Duty to Warn
When kids sit down to watch Sesame Street, they will now get a ”corporate sponsorship message” from McDonald’s, promoting yet more brand recognition for the largest fast food chain in the world.
Sesame Street thus becomes yet another advertising vehicle for McDonald’s, hooking a new generation of children on its high calorie, high fat, junk food — junk food that has helped cause an epidemic of childhood obesity and soaring rates of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other serious illnesses among children.
Sesame Street is one of the most popular children’s television programs on PBS. Parents expect the popular children’s show to educate their children about letters, numbers and healthy lifestyles, not entice them to eat more empty calories.
Go to the site below to tell Gary E. Knell, CEO of Sesame Workshop, to stop running corporate sponsorship messages for McDonald’s before or after Sesame Street.
act.actforchange.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/eVzn0FCm6x0JAe0gvg0A8
Sesame Street thus becomes yet another advertising vehicle for McDonald’s, hooking a new generation of children on its high calorie, high fat, junk food — junk food that has helped cause an epidemic of childhood obesity and soaring rates of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other serious illnesses among children.
Sesame Street is one of the most popular children’s television programs on PBS. Parents expect the popular children’s show to educate their children about letters, numbers and healthy lifestyles, not entice them to eat more empty calories.
Go to the site below to tell Gary E. Knell, CEO of Sesame Workshop, to stop running corporate sponsorship messages for McDonald’s before or after Sesame Street.
act.actforchange.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/eVzn0FCm6x0JAe0gvg0A8
The Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
(POCLAD) posted a “Model Legal Brief to Eliminate
Corporate Rights” to its website on October 10, making it available to help citizen groups create winning organizing strategies by stripping constitutional protections from corporations and preventing them from governing their communities.
Richard Grossman, co-founder of POCLAD, authored the brief with Thomas Linzey, Esq., director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, (CELDF) a public interest law firm in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Dan Brannen, a Santa Fe attorney.
The Brief was created to support community leaders and citizens across the United States who are confronting the array of judicially bestowed constitutional rights wielded by corporations. The Brief not only challenges “corporate personhood” – the theory that corporations possess the constitutional rights of people and therefore may use the Bill of Rights to get courts and police to deny people’s fundamental rights, but also confronts the powers corporations wield under the Commerce and Contracts Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Richard Grossman, co-founder of POCLAD, authored the brief with Thomas Linzey, Esq., director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, (CELDF) a public interest law firm in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Dan Brannen, a Santa Fe attorney.
The Brief was created to support community leaders and citizens across the United States who are confronting the array of judicially bestowed constitutional rights wielded by corporations. The Brief not only challenges “corporate personhood” – the theory that corporations possess the constitutional rights of people and therefore may use the Bill of Rights to get courts and police to deny people’s fundamental rights, but also confronts the powers corporations wield under the Commerce and Contracts Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP-Leavenworth
PO Box 1000
Leavenworth, KS 66048-1000
September 19, 2003
Greetings Sisters, Brothers, Friends and Supporters,
Well, we have just completed another round in the courts. I understand oral arguments went very well in Denver today. Barry, one of my attorneys, was able to brief me on the legal issues that were argued before the court.
The one legal issue that I was most concerned about was the secret parole hearing that was held without my or my attorneys’ knowledge.
Let me explain.
USP-Leavenworth
PO Box 1000
Leavenworth, KS 66048-1000
September 19, 2003
Greetings Sisters, Brothers, Friends and Supporters,
Well, we have just completed another round in the courts. I understand oral arguments went very well in Denver today. Barry, one of my attorneys, was able to brief me on the legal issues that were argued before the court.
The one legal issue that I was most concerned about was the secret parole hearing that was held without my or my attorneys’ knowledge.
Let me explain.
The problem with the modern
American liberal is that they
take things too darn seriously, says Michael Moore. The director of the Academy Award wining Best Documentary, Bowling For Columbine and author of the best-selling book, Stupid White Men was in Columbus October 30 as part of a 39 city tour to promote his new book, Dude, Where’s My Country?
Invited by the Students for Economic Labor and Justice, Committee for Justice in Palestine and the Council for Graduate Students, Moore spoke to a standing-room crowd of over 400 wildly enthusiastic students at the Ohio Union East Ballroom. Moore delayed his remarks step out to the front lawn of the Ohio Union to address a crowd of another 400 or so whom had been turned away. He told both audiences, “There’s hope that things are going to change and we’re going to remove George Bush.”
By an odd coincidence, the author of Dude, Where’s My Country was in the city at the same time as President Bush, the dude Moore says stole the country in the election of 2000. The president was in Columbus for a Republican fund-raiser.
Invited by the Students for Economic Labor and Justice, Committee for Justice in Palestine and the Council for Graduate Students, Moore spoke to a standing-room crowd of over 400 wildly enthusiastic students at the Ohio Union East Ballroom. Moore delayed his remarks step out to the front lawn of the Ohio Union to address a crowd of another 400 or so whom had been turned away. He told both audiences, “There’s hope that things are going to change and we’re going to remove George Bush.”
By an odd coincidence, the author of Dude, Where’s My Country was in the city at the same time as President Bush, the dude Moore says stole the country in the election of 2000. The president was in Columbus for a Republican fund-raiser.
Thanks to millions of real American patriots (peace, freedom, and environmental activists from every walk of life) the
truth about the ugly goals of the murderous Bush regime are being widely recognized.
In the face of the raucous and near-constant barrage of Republican neo-con lies and deceptions, as broadcast to us by the handful of fanatical right-wing billionaires that control our mass media, learning the truth about Bush is perhaps the greatest demonstration that our evolving democracy is still functioning.
In the face of the raucous and near-constant barrage of Republican neo-con lies and deceptions, as broadcast to us by the handful of fanatical right-wing billionaires that control our mass media, learning the truth about Bush is perhaps the greatest demonstration that our evolving democracy is still functioning.
In a March 7th Bush Commentary, you note:
"Jack Beatty in the Atlantic Monthly: Beatty suggests ... Bush's apparent belief that God has appointed him to lead a global crusade against evil.
"He writes, 'If this is what Bush believes, if his talk of Armageddon is not just catnip for the religious right, then he is in a fair way to becoming the American Ayatollah.
"'Bush's belief in God is based on his personal narrative of divine salvation as a recovering alcoholic. He once told members of the clergy, 'There is only one reason that I am in the Oval Office and not in a bar. I found faith. I found God.'"
First, I highly suggest that the two previous articles noted in my piece GEORGE W. and ALCOHOLISM as published In Counterpunch be read. Michael O'McCarthy: Bush and Alcoholism (Counterpunch - October 19, 2002)
There is nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate in the lifestyle of George Bush that he is a "recovered" alcoholic. (As indicated above, Bush explicitly implies that he is alcoholic.)
"Jack Beatty in the Atlantic Monthly: Beatty suggests ... Bush's apparent belief that God has appointed him to lead a global crusade against evil.
"He writes, 'If this is what Bush believes, if his talk of Armageddon is not just catnip for the religious right, then he is in a fair way to becoming the American Ayatollah.
"'Bush's belief in God is based on his personal narrative of divine salvation as a recovering alcoholic. He once told members of the clergy, 'There is only one reason that I am in the Oval Office and not in a bar. I found faith. I found God.'"
First, I highly suggest that the two previous articles noted in my piece GEORGE W. and ALCOHOLISM as published In Counterpunch be read. Michael O'McCarthy: Bush and Alcoholism (Counterpunch - October 19, 2002)
There is nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate in the lifestyle of George Bush that he is a "recovered" alcoholic. (As indicated above, Bush explicitly implies that he is alcoholic.)
Ann Coulter is the Right kind of woman. Strutting her political stuff, all flowing hair and short skirts, Coulter validates right-wing misogynist bluster and class arrogance. Ms. Coulter mistakes capitulation for independent thinking, when in fact, as long as she echoes Dennis Miller or Bill O'Reilly-attacking anyone who questions American aggression abroad, claiming that Bill Clinton lies with ease, and chanting "classic liberal scandal!"-she'll have a job. To be sure, it is a lucrative career move; reactionary polemic pays well.
Like Dennis Miller, whose transformation from liberal stand-up to conservative rant man boggles the senses, Ann Coulter has broken the code for success in the American hyper-conservative media: embrace the ideology of the moment and claim it as one's own. In the world of mostly male, self-important talk television, female collusion makes an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em kind of sense. In this case, like Camille Paglia, for example, a woman spouts the illiberal ideas most damaging to other women and earns access to those prizes-wealth, television face time, book contracts-largely controlled by men.
Like Dennis Miller, whose transformation from liberal stand-up to conservative rant man boggles the senses, Ann Coulter has broken the code for success in the American hyper-conservative media: embrace the ideology of the moment and claim it as one's own. In the world of mostly male, self-important talk television, female collusion makes an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em kind of sense. In this case, like Camille Paglia, for example, a woman spouts the illiberal ideas most damaging to other women and earns access to those prizes-wealth, television face time, book contracts-largely controlled by men.
US Senator Robert Byrd, on the floor of Congress, on October 17, has
explicitly compared the Bush media operation to that run by Herman Goering, mastermind
of the Nazi putsch against the German people.
On the same day, the Associated Press ran a national story linking Prescott Bush to Adolf Hitler. The lead read: "President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show."
That night, CNN ran a "streamer" on the bottom of its all-news programming confirming that "declassified documents show Prescott Bush connections to Nazi finance."
Stories reminding the public that the grandfather of George W. Bush and his United Trust Bank were cited by the US government in 1942 for helping Hitler under the Trading With the Enemies Act, have now spread widely through the major meda.
What's going on here? Are these stories linking Team Bush to the Nazis irrelevant? Mere partisan politics? Or do they indicate a growing public concern with what is actually happening in Washington?
On the same day, the Associated Press ran a national story linking Prescott Bush to Adolf Hitler. The lead read: "President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show."
That night, CNN ran a "streamer" on the bottom of its all-news programming confirming that "declassified documents show Prescott Bush connections to Nazi finance."
Stories reminding the public that the grandfather of George W. Bush and his United Trust Bank were cited by the US government in 1942 for helping Hitler under the Trading With the Enemies Act, have now spread widely through the major meda.
What's going on here? Are these stories linking Team Bush to the Nazis irrelevant? Mere partisan politics? Or do they indicate a growing public concern with what is actually happening in Washington?
My name is Michael O and I am a recovered alcoholic. I am also a progressive political activist. The two are not always
compatible. It is a principle of personal recovery from the disease of alcoholism that I will cease fighting anybody or
anything in order that I maintain the necessary level of spiritual serenity that keeps me from creating resentments and
justifiable anger. Those two emotional states will lead me to drink. They are, as our experience has taught, the two most
common emotional causes of relapses.
When I indulge in either of those two emotional states of mind, I am not rational. My perception is blurred by my own self-righteousness, which is driven by self-centered fear. That is not the right state of mind to live everyday life. Certainly not one by which to make decisions that affect all humankind. That is why I am writing.
When I indulge in either of those two emotional states of mind, I am not rational. My perception is blurred by my own self-righteousness, which is driven by self-centered fear. That is not the right state of mind to live everyday life. Certainly not one by which to make decisions that affect all humankind. That is why I am writing.
Did bankrupt energy company Enron Corp. influence a controversial decision federal energy regulators made in November 2000, saying California wasn't entitled to more than $3 billion in refunds from power companies who allegedly gamed the state's wholesale electricity market?
About two dozen of the more than one million Enron emails dealing with California's energy crisis, recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, appear to make a strong case that the one-time high-flying energy company had some role in influencing the FERC decision three years ago--a major blow to California consumers and two of the state's investor-owned utilities that were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Utilities in California lost billions of dollars buying high-cost power on the wholesale market and selling it at a loss under a state mandated rate freeze.
About two dozen of the more than one million Enron emails dealing with California's energy crisis, recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, appear to make a strong case that the one-time high-flying energy company had some role in influencing the FERC decision three years ago--a major blow to California consumers and two of the state's investor-owned utilities that were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Utilities in California lost billions of dollars buying high-cost power on the wholesale market and selling it at a loss under a state mandated rate freeze.