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As Italy’s elections go from bad to worse, Vicenza remains the silver lining

Just when it seemed things could get no worse on the Italian political landscape following the first round of elections, run-off elections this past Sunday and Monday proved the contrary. But the northern city of Vicenza, home to a vibrant citizens’ movement against a second US military base in their city, proved to be the silver lining.

Round One

In the mid-April elections that came after the collapse last January of the center-left government led by Romano Prodi, the center-right coalition led by media magnate, billionaire and staunch Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi not only beat out former Rome Mayor and leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, Walter Veltroni, but also with a very comfortable 9-point lead.

Desiree Fairooz was convicted today for calling out Condi

Peace activist Desiree Fairooz was convicted of disorderly conduct today in US Superior Court. Fairooz approached and called US Secretary of State Condi Rice a war criminal at a congressional hearing in September 2007.

Government prosecutor and pro-war supporter, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, asked Judge Richard Ringell to sentence Fairooz to 90 days in the DC Jail. Ringell told Fairooz that there is a price for civil disobedience that included jail time. However, the judge said he would not be sentencing Fairooz to jail time, according to peace activists who were in court today. Instead Ringell sentenced Fairooz to 5 days jail time suspended, 3 months of unsupervised probation, and the payment of $50 to the victims of violent crime fund activists said.

Did the US Supreme Court deliver the Indiana Primary to Hillary Clinton?

Imagine Hillary Clinton's luck.

When she needed to win a primary in New Hampshire, the machines glitched up, and she emerged with an unexpected margin of victory. Whether it was due to electronic voting breakdowns is not clear. But there was never a a full recount or a thorough investigation of the serious problems that plagued the vote count in that state.

When she needed a victory in Ohio, Republican voters -- urged on by Rush Limbaugh -- crossed over in droves and helped give her one. Cross-over voting may also have been a factor in her critical victory in Pennsylvania. There were also numerous instances of computer tabulation glitches in the Pennsylvania secretary of state's office.

Now the Indiana primary looms ahead. Less than a week prior, the US Supreme Court has delivered a devastating decision on voter ID that could again make a big difference in Clinton's favor.

Contrary to two centuries of American election law, the Court has ruled 6-3 that it is legal for a state to require official photo ID in order to vote. The lead decision in this case, written by liberal

Did the US Supreme Court just elect John McCain?

The US Supreme Court has just dealt a serious blow to voters' rights that could help put John McCain in the White House by eliminating tens of thousands of voters who generally vote Democratic.

By 6-3 the Court has upheld an Indiana law that requires citizens to present a photo identification card in order to vote. Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Georgia, Hawaii and South Dakota have similar laws. Though it's unlikely, as many as two dozen other states could add them by election day. Other states, like Ohio, have less stringent ID requirements than Indiana's, but still have certain restrictions that are strongly opposed by voter rights advocates.

The decision turns back two centuries of jurisprudence that has accepted a registered voter's signature as sufficient identification for casting a ballot. By matching that signature against one given at registration, and with harsh penalties for ballot stuffing, the Justices confirmed in their lead opinion that there is "no evidence" for the kind of widespread voter fraud Republican partisans have used to justify the demand for photo ID.

Shattering the war consensus

Why, for God’s sake, does nothing change? The war goes on, the money flows, the blood flows, the lies stay exactly the same. Have you noticed? Have you ever wondered, with a stab of transcendent confusion, why a self-correcting rationality hasn’t kicked in by now, why a saner awareness hasn’t made itself evident in the macro-affairs of the nation by now?

Folks, we have a seriously dysfunctional situation on our hands, more pervasive, I fear, than most of us realize. Deep into Bush II, our government appears to have taken on a crack house dysfunctionality. The institutional checks and balances that Americans are so proud of — including, of course, the watchdog media — have been so compromised by the war-junkie administration they’ve served and enabled they have almost no objectivity left with which to challenge or counter it. And thus the national war addiction permeates every facet of governance, and the media’s coverage thereof.

National Lawyers Guild urges Israel to permit Richard Falk to enter Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories

New York -- The National Lawyers Guild calls on Israel to permit Richard Falk, an eminent and widely-respected law professor and scholar, to enter Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories it seized forty years ago and has held illegally ever since.  Professor Falk was recently appointed as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Israel has barred entry to Professor Falk, claiming he cannot be fair because of his prior condemnation of persistent and pervasive human rights violations carried out by Israel in the Occupied Territories.  In fact, Professor Falk made no claims any different from those made by John Dugard, the man he was to replace, in several reports on conditions in the Occupied Territories. 

Making YOU pay for the next Chernobyls ... in advance!!

Are you ready to pay for the next Chernobyls---in advance? Are you willing to have nuclear power PREVENT a solution to the climate crisis?

Twenty-two years ago today, an apocalyptic cloud rose up from Unit Four, in the heart of the Ukraine. For the next few hundred generations, you and your progeny will breathe its radioactive fallout, which was thousands of times worse than that released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Conservative estimates of Chernobyl's financial costs are in the $500 billion range. In downwind regions festering with cancer and birth-defected children, the ultimate death toll is impossible to estimate.

Another Chernobyl could be happening as you read this. And you are already on line to pay for it.

The so-called "reactor renaissance" is built on high-priced lies and public liability.

Not one of the 104 US reactors now licensed to operate, and not one of the new ones being hyped, can get insurance from private sources against another Chernobyl.

Tune Your Radios to WCRS, 102.1 and 98.3 FM in Central Ohio

If you haven't pre-programmed your radios, take this reminder to start listening to WCRS, the Community Radio Service of Simply Living. We're broadcasting from 3-8 p.m. Mon.-Fri. and now on Weekends! The schedule now includes 8 hours weekly of local talk and music radio plus nationally syndicated Pacifica programming. Check out the schedule: WCRS Schedule. To get involved, call Zach at 447-0296 x103.

Truth wreckage

The interests of war, which siphon off 40 percent of every dollar we pay in taxes, have no choice but to declare peace — or at least truth — anti-American, because the blood myth of national exceptionalism, and the perpetual insecurity it creates, is all they’ve got.

It’s also all they need.

Did anyone, for instance, expect the Petraeus-Crocker testimony before Congress this week to affect or even address what we’re actually doing in Iraq? The best we get is some mild criticism from the opposition party, stern words about our “missteps” in the waltz to victory, ineffective calls for a timetable for troop withdrawal that, sincere or wholly insincere, will not in fact lead to a timetable for troop withdrawal because nothing is on the line in this testimony; and, in any case, no congressperson dares trample on “the seeds of nascent democracy” our boys and girls have been planting over there for the last five years. And lo, “There has been growth,” the general declared. And those baby democracies are so cute!

Can grandmothers end wars?

Here is the perfect Mother's Day gift for your mother, your mother in law, your grandmothers, and in fact for the men in their lives as well - who ought to be shamed into action. Joan Wile has published a book called "Grandmothers Against the War: Getting Off Our Fannies and Standing Up for Peace." As far as I know, this is her first book. It is very much an account of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. If more people did the same, we would put an end to war.

Of course, the people in this book are extraordinary, but everyone is, and the actions that Wile recounts this group of grandmothers having taken are actions she describes as fun and exciting. If more people understood that and acted on it, we would put an end to war.

These grandmothers in New York City hold a weekly vigil against the occupation of Iraq. And they mean it. They are protesting the current proposal by the Democrats to "oppose" the occupation by throwing another $178 billion at it. Quick! Quick! Can somebody "oppose" me like that?

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