Tuesday, December 14, 2010




GO BERNIE....FINALLY THE TRUTH IS SPOKEN...FOR 8.5 HOURS WITHOUT YIELDING ON THE SENATE FLOOR.
YES....

Tuesday, December 7, 2010




THIS VIDEO DETAILS THE REAL CRIMINALS, THE ONES WHO SHOULD BE DENIED BAIL.

Friday, December 3, 2010

 May Julian Assange speak to all people .
(January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177
English Translation
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk from TEDxDU.


http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

here is the interview....LISTEN>>>>

Awesome interview, with some really "new" ideas being presented for a second time...if you know what i mean....Thank you Amy Goodman and Derrick Jensen.

Author and Activist Derrick Jensen: "The Dominant Culture is Killing the Planet...It’s Very Important for Us to Start to Build a Culture of Resistance"

AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with a figure who’s been called the poet-philosopher of the ecology movement. Author and activist Derrick Jensen has written some 15 books critiquing contemporary society and the destruction of the environment. In 2008, he was named one of Utne Reader magazine’s 50 visionaries who are changing the world. Among his books, A Language Older than Words, Endgame, What We Left Behind, and Resistance against Empire.



Derrick Jensen lives in Northern California. I had an extended conversation with him in San Francisco just a few weeks ago. Today we play part one of that discussion. I began by asking Derrick Jensen about the title of his book, what he means by Deep Green Resistance.


DERRICK JENSEN: Well, I think that we need to—I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet. And we can argue about whether, you know, there will be a few bacteria left or whatever, but when 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone, when there’s six to ten times as much plastic as phytoplankton in parts of the ocean, when there’s dioxin in every mother’s breast milk, when background rates—or rates of extinction are a thousand to ten thousand times background rates, you know, it’s sort of just playing with numbers to talk about whether it’s killing the planet or simply mortally wounding it. And I think it’s very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we’re doing isn’t working, clearly.


I ask a lot of times why it is that environmentalists, as environmentalists—I include myself as a front line activist—I ask why it is that we lose so often. And there’s a couple of answers that really speak to me. One of them is that I think a lot of us don’t really know what it is we want, and we don’t think strategically very much. It’s like, so what do you want?


So, I don’t think that a lot of us think very clearly about what it is exactly we want. And, I mean, I do know what I want, which is I want to live in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before, and I want to live in a world that has less dioxin in every mother’s breast milk every year than the year before, and a world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. And that’s part of—part of—one of the reasons I think that a lot of times we don’t win is, once again, I’m not sure that a lot of us know what we want.


And then another problem is that—there’s this absolutely extraordinary book called The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton, and in this book he describes how it was that men—people, but men in this case—who had taken the Hippocratic Oath could work in Nazi death camps. And what he found was that many of the doctors who worked in the death camps actually cared very deeply for the health of the inmates. And, you know, Mengele was, you know, horrible. But a lot of the sort of straight-line doctors were just—they would do whatever they could. They would give them an extra scrap of potato to eat or—the inmates. Or they would hide them from the selection officers who were going to kill them. Or they would—


AMY GOODMAN: To keep their experiments going?


DERRICK JENSEN: No, no, no. They would hide them from the selection officers who were going to kill them. They would do this to protect the inmate for that day. They would put them to bed, you know. They would actually do everything—if they were in pain, they would give them aspirin to lick. They would do what they could to help, except for the most important thing of all, which is they wouldn’t question the existence of the entire death camp itself. So they would find themselves working within the rules, however they could, to try to improve conditions marginally. And in retrospect, of course, that’s just not sufficient. And as a longtime activist, I see myself and other activists doing the same thing, that what we do is we do everything that is allowed by those in power to attempt to stop their destruction. But the problem is, whenever we figure out a way to use their rules to actually stop them, they change the rules.


AMY GOODMAN: Derrick Jensen, deep green resistance, what form should it take?


DERRICK JENSEN: Sometimes I get accused of being the violence guy, because I talk about capital of fighting back. But I don’t ever think that’s really fair, because I really consider myself the everything guy, that I want to put everything on the table and talk about, you know, all forms of resistance, and decide whether they’re appropriate or inappropriate for use. I don’t want to go in prejudging.


I think, for example, one man, all by himself, almost stopped World War II: Georg Elser. He was a trade unionist who didn’t like what Hitler was doing to the trade unions. So he got a job in a mine, stole some explosives, and he knew every year, on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, that Hitler would give a speech, and from 7:30 to 8:30, so he set a bomb to go off at 8:20, 1939. And unfortunately, because of the weather, Hitler gave his speech from 7:00 to 8:00 and left 20 minutes early. And so, my point is, I think that, in that case—you know, and we can certainly parse out cases where we think it’s appropriate to have militant response or non-militant response, but something I want to say about all that is that that’s not the real question for me. The real question is the distinction between those people who do something and those people who do nothing.


And I want to emphasize, too, that, for example, even the IRA at its strongest, or the U.S. military, for that matter, only about two percent of the people ever pick up weapons. Most of the people are doing support work. I mean, Maud Gonne was—excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang. And her son became the chief of staff of the IRA and later formed Amnesty International. And there’s this—I guess all I’m trying to say is that we need to ask ourselves, what do we want, and then to ask ourselves, how are we going to get there? And those are not rhetorical questions.


AMY GOODMAN: I mean, there is an easy resorting to violence. I think it’s the—comes from the model of the establishment. They like to say war is the last resort, but so often it is the first approach that the establishment takes, led by the military—and sometimes not led by. They’re the ones that know the suffering the most, so it’ll just be the civilian government. But do you want to take that model of violence as a way—even a way to deal? I mean, imagine if you took violence off the table, you didn’t justify the violence the establishment was doing by saying—or you didn’t answer by saying they’re doing violence, so it has to be met with violence. I mean, from your life, you talk a great deal about your own growing up and the role that violence played and how incredibly destructive it was. Why don’t we go there? Why don’t you talk about how you came to be Derrick Jensen? What has shaped you, influenced you, both negatively and positively? But this issue of violence that is so real, unfortunately not a metaphor in your life.


DERRICK JENSEN: Well, yeah. My father’s extremely violent—was, presumably still is. I haven’t talked to him for years. And he broke my sister’s arm. My brother has epilepsy from blows to the head. He raped my mother, my sister and me. And that—one of the things that that—and we can talk about the negative effects of that. You know, many years of therapy. And we can talk about, you know, the years of insomnia and the night terrors and all that. But I think the central way—there are a few people—I know you’re not saying this—there are a few people who say, "Gosh, he just wants to fight back because he’s projecting his own, you know, helplessness as a child onto larger culture. You know, he hates the big daddy now, you know, the Uncle Sam daddy." And once again, I’m not suggesting you were suggesting that—and that’s always been sort of a kind of a ridiculous critique, I’ve thought, because if my father would have been perfect, 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans would still be gone, and Coca-Cola would still be destroying aquifers in India, and 25 percent of all women in this culture would still be getting raped. And, you know, we could go all down the list, that—


But one of the things that he—that that did do is it helped me understand—it helped me get a framework on which I could start to understand the larger movements of power in the culture and also the larger ways that discourse supports power. And one of my favorite examples of this is the psychiatrist R.D. Laing came up with the three rules of a dysfunctional family, which are also three rules of a dysfunctional culture. And Rule A is don’t. Rule A-1 is Rule A does not exist. And Rule A-2 is never discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A-1 or A-2. So what this means, you know, within the sort of corporate news media, is you can talk forever about Dancing with the Stars or, you know, whatever spectacle we want to talk about, but talking about the things that really matter, as in the real physical world, or as in stopping atrocities, you know, against women, and so, that’s one of the ways, I think, that that—that’s one of the—one of the things I got from my childhood or that I was able to sift out from my childhood or refine from my childhood is that understanding of how abusive dynamics work.


AMY GOODMAN: Derrick, what is the influence of Native Americans in your writing, in your work, in your activism?


DERRICK JENSEN: It’s another great question. And I have tried not to romanticize them, which is another form of objectification. And what I do know is I know that the Tolowa Indians, on whose land I now live up in way northern California, they lived there for at least 12,500 years, if you believe the myths of science. And if you believe the myths of the Tolowa, they lived there since the beginning of time, using a myth as stories that we tell ourselves that make the world fit together. So, in any case, the Tolowa lived there for at least 12,500 years. And when the dominant culture got there 180 years ago, the place was a paradise. I mean, salmon runs so thick that you could hear them for miles before you’d see them. Just—I learned this recently, that one of the—up in Canada, one of the things that people would do for fun when the salmon runs came in is they would throw a little pebble into the water, and they would see how long it would float on the backs of fish before it would hit the ground, because there were so many fish that the rock couldn’t make its way down. And, you know, I’m lucky if I see a half-dozen salmon in a year at this point.


So my point is that they do offer a model for—one of the things that abusers constantly want us to do is to believe that there is only one way to be, which is theirs. And this is true—you know, there’s the great line—I think it was Václav Havel—the struggle against oppression is a struggle of memory against forgetting. And one of the things we need to remember is that there have been other ways of living that have been sustainable. You know, the Tolowa lived there for 12,500 years, which is sustainable by any realistic measurement. And they didn’t do it because they were too stupid to invent backhoes. You know, why? Why? How did they look at the world differently that allowed them to live? It wasn’t because they were primitives. It wasn’t because they were savages. What did they have? They had social strictures in place.


AMY GOODMAN: Derrick, you’ve written, "Civilization is not and can never be sustainable."


DERRICK JENSEN: Yeah. Several years ago, I was riding around in a car with a friend of mine, George Draffan, with whom I’ve written a couple books. And I was just making conversation. I said, "So, George, if you could live at any level of technology that you want to, what would it be?" And he was not in a very good mood that day, and he said, "That’s a really stupid question, Derrick, because we can fantasize whatever we want, but the truth is there’s only one level of technology that’s sustainable. And that’s the Stone Age. And we’ll be there again some day. And the only question really is, what’s left of the world when we get there?"


It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that any way of living that’s based on the use of non-renewable resources won’t last. In fact, I would say it takes anybody but a rocket scientist to figure that out. And likewise, it doesn’t take someone who’s very smart to figure out that if every year there are fewer salmon return than the year before, that eventually there won’t be any left. I mean, there were so many passenger pigeons that they would darken the sky for days at a time. There were six times as many passenger pigeons than all the birds in the northern—in North America. Do we know why there aren’t any penguins in the northern hemisphere? The great ox? They were destroyed. And my point is that any way of life that’s based on the hyper-exploitation of renewable resources won’t last. You have to basically—in the book, What We Leave Behind, what we came to for a definition of "sustainability" is leaving the physical world in a better place than when you were born, that the world is actually a better place because you were born.


A lot of definitions of "civilization" that we see are not really very specific, and the definition I like the most, which is defensible both linguistically and historically, is civilization is a way of life characterized by the growth of cities—once again, defensible both linguistically and historically. And a couple things happen as soon as you—well, wait. Back up. So that’s great, Derrick, but what’s a city? A city, I’ve defined as people living in numbers large enough to require the importation of resources. And what this means, that the Tolowa didn’t live in cities, because they didn’t require the importation of resources. They didn’t live in cities; they lived in villages, camps, and they ate salmon. They ate what the land gave willingly.


And two things happen as soon as you require the importation of resources. One is that your way of living can never be sustainable, because if you require the importation of resources, it means you denuded the land base of that particular resource, and as your city grows, you’ll need an ever larger area. And the other thing it means is that your way of life must be based on violence, because if you require the importation of resources, trade will never be sufficiently reliable, because if you require the importation of resources and the people in the next watershed over aren’t going to trade you for it, you’re going to take it. And one of the problems with this whole system is that destroying your land base gives you a competitive advantage over the other cultures who don’t. The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoenician and Egyptian navies. And if you destroy your land base, if you don’t care about the future, you can turn this into immediate power and then use it to conquer, and which is something you have to do, because you’ve destroyed your own land base. And as time goes on, you have to keep expanding. And that’s not a very good idea on a finite planet.


AMY GOODMAN: Derrick Jensen—part two of our conversation coming up later this week—author of Resistance against Empire, A Language Older than Words, Deep Green Resistance, coming soon.





Friday, November 5, 2010

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-1-2010/look-who-s-stalking
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-1-2010/look-who-s-stalking

OH MY GODDESS>>>>><<<<<

Saturday, October 30, 2010

http://www.thenation.com/blog/155629/wikileaks-and-war-spending?rel=emailNation

Friday, October 29, 2010

Great read by: http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

Monsanto Brings Small Family Dairy to Court

"Oakhurst Dairy has been owned and operated by the same Maine family since 1921, and Monsanto recently attempted to put them out of business. Oakhurst, like many other dairy producers in the U.S., has been responding to consumer demand to provide milk free of rBGH, a synthetic hormone banned (for health reasons) in every industrialized country other than the U.S.
Monsanto, the number one producer of the rBGH synthetic steroid, sued Oakhurst, claiming they should not have the right to inform their customers that their dairy products do not contain the Monsanto chemical. Given the intense pressure from the transnational corporation, Oakhurst was forced to settle out of court, leaving many other dairies vulnerable to similar attacks from Monsanto."

"Monsanto executive told The New York Times that the safety of genetically engineered foods was the government's problem, not the company's:

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."
"As Angell implies, Monsanto's interest in selling as much genetically engineered food as possible is in direct conflict with the government's responsibility for food safety.
Monsanto has induced politicians to abdicate their responsibility to protect consumers through generous campaign contributions and heavy lobbying. "
The most telling evidence that Monsanto's strategy has been an overwhelming succes is the number of former Monsanto employees who have been given jobs in the FDA and other regulatory agencies that monitor Monsanto's products.
"Margaret Miller is just one example. While working as a Monsanto researcher, she contributed to a scientific report for the FDA on Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
Shortly before the report was submitted, Miller left Monsanto to work at the FDA, where her first job was to review the same report! Assisting Miller was another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen. Needless to say, the FDA accepted Monsanto's findings, which became the basis for its approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone and its decision not to require labels on milk produced through the use of the artificial hormone.
The FDA official who made the decision not to label Monsanto's milk was Michael Taylor, who had worked as a lawyer for Monsanto. Today, Michael Taylor is in the Obama Administration, in charge of food safety.

President Obama knows that agribusiness cannot be trusted with the regulatory powers of government.

On the campaign trail in 2007, he promised: "We'll tell ConAgra that it's not the Department of Agribusiness. It's the Department of Agriculture. We're going to put the people's interests ahead of the special interests."
But, starting with his choice for USDA Secretary, the pro-biotech former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, President Obama has let Monsanto, Dupont and the other pesticide and genetic engineering companies know they'll have plenty of friends and supporters within his administration.
President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms.
Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods.

Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is now the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Islam Siddiqui, Vice President of the Monsanto and Dupont-funded pesticide-promoting lobbying group, CropLife, is now the Agriculture Negotiator for the US Trade Representative.

Rajiv Shah, former agricultural-development director for the pro-biotech Gates Foundation (a frequent Monsanto partner), served as Obama's USDA Under Secretary for Research Education and Economics and Chief Scientist and is now head of USAID."





Wednesday, October 27, 2010



Is this who we really want to be....when did this shift happen?

Saturday, October 23, 2010



WOW.....my religion, my nation, my consumer society....FREEDOM'S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE......


Friday, October 22, 2010

'Maybe you think you’ve seen it all – I certainly thought I had, until I saw the husband of Republican US Senate candidate Linda McMahon on television degrading a woman wrestler – ordering her to get on her knees, bark like a dog, and take off her clothes to prove that she is “sorry.” If you are disgusted, send a letter of protest to Linda McMahon.
The video is disturbing, but if you must see it, you can watch it here. This is the kind of disgusting spectacle Linda McMahon created as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, and now she wants to be the US Senator from Connecticut.
Help us stop the madness. Please send this message to everyone you know in Connecticut, and remind them how important it is to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, November 2nd.
McMahon has already said she will spend $50 million dollars to win the race against Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General who was influential in passing comprehensive domestic violence legislation and has been personally active as chair of two anti- violence efforts, “Men Against Domestic Violence” and “Men Make A Difference.”
Don’t let the $50 million dollars that she made on depraved productions like this one buy her a seat in the US Senate.
Send a letter of protest demanding that Linda McMahon renounce World Wrestling Entertainment's degradation of women and stop spending the millions she made by promoting violence to buy a seat in the United States Senate. Women deserve better.
For ending violence against women,
Kim Gandy
Kim Gandy
Vice President

THIS IS SO SICK...IT IS THE DISEASE OF OUR CULTURE.

Friday, October 15, 2010


I love the Elders.....thank you John le Carr'e....my deepest gratitude to your wisdom and deep compassionate humanistic values.
Please all readers...listen to this interview...it is an excellent interview.

thanks for the interview: Amy Goodman and Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/exclusive_british_novelist_john_le_carr

Monday, September 27, 2010

RECONNECT WITH YOURSELF ~ AND THE NATURAL WORLD.....REGISTERED FOR THIS RETREAT...  www.sacredhearthretreat.com

Monday, September 13, 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

"The Big Uneasy"–In New Doc, Harry Shearer Makes the Case that Katrina Was an Unnatural Disaster


On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a new documentary, The Big Uneasy, argues that the destruction of New Orleans was an unnatural disaster and how it could have been prevented. We speak with the filmmaker: actor and satirist Harry Shearer. 


http://www.democracynow.org/

Friday, August 27, 2010



Amy Goodman interview Dave Eggers, author of "Zeitoun": How a Hero in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina Was Arrested, Labeled a Terrorist and Imprisoned.
The interview can be found at the link below.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/27/exclusivezeitoun_how_a_hero_in_new

Check out the website site Voice of Witness ..... incredible work.

Thursday, August 26, 2010



YOU HAVE THE WRONG CRIMINALS.....................................

Friday, July 30, 2010

How the sports industry is married to right wing politics &  corruption at unimaginable levels..... go to a baseball game and support Black Water,,,, follow the money.  the interveiw is worth listening to.

 http://www.sportsfanscoalition.org/tag/dave-zirin/

Friday, July 23, 2010

THIS IS A MUST SEE.....

 http://gaslandthemovie.com/
"The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown."


GASLAND will be broadcast on HBO through 2012. To host a public screening in your community please click here. The DVD will be on sale in December 2010.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

FROM TRUE MAJORITY.....
http://act.truemajorityaction.org
 The Obama administration just fired a prominent black USDA official after she was smeared by the far-right smear machine at FOX News.1

Shirley Sherrod was in charge of USDA's work in Georgia. And at a recent NAACP dinner she told the story of how she overcame her own racial biases working to help save a white family's farm.2

But when FOX News got hold of a selectively edited video that made it appear she was confessing to discriminating against the white couple, it took less than a day for her to be forced out of her job with the Obama team.3

We need to call on the White House to immediately give Shirley Sherrod her job back, and to stop listening to FOX and other right-wing media. Once you've taken action, please tell your friends and family to do the same -- the more people who know the truth about this story, the better. Just click here to get started:
From start to finish this whole controversy was manufactured by FOX and its allies to attack an honest woman who's spent her whole life helping poor farmers in Georgia.

First a right-wing blogger posted a deceptively edited video of Sherrod that seems to show her saying that she once didn't "give [a white farmer] the full force of what I could do" to help him, because of his race. Then, FOX News ran the doctored video and false storyline over and over again while their on-air personalities called for Sherrod's firing. Finally, Sherrod was pressured by the White House to resign without being given a chance to tell her side of the story.5

But the whole thing was a lie. Yesterday, Roger Spooner -- the white farmer in Sherrod's story -- said that Sherrod saved his family's farm and kept them out of bankruptcy. He told CNN, "I don't know what brought up the racist mess. They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me."6

This isn't the first time FOX has used a made-up story to attack prominent members of the administration. A few months ago, green jobs czar Van Jones was forced out in a similar pattern.7 And several other members of the Obama administration have lost their jobs,  been demoted or withdrawn from consideration for jobs after becoming the target of smear campaigns launched by FOX News.8

It's bad enough that FOX and the right-wing media use smear campaigns and appeals to racial paranoia to stir up their right-wing viewers. But it's outrageous for Obama to turn his back on honest public servants just to avoid having to fight back.

Monday, July 12, 2010

“These blind slaves are told they are “free” and “highly educated” even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity”
- Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare

A Debate on Geoengineering: Vandana Shiva vs. Gwynne Dyer

Debate
Supporters of geoengineering have proposed radical ways to alter the planet to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals include creating artificial volcanoes to pollute the atmosphere with sulfur particles, fertilizing the oceans and placing sun-deflecting aluminum foil in the sky. But opposition is growing to geoengineering. We host a debate between Indian environmentalist, scientist, philosopher and eco-feminist, Vandana Shiva, and geopolitical analyst and columnist, Gwynne Dyer. 
 
 
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/8/gwynne_dyer_on_climate_wars_the
 
THIS IS A TIME WHEN TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.
 
 
 
 
 
 


CHEMTRAILS...............FOLLOW THE MONEY..........FOLLOW MONSANTO.

Monday, July 5, 2010

 I came across this story ~ it hit me right in the chest....Truth-out!

Happy independence day....

Ridiculous America  Sunday 04 July 2010 ..

here: http://www.truth-out.org/ridiculous-america61048

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed  Here is his conclusion:

Ridiculous. The whole thing, and in every way.
Here is a country whose still-lingering greatness was born on the backs of workers who unionized against the will and wishes of the great powers of capitalism. Yet here also is a country where the vital lessons of that effort have been largely disparaged and forgotten, because the truth of those lessons still discomforts those great powers. This week, the progeny of those early organizers used the democratic process to make progress for themselves and their fellow members, and even in defeat were magnificent.
Here is a country that makes men of such courage that they volunteer to die thousands of miles from home, who scramble to save each other when the bullets are flying, and can still smile about it. Yet here also is a country that takes men of this caliber and throws them - not once, not twice, not three but four times - into a meat-grinder based on lies and the desire for profit and power. If the man I met hadn't been shot, like as not he'd either still be in Afghanistan, or would be gearing up for a fifth trip to the other side of the world.
Happy birthday, you ridiculous nation. You are a great and terrible place, and you must do better. Not just because you have to, which you do, but because you can. You have the necessary pieces, and you have the potential. I know, because I saw it all week long on my sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, June 21, 2010

The Move to Amend coalition and its member organizations will be presenting a series of sessions, leading up to a "Peoples Movement Assembly"at 1pm, on Friday, June 25th. These are all a part of our own "Democracy Track" . . . if you'll be in Detroit, come aboard, and join us!


For links to more detailed descriptions of the events below, see http://www.democracytrack.org/


MovetoAmend.org is a coalition dedicated to ending the illegitimate legal doctrines that prevent the American people from governing ourselves.
 Move to Amend at the U.S. Social Forum
“Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporations to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obedience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material.
The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army


Monday, June 14, 2010

http://www.slowfood.com/
Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
 

To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.
Today, we have over 100,000 members in 132 countries.



                                                                CHECK IT OUT....

CULTURES OF RESISTANCE from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Either a person comes to a place of some self-knowledge and thereby
learns to contribute something genuine to life, or they add to all that
is inauthentic and distorted in the world. No one can be neutral on the road of life and death
.”
Michael Meade from The Water of Life

Thursday, June 3, 2010

MOVE YOUR MONEY.....A PEOPLE POWERED MOVEMENT.....THIS DOES NOT COST YOU A PENNY.....MOVE YOUR MONEY....TAKE ACTION AGAINST CORPORATE CRIME.

http://moveyourmoney.info/

The big banks on Wall Street -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have had an incredible year, getting huge taxpayer bail-outs, making record profits and paying out multi-million dollar bonuses to their CEOs while many of them are still participating in all the highly leveraged activities that caused our housing and credit crisis in the first place. 
I'd like to say the good news is that Congress is poised to pass major financial reforms later this month, so the President can sign the bill before the 4th of July. The problem is the bill they're planning to pass isn't good enough. Don't take it from me. Here's what the New York Times said about it last week:
The financial reform legislation making its way through Congress has Wall Street executives privately relieved that the bill does not do more to fundamentally change how the industry does business.

Despite the outcry from lobbyists and warnings from conservative Republicans that the legislation will choke economic growth, bankers and many analysts think that the bill approved by the Senate last week will reduce Wall Street's profits but leave its size and power largely intact.
In other words, too big to fail banks will still be too big to fail. It's time to take matters into our own hands. So today we're joining the Move Your Money campaign started by the good people at The Huffington Post. Declare your independence from big banks and pledge to Move Your Money to a local community bank or credit union today.

PLEDGE TO MOVE YOUR MONEY TO A COMMUNITY BANK OR CREDIT UNION RIGHT NOW

Community banks and credit unions don't act like the big banks. Typically, they're more responsible in how they manage their money, they're more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them, and they're more inclined to make loans they know will get paid back. And your local credit union isn't going to ask Congress for a multi-billion dollar bail-out either. These are the qualities most people want banks to have.

The idea is simple.

To regular Americans this issue isn't Left or Right -- it just makes sense. If enough people move their money from a big bank to a smaller, more local, more traditional community bank, we can break up the big banks ourselves. By working together, we won't have to wait for Congress make change happen.

TAKE THE PLEDGE AND FIND A CREDIT UNION OR COMMUNITY BANK NEAR YOU


We can send a message to Congress, the President and every candidate running for office that we don't trust big banks with our money. But it's up to us to do it.

Let's get started right now. Thank you for everything you do.

-Charles

Resources

It may seem daunting to move your money or to get other people and organizations in your town to follow your lead. We put together these resources for you to use and share with others. Can’t find the info you need here? Check our FAQ. If you still can’t find an answer to your question, contact us and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Checklist

7 Easy Steps to Move Your Checking Account

Big banks have the advantage of inertia. Moving your checking and savings accounts is not as simple as switching grocery stores. You’ll have to maintain both your new and old accounts for a few weeks until everything switches over. That can be a little tricky, especially if you’re living paycheck to paycheck. After you’ve found your new financial institution, follow this simple sequence compiled by Stacy Mitchell of the New Rules Project’s Community Banking Initiative and keep an eye on things. It should go smoothly and, in a few weeks, you’ll be in a brand new banking relationship.
1. Open your new account.
In most cases, you should be able open a checking account with an initial deposit of between $25 and $100. At a credit union, you’ll also become a member and co-owner at the same time.

2. Order your new debit/ATM card and checks.
These typically arrive within 1 to 2 weeks. You may also want to apply for a credit card from your new local institution.

3. If you use direct deposit, ask your employer to reroute your paycheck to your new account.
When you open your new account, ask the bank or credit union for a direct deposit authorization form that includes your new account information. Give this form to your employer and anyone else who makes direct deposits to your account. It may take one or more pay cycles for the change to be made, so keep your old checking account open and watch for the switch.

4. Contact companies that direct-debit your account.
Using your last bank statement, make a list of any businesses that you’ve authorized to directly debit your account. Ask your new bank or credit union for an automatic payments authorization form that includes your new account information. Send this to the businesses on your list.

5. Set up online bill paying for your new account.
If you like to pay bills online, set up bill payment information for your new account. Meanwhile,stop any automatic recurring payments you have established through your old account.

6. Close your old account.
Once you have started receiving direct deposits into your new account and are sure that there are no outstanding checks or automatic debits that need to clear, close your old account. Warning: do not just withdraw the last dollar and assume the account will fade away on its own. Your old big bank may start charging you fees for having an empty or inactive checking account. Instead, follow the bank’s procedure for closing out the account.

7. Enjoy your new local banking relationship!
—————————

Tuesday, June 1, 2010




Check out this lecture by Noam Chomsky: "The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination"


On this Memorial Day special, we spend the hour with the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books. He spoke recently here in New York addressing more than a thousand people at the Left Forum. He began by discussing the case of Joseph Andrew Stack, who crashed his small plane into an office building in Austin, Texas, hitting an IRS office, committing suicide.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Monday, May 17, 2010

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490348n&tag=related;photovideo

Scott Pelley investigates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11, causing the ongoing oil leak in the waters off of Louisiana. One survivor talks about his harrowing escape and what happened after he got off the burning rig.

The story within the story.........

Sunday, May 16, 2010

EVERY WAR HAS TWO LOSERS tells the story of how one man, William Stafford (1914-1993), chose to answer the call to war. It is a story of confronting beliefs that swirl around war - Isn't war inevitable? Even necessary? What about the enemy? Stafford refused to fight in World War Two and served four years in camps for conscientious objectors. Later he was the winner of the National Book Award for poetry.


Director Haydn Reiss met Stafford in 1990 and later produced a one-hour documentary, William Stafford & Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship. That film chronicles the similarities and differences between these two close friends and great poets. Approaches to writing, teaching and the meaning of poetry are all explored in this lively and engaging film. (The film is included as a DVD extra on EVERY WAR HAS TWO LOSERS)

http://www.everywar.com/index.html

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201005131030
 
http://theschoolofmyth.blogspot.com/

Every War Has Two Losers Trailer

Friday, May 14, 2010

Campaign to save the life of Kiana Firouz at risk of deportation from the U.K.


Kiana Firouz, 27 years old, actress and lesbian activist from Teheran, Iran, has long been engaged in the battle against the discrimination and persecution of homosexuals by the Ahmadinejad regime. After photograms of her video documentary on the condition of lesbians and gays fell into the hands of the Iranian intelligence, agents began to follow and intimidate her. Concerned about her safety, Kiana left Teheran and sought refuge in the U.K., where she could continue her work and studies.
see the this post at:
http://www.everyonegroup.com/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2010/5/6_Campaign_to_save_the_life_of_Kiana_Firouz_at_risk_of_deportation_from_the_U.K..html
She filed for asylum but her application was rejected by the Home Office even though the Ministry recognized her being persecuted for her sexual orientation and despite the fact that the Ministry is well aware that under Islamic law homosexuality is considered a heinous crime punishable by hanging and that gays and lesbians are enemies of Allah. In Iran, punishment for an adult consenting lesbian of healthy mind and is 100 whippings. If the act is repeated three times and punished each time, the death sentence is applied the fourth time (Art. 127, 129, 130).
Kiana filed for a court appeal following the Home Office’s decision to reject her application for asylum, but the judge overruled her appeal According to Kiana’s lawyer, the last remaining chance is to appeal the judge’s decision, but the risk of deportation is imminent.
Kiana recently took part in the film Cul de sac, which focuses on her life and civil rights battles in Iran. “It was important for me to take part in the film,” she stated in a recent interview. “As an Iranian lesbian I think the film is the best way to show how difficult life is for lesbians in my country. This film,” she continued, “contains sex scenes that would be sufficient evidence for receiving a death sentence if I were sent back to Iran. Now, my only hope is to mobilize the international LGBT community.”
Slated for release this month, Cul de sac attracted global media attention after its trailer was shown on YouTube in December 2009. Over 10,000 saw the video in the first four days it was put on line. And the media of the opposition in Iran, under constant watch by regime authorities, received news of its transmission.
Kiana has also launched a petition against the decision to have her deported to Iran.
The EveryOne Group, an international human rights organization, which was involved in the asylum cases of the lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh, who risked being deported from London to Teheran in 2007, and of the Iranian gay, Mehdi Kazemi, appeals to the British government and the democratic forces of the European Union, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, that Kiana Firouz be immediately guaranteed adequate humanitarian protection and that the order for her deportation be repealed, given that on return to Iran she will face a death sentence not only because a lesbian but because of her civil rights activism.
The EveryOne activists invite concerned readers to send protest e-mail messages to the British Home Office (public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk) requesting that Kiana receive refugee status as soon as possible, for she is a symbol of the international fight against homophobia and repression of gays and lesbians in Islamic countries.
http://www.petitiononline.com/kianaf/petition.html

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Rally for Public Land in Marquette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk-HwEFpsX4

Michigan, lets not allow the abuse.

Filmmaker Ordered to Hand Ecuador Footage to Chevron

A federal judge has ordered a documentary filmmaker to hand over hundreds of hours of footage to the oil giant Chevron. Joseph Berlinger’s film, “Crude”, chronicles the struggle of indigenous Ecuadorians against Chevron’s oil contamination of their land. Chevron has sought Berlinger’s outtakes to help defend itself against an Ecuadorian lawsuit seeking $27 billion dollars in environmental damages. Belinger says he’ll appeal the order, arguing that his footage should be shielded under the same protections granted to journalists. Berlinger’s attorney, Maura Wogan, says the ruling poses “great harm to documentary filmmakers and investigative reporters everywhere.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/headlines#14
 
http://www.crudethemovie.com/
“A fascinating and important story. CRUDE does an extraordinary job of merging journalism and art.”
Christiane Amanpour, CNN Chief International Correspondent
Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.
The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a “death zone” in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life. Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by “environmental con men” who are seeking to line their pockets with the company’s billions.
The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate. And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged in and out of court, and the case drew attention from an array of celebrities, politicians and journalists, and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film’s subjects sparked further controversy as they won a CNN “Hero” award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Shooting in dozens of locations on three continents and in multiple languages, Berlinger and his crew gained extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond, capturing the drama as it unfolded while the case grew from a little-known legal story to an international cause célèbre. Crude is a ground-level view of one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time, one that has the potential of forever changing the way international business is conducted. While the environmental impact of the consumption of fossil fuels has been increasingly documented in recent years, Crude focuses on the human cost of our addiction to oil and the increasingly difficult task of holding a major corporation accountable for its past deeds.