Category: Action

The gross incompetents and criminally negligent may be leaving DC soon, but there are still tens of thousands of people on the gulf coast who haven’t been able to rebuild… so we’re going back over Christmas, some for the fifth time since the storm.

What started as a group of 7 is now over 70 strong.

Show us some love… and if you’re near Westchester County, NY… come listen to some music:

The following just went out this morning via the Veterans for Peace list:

An associate of mine still believes that his stocks portfolio is safe (it will come back) even as he witnesses his business failing due to the credit freeze…but that is so American “it can’t happen here, it can’t happen to me,”… even though it is and right in front of our eyes.

And that is perhaps the most amazing trick as well as the biggest crime: making people believe that something works to their advantage, while in reality it drives them into debt-riddled poverty. People have this remarkable talent to fool themselves, to see only what they wish to see, and it can be a gift from heaven. But that’s not always a given.

http://theautomaticearth.blogs…

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for providing the information on this action alert.

Republican-in-Spirit Joe LIEberman has supported Republican dictators and right-wing policies for some years now.  In 2006, after losing a primary election to challenger Ned Lamont, LIEberman told Connnecticut voters that their will was irrelevant; he would run for re-election as an independent.  Lamont made a series of missteps afterward, losing out to his extreme right-wing opponent in the general election.  Since then, LIEberman has sided with Republicans on virtually every policy issue and used his caucus status with Senate Democrats to force them to adopt his position on legislation favorable to his Republican masters.

Now that there is an undeniable Democratic majority in the Senate, that political party no longer needs to coddle him by letting him keep the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.  According to Greenwald, president-elect Barack Obama is taking the official position of staying the hell out of Senate affairs.  This creates the opening we on the left require to pressure the Senate to dump LIEberman.

Of all of the egregious acts committed by the Bush Administration, there is one that stands out as a symbol of every wrong turn our nation took in his blessedly ending era. The use of the word Homeland to describe the Land of the Free. The unmistakable fascistic overtones simply ring of despotism and tyranny. The mind almost inevitably hears the echoes of Hitler’s Fatherland and Stalin’s Motherland. Though of course we only flirted with that level of jingoistic totalitarian reality, the fear based propaganda that took hold after 9/11 was shocking in its depth….and in the way it was embraced…here in the greatest democracy ever established. Here in the Land of the Free. We were asked…no, we were TOLD that we were required to give up our individual Constitutional Rights for the good of the State. There are many names and terms for that requirement, for that abrigement of our hard won rights. None of them contain the word Freedom.

Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act. All direct assaults on our freedom, on what America stands for, on what our veterans fought for. The fight for the rights of the individual in opposition to all forms of tyranny. That is the founding principle of America. America IS the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, it IS The Declaration of Independence…from tyranny.

With the election of Barack Obama, we can now see the light through the trees on the road back to the Land of the Free, but we are far from out of the woods yet.

When people talk of the crimes and excesses of the Bush Administration now, they talk in the past tense. But these crimes and excesses are still here. We still live under them, we still live with them, every day. The rights that were abridged under the Patriot Act are still abridged. The para-military powers that were given to the intelligence agencies and agencies like ICE and the DEA are still in effect. The government can still search your home without a warrant and without even notifying you. They can still search your medical and financial records without you knowing as well.

YOUR Government is still spying on YOU.

And for all we know….the CIA is STILL torturing people in our name.  

Demonstration Against the School of Americas (recently renamed Western Hemisphere Institute For Security Cooperation).

Also known as “School of Assassins” its graduates have been involved in many human rights abuses of Latin American civilians up to the killing of people.  This institution is run by the U.S. Army and teaches Latin American soldiers who have been involved in human rights violations against the people of their own countries.  Some of the people who have become victims of graduates of the SOA are human rights workers, labor organizers, religious people and even children.

The South Country Peace Group and the St. Joseph The Worker Pax Christi Group have organized a local demonstration to Long Island to show solidarity with demonstrators at Fort Benning and elsewhere around the country.

On behalf of a research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, I am posting this announcement. They are looking for volunteers to take an online survey about political attitudes and voting behavior.    

Here is the link to the survey:  

NYU Psych Survey

On that page you will find more information about the study.  

If you agree to be in this study, you will be asked to do the following:

1) Complete a questionnaire about your background (age, gender, education, etc.)

2) Report your opinions on various political and social issues and rate how important those issues are to you

3) Evaluate the Presidential candidates (Obama and McCain) on a number of traits and positions

We are interested in learning about your opinions throughout the course of the election, so we also ask you to participate in three bimonthly follow-up surveys that will be shorter but similar in content to the one you are about to complete. You are not required to do the follow-up surveys if you complete this survey, but we encourage you to do so.

Participation in the first session of this study will involve 15-20 minutes of your time. If you agree to participate in the follow-up surveys, each will take an additional 15 minutes. The total time for participation in all four biweekly survey sessions will not exceed an hour.

Also, if you participate in the followup surveys you can win $100.  

If you choose to provide your contact information (your email address), you will entered into a random drawing for 2 prizes of $100 for participating in the survey; if you withdraw before the end of the study, you will not be entered into the drawing. You will be entered into new drawing for $100 each time you complete a follow-up survey (up to four times total).

If you have questions about the survey or your participation they include contact info on that page as well.  

By request I am turning off the comments for this essay. They don’t want the sample to be biased by people talking about the survey here.    

Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein interview author Naomi Wolf tomorrow at 2:00 PM EDT for their online radio show, Drunken Politics.  This is the YouTube recording of an earlier interview.

In this election, to vote as a citizen of the state of Michigan, I will for the first time have to present photo identification at the polls, or sign an affadavit stating that I do not possess one. Michigan joins just seven states that now require photo ID.

In total, there are twenty-four states that require voters to present ID, although in seventeen of them no photo is required. In those states voters are able to vote with birth certificates and social security cards, forms of ID with no cost to acquire. This makes it possible for essentially all citizens to vote.

This is not the case with required photo ID laws.