Global
Phone Your Representative to Co-sponsor H. Con. Res. 327 to End Rights
Violations in Aceh
The Indonesian Government has extended martial law in Aceh for another six months. As the civilian death toll mounts, governments of the world remain quiet. Act now to urge the U.S. Congress to send a loud and clear message that the Indonesian military's slaughter of Acehnese must be stopped. Urge your Representative to cosponsor H. Con. Res. 327.
H. Con. Res. 327 calls on the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to immediately declare a ceasefire and halt hostilities in Aceh, end all human rights violations, and return to negotiations with significant Acehnese civil society and international involvement. The resolution further urges Indonesia to refrain from using U.S.-supplied weapons in Aceh. The Indonesian military has used F-16 fighter jets and OV-10 Bronco planes against civilians, as well as C-130 cargo planes.
The Indonesian Government has extended martial law in Aceh for another six months. As the civilian death toll mounts, governments of the world remain quiet. Act now to urge the U.S. Congress to send a loud and clear message that the Indonesian military's slaughter of Acehnese must be stopped. Urge your Representative to cosponsor H. Con. Res. 327.
H. Con. Res. 327 calls on the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to immediately declare a ceasefire and halt hostilities in Aceh, end all human rights violations, and return to negotiations with significant Acehnese civil society and international involvement. The resolution further urges Indonesia to refrain from using U.S.-supplied weapons in Aceh. The Indonesian military has used F-16 fighter jets and OV-10 Bronco planes against civilians, as well as C-130 cargo planes.
I suggest you get a drug test you must be high on something. For one minute you actually think truck drivers are going to help you in the I-270 shootings. I think it will snow in hell first. Until your state reverses it's revenue seeking agenda directed towards trucks your not going to get the help you seek. It would be like Hitler asking the Jews to help eliminate themselves. The Gestapo like tactics to fill the state's treasury and the state police retirement fund must cease. I myself refuse to buy anything made in Ohio. I don't shop at Sears or Value City or buy anything made in Ohio at all. I always had respect for law enforcement until I traveled in Ohio. I always gave law enforcement the benefit of the doubt until I personally observed different. Well I can honestly say I have witnessed some highly questionable tactics and dealings by law enforcement officials in your state. Many in a unfavorable determination in my opinion and a few in a positive manner. I no longer have to go to your state or thru it but my boycott of your goods and services remain.
In a post today under the above title, David McReynolds of the
Socialist Party writes that we should "continue the fight to close down
the Guantanamo Base entirely, including its return to Cuba". It reminded
me of the last time that was an issue, during the Cuba Missile Crisis of
1962, which younger readers need to learn about. I describe it as
follows in my autobiography:
"American nuclear missiles had been stationed in Turkey, right on the Soviet border, for years. Now, however, American spy planes discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy announced a naval blockade against Soviet ships en route to that island, a flat violation of freedom of the seas, which is a long-standing, universal principle of international law. Its acceptance would mean Soviet surrender to domination of the world by the United States. Moscow could not accept that. The world was on the verge of nuclear destruction for the first and only time ever.
"American nuclear missiles had been stationed in Turkey, right on the Soviet border, for years. Now, however, American spy planes discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy announced a naval blockade against Soviet ships en route to that island, a flat violation of freedom of the seas, which is a long-standing, universal principle of international law. Its acceptance would mean Soviet surrender to domination of the world by the United States. Moscow could not accept that. The world was on the verge of nuclear destruction for the first and only time ever.
October 10, 2003
Dear President Bush,
Scouting for All joins with you in wanting "No Child Left Behind", as you stated in your Education bill and your 2003 State of the Union Address. I ask you, as honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America, to have the BSA join you in ensuring that gay and atheist children are not left behind by the Boy Scouts of America. The current national leadership of the BSA, located in your own home state of Texas excludes membership to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and atheist children and adults.
Dear President Bush,
Scouting for All joins with you in wanting "No Child Left Behind", as you stated in your Education bill and your 2003 State of the Union Address. I ask you, as honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America, to have the BSA join you in ensuring that gay and atheist children are not left behind by the Boy Scouts of America. The current national leadership of the BSA, located in your own home state of Texas excludes membership to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and atheist children and adults.
In a speech recently in Washington D.C., John Bolton, Undersecretary of State warned that Syria's WMDs threaten U.S. interests.
In the same speech, Bolton said that Iran and the rest of the "Axis of Evil" should know that all options are open against those "rogue states" that have WMDs. He also included Cuba, Libya and North Korea.
www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/december/12_04_2.html
In the same speech, Bolton said that Iran and the rest of the "Axis of Evil" should know that all options are open against those "rogue states" that have WMDs. He also included Cuba, Libya and North Korea.
www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/december/12_04_2.html
Howard Dean is asking for media trouble.
On Dec. 1, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination went where few national politicians have dared to go -- directly challenging the media conglomerates.
Don’t get me wrong. Dean’s record in Vermont hardly reflects an inclination to take on corporate power. His obsession with balancing budgets and coddling big business often led him to comfort the already comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Low-income people suffered the consequences of inadequate social services.
But let’s give the doctor-turned-politician some credit for a new direction. Midway through his Dec. 1 appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show, Dean said that he wants to “break up giant media enterprises.”
Dean went well beyond the hold-the-line stance adopted last summer by large majorities in Congress, who voted to prevent more media deregulation by the Federal Communications Commission. He declared that maintaining the media status quo isn’t good enough.
On Dec. 1, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination went where few national politicians have dared to go -- directly challenging the media conglomerates.
Don’t get me wrong. Dean’s record in Vermont hardly reflects an inclination to take on corporate power. His obsession with balancing budgets and coddling big business often led him to comfort the already comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Low-income people suffered the consequences of inadequate social services.
But let’s give the doctor-turned-politician some credit for a new direction. Midway through his Dec. 1 appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show, Dean said that he wants to “break up giant media enterprises.”
Dean went well beyond the hold-the-line stance adopted last summer by large majorities in Congress, who voted to prevent more media deregulation by the Federal Communications Commission. He declared that maintaining the media status quo isn’t good enough.
Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his incomparable memoirs that Soviet admirals, like admirals everywhere, loved battleships because they could get piped aboard in great style amid the respectful hurrahs of their crews. It's the same with the United Nations, now more than ever reduced to the servile function of after-sales service provider for the United States, on permanent call as the mop-up brigade.
It would be a great step forward if several big Third World countries were soon to quit the United Nations, declaring that it has no political function beyond ratifying the world's present distasteful political arrangements. The trouble is that national political elites in pretty much every member country -- now 191 in all -- yearn to live in high style for at least a few years, and in some case for decades, on the Upper East side of Manhattan and to cut a dash in the General Assembly. They have a deep material stake in continuing membership, even though in the case of small, poor countries the prodigious outlays on a U.N. delegation could be far better used in some decent domestic application, funding local crafts or orphanages back home.
It would be a great step forward if several big Third World countries were soon to quit the United Nations, declaring that it has no political function beyond ratifying the world's present distasteful political arrangements. The trouble is that national political elites in pretty much every member country -- now 191 in all -- yearn to live in high style for at least a few years, and in some case for decades, on the Upper East side of Manhattan and to cut a dash in the General Assembly. They have a deep material stake in continuing membership, even though in the case of small, poor countries the prodigious outlays on a U.N. delegation could be far better used in some decent domestic application, funding local crafts or orphanages back home.
Democracy in this country has been dying a slow death, since the
1960's. I am not sure people are putting their heads in the sand. Our
political culture is one built on trust in our system. If wrongdoers
are put into government, we will remove them in the next elections.
(Or, in the case of California, engineer a coup).
Needless to say, it is a scary thought to think our Democratic process has been hijacked. It is a scary thought to think that the American public does not see that "our liberties are being taken away to protect our freedom". And, they are not questioning why the world is against us. After all, we are a perfect country, since we go to church.
Needless to say, it is a scary thought to think our Democratic process has been hijacked. It is a scary thought to think that the American public does not see that "our liberties are being taken away to protect our freedom". And, they are not questioning why the world is against us. After all, we are a perfect country, since we go to church.
Dr. Fitrakis:
Just read your piece on voting fraud excerpted on the Smirking Chimp.
I don't doubt a word of it. But at this late date, as the next "stealable" election looms, what the hell do we do to at least try to stop it?! Articles like yours that provide no way out of the hell we've been plunged into do less good than harm, simply by increasing the sense of desperation in people already aware of the problem. If you warn me that my house is burning to the ground but have no flippin' idea how I might get out in time, have you really done me a favor? Is inculcating blind, inchoate rage/fear really useful to anybody?
Krugman plans to follow up his very recent column on hack box voting by providing real steps to take to help fight this evil in his next column. Here's hoping that you'll do the same.
As a ward director in the 1960 Nixon campaign, I was disgusted when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson seemed to have stolen the election. Nevertheless, on that day three years later I wept, watching the black-and-white TV along with my wife. For three days we watched, doing little else.
The event has even more depth for me now, as I see it in retrospect: the time when our national course took a sharp turn away from the one we had followed since the country's founding. The worldly wise Europeans knew they had witnessed a coup d'etat. How silly! This is America! The deed was done by a lone madman, captured and almost as promptly executed, saving us a trial.
The event has even more depth for me now, as I see it in retrospect: the time when our national course took a sharp turn away from the one we had followed since the country's founding. The worldly wise Europeans knew they had witnessed a coup d'etat. How silly! This is America! The deed was done by a lone madman, captured and almost as promptly executed, saving us a trial.