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We are encouraged that PAW (Paw Advocates for Wahoff) is making steady progress toward the reinstatement of Lisa Wahoff from "Paid Administrative Leave" to her position as "Director of the Franklin County Animal Shelter".

However, PAW cannot rest for one minute, but hastens to redouble all efforts in order to achieve Lisa's speedy return to the Shelter, where she is sorely needed during this period of investigation by the County Commissioners. In the meantime, the Commissioners need to know that the community does not appreciate playing politics with its most vulnerable animals. PAW presented its first batch of signed petitions in favor of Wahoff to the County Commissioners on February 5, 2009. With more moderate weather, we will now be able to get many more petitions distributed, signed, and delivered on a weekly basis. People just need to be made aware of them to eagerly sign, and even help in the petition drive. (See attachment to download petition)

If we can move beyond torture, do we not have a responsibility also to think for a moment about the obvious fact that torture is not the cruelest thing we do? Torture offends us, in part, because the torturer is not at risk, but neither are most pilots dropping bombs. And how exactly does the risk taken by ground troops mitigate the suffering of those they wound, kill, and terrorize? Hanging someone by the wrists offends us, and yet we might rather have it done to us than be kept in 23-hours-a-day isolation for a decade, a practice that is part of our accepted justice system. Clearly our morality is a scrambled hodge-podge of reactions that could use some improvement.

Rest assured, there are powerful interests that will not put up with an Obama presidency if it’s about even half the changes it threatens — I mean, promises — to make.

Watch them circle, yipping at his integrity. “Obama’s moralizing tone may not wear well,” a Wall Street Journal headline archly surmised a few days ago. “How often do Americans want to hear how misguided they were before his arrival?”

Huh? The new president didn’t simply, inscrutably “arrive” at the White House, as though appointed by, oh, Rod Blagojevich. He was elected by a serious, screaming-for-change majority of Americans to do precisely what he is doing, and so much more — that is to say, to upset to the point of apoplexy the status quo of war and greed as represented so faithfully by, among many other media hypocrites, the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

One of the remaining Bush appointees in the Obama administration is the U.S. representative to the International Whaling Commission (IWC). And like the man who appointed him, William Hogarth is wreaking destruction on our planet and its inhabitants.

On February 2, Hogarth submitted a proposal that would lift the international moratorium on whale hunting. Tell President Obama you don't support U.S.-sanctioned killing of wales! >>

Hogarth brokered a proposed deal that would allow Japan to do new "coastal whaling" in exchange for ramping down so-called "scientific" whaling over the next five years.

But a slow decline in one type of whales being killed in exchange for opening a new group for slaughter is not a compromise that's acceptable! Hogarth's proposal puts the threatened coastal Japanese whales at even greater risk. The IWC needs to instead focus its attention on stopping whaling altogether.

AMY GOODMAN: A coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision from the $900 billion stimulus bill that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. We host a debate between independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman and Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder and member of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Guests:

Harvey Wasserman, Independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist. In the early 1970s he helped found the grassroots movement against nuclear power in the United States.

Patrick Moore, co-chair of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. He is founder of the organization Green Spirit. In the 1970s he was one of the founding members of Greenpeace.

Rush Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: As the Senate continues debate on President Obama’s $900 billion economic stimulus plan, a coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants.

I want to thank each and everyone of you for your efforts in my urgent time of need, you cannot imagine how much my spirit has been lifted from the cards and letters, the phone calls and how everyone kept up the pressure. My gratitude is really more than I can express.

My return to Lewisburg was met like a hero’s welcome, and many people came to assure me of my safety there. It is so ironic that the prisoners in a federal maximum-security prison can guarantee my safety, but the Bureau of Prisons will not. I did not say, “cannot”, but “will not” do so. You have to remember the BOP is a little brother to the FBI and they came from an illegitimate mother called the JUST-US (Justice) Department.

It’s the 90th anniversary this month of the general strike that brought the city of Seattle to a virtual standstill -- one of the very few general strikes in U.S.history and certainly one of the most dramatic and disruptive.

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson described it this way: “Street car gongs ceased their clamor. Newsboys cast their unsold papers into the streets. From the doors of mill and factory, store and workshop, streamed 65,000 working men. School children with fear in their hearts hurried homeward. The lifestream of a great city stopped.”

It was one of no less than 3,600 strikes that broke out nationwide in that post- World War I year of 1919. Steelworkers, coal miners, workers of all kinds – even policemen -- walked off the job.

They acted in response to drastic reductions in the wages that the heavy demand for labor during the war had brought them, the onerous working conditions that were now imposed on them and the widespread attempts by government and employers to destroy their unions.

The American Federation of Labor’s local council called the Seattle general
The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus Package.

It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new reactors Wall Street wouldn’t finance even when it had cash. It will take a healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your Senators now.

The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for “eligible technologies” that would technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed at nukes and “clean coal.”

The Stimulus Package is explicitly meant to create jobs within the next two years. But according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, no new reactors could be licensed for construction within that time. Nor could any new coal plants. And thus the funds in this rider are to "remain available until committed." That means their "stimulus" might not go into effect for many years.

Celebrating the fact that J. Kenneth Blackwell was defeated in his recent bid for the leadership of the Republican National Committee! Actually, he did about as poorly as a guy could do. Of course though, the Dispatch left a few things out and well, Bob Fitrakis points out a few of them here. Enjoy!



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