues, serving only to obscure the bigger picture. The real life issue is not that our elected government has used police state tactics on prisoners, but that our elected leaders believe that the United States has some sort of moral authority to define its own set of standards, freeing American spies and soldiers to operate outside of the laws that bind the rest of the human race. The torture debate has merely exposed the terror that our government utilizes everyday, to have its way with the world.
The recent revelations contained in CIA releases is kid’s stuff in the real spy world, but it is revealing enough to give the public a whiff of the stench that rolls out of the agency’s secret prisons and nightmarish hell holes, where they show the world what American democracy really means—POWER, plain and simple.
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