Channeling Thomas Friedman

Get ready for a special tour of a renowned outlook, conjured from the writings of syndicated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. As the leading media advocate of “free trade” and “globalization,” he is expertly proficient at explaining the world to the world. If we could synthesize Friedman’s brain waves, the essential messages would go something like this:

Silicon chips are the holy wafers of opportunity. From Bangalore to Bob’s Big Boy Burgers, those who understand the Internet will leave behind those who do not.

I want to tell you about Rajiv/Mohammed/George, now doing awesome business in Madras/Amman/Durham. Only a few years ago, this visionary man started from scratch with just a vision -- a vision that he, like me, has been wise enough to comprehend.

So, Rajiv/Mohammed/George built a business on the digital backbone of the new global economy. Now, the employees fill orders on a varying shift schedule, and time zones are always covered. Don’t ask what they’re selling -- that hardly matters. They’re working in a high-tech industry, and the profits are auspicious. This is the Future. And it is good. Fabulous, actually.

Bush intends to follow law!

http://mattbors.com

Corrode your conformity: Big Brother doesn't practice fraternal love

"Non-violence is a weapon of the strong." --Mahatma Gandhi

"It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die that the country may live." --Maximilien Robespierre

October 17, 2006 is a watershed date in the epic struggle between oppressors and oppressed. Events of that day undoubtedly prompted Marx and Engels to awaken from their eternal slumber and spin violently in their graves. A mere swish of the pen by a conscienceless swine effectively transferred absolute power into the hands of a relative handful of rich and powerful individuals and corporations.

Happy birthday, Big Brother!

Over two centuries ago, 25,000 intrepid souls sacrificed their lives to free the American Colonies from the clutches of a ruthless empire and to found a nation based on democratic principles. Tragically, on 10/17 the tattered remains of freedom for which American Revolutionary soldiers spilled crimson rivers were reduced to mere abstractions by a miniscule volume of ink.

Important voter activism

This is REALLY important, and you can help by taking just a few minutes of your time over the next few days, from the comfort of your own home. 

Cuyahoga Board of Elections has “decided” NOT to post election results at the polling place, despite the fact that:

• Their May primary election debacle made national news, and voter confidence has plummeted.  (Why else would there be record numbers of voters clamoring to vote absentee?)

• The Election Science Institute revealed numerous discrepancies in vote counts among the different vote tallies (across the different media: paper, memory card, hard drive, etc.).

• There is undisputed proof that electronic voting (especially Diebold equipment) is vulnerable to fraud, hacking, and other security breaches.

• Judging by the Poll Worker Training Manual and numerous predictions, election day will be chaotic, with near impossible tracking of all election components.

• The general public is VERY concerned about electronic voting machines and wants transparency in the vote counting (Zogby poll – 92%)

Cheated!

"Cheated!" written by Sheri Myers illustrated by Sophie Goldstein, published by Wake Up and Save Your Country, 2006

Buy "Cheated!" through our online store now

Issue 3

COLUMBUS- Ah, election season in Ohio. I have been out of state for quite a while, but I am delighted to be back in Ohio for election time. One can walk down the street and all but smell the politics simmering: harried college kids taking a semester off to campaign, politicians out and about, sticking their noses into the very diapers of tiny constituents, the sickly sweet fragrance of ballot paper…wait, those ballots aren’t supposed to smell like that! Blackwell, what are you doing?

The Grinch of election season, our Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, as chair of the bi-partisan Ohio Ballot Board and the fifth vote on a board of five, has quite an influence over ballot language in this state.

Shareholder glee

I don’t mind gas prices from war in Iraq
since I have three shares of Exxon stock.
so I am prepared for oil shortage shock.

Halliburton shares are now on my buy list
for their war profits prove hard to resist
engineered to build each new terrorist.

Iran’s atomic threats don’t bother me,
because I support George Bush diplomacy.
proved  so successful exporting democracy.

Now Mid East war fronts will surely expand
with two more years with Bush still in command
prepared to lead us through foreign quick sand.

Deficits and casualties will sure increase,
as we have our leader allergic to peace
using war threats as election strategies.

The myth of microloans

The committee that gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel peace prize has given it this year to Mohammed Yunus, the economist who put the word "microloan" on the map with the Grameen Bank in his native land of Bangladesh. That's progress of a sort. But in terms of hot air, any sentences linking "peace" with "Henry Kissinger" aren't immeasurably more vacuous than the notion that microloans can help -- to use the language of the Nobel Committee's citation -- "large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty."

            Throughout the late Eighties and Nineties, in the verbal currency of First-World do-gooders, "microloans" became one of those magically fungible words, embedded in a thousand foundation and NGO annual reports, like "sustainable." What could be more virtuous in terms of prudent philanthropy than giving very small loans to very poor women? Microloans breathe healthful uplift, as divorced from the sordid world of megaloans (though not, it turns out, mega-interest rates), as are microbrews from Budweiser.

YOU CAN HELP ENSURE A FAIR ELECTION ON NOVEMBER 7, 2006

There are several ways that YOU can help protect the vote in 2006:
VIDEO THE VOTE: Help document irregularities on election day, join the team. Video records will be immediately uploaded to the web. If you are interested in the video project, please contact Melissa Giraud at melissa@columbusvotes.org. See Video the Vote on YouTube

PARALLEL ELECTION VOLUNTEER: Learn how hand-counted paper ballots are the most accurate way to count votes by helping in a citizen-run Parallel Election. For more information, contact Rady Ananda at rady.j30@gmail.com or Marj Creech at 740.940.5038 or risenregan@earthlink.net. See Parallel Elections

Breaking the silence of the night  

"A time comes when silence is betrayal".
 -Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967 

It all begins somewhere, the questioning, the doubting, the feeling that something’s not right; like that day the captain set fire to the Vietnamese woman’s hooch, or the night we shot those women and children by mistake. It’s all got to start somewhere. For them it might have been the innocent civilians killed that day at the checkpoint just north of Baghdad or the dead children lying in the road in Kirkuk, or that night in Nasiriyah when they kicked in the front door of that house, screaming and cursing at the children as they threw their father to the floor, tying his hands behind his back and putting a hood over his head, but you remain silent, you say nothing. You’ve been taught to follow orders, to obey and not question, to go along with the program and do exactly what you’re told. You learned that in boot camp.

Like many Americans who served in Vietnam and those now serving in Iraq, and countless other human beings throughout history, I had been willing to give my life for my country with little knowledge or awareness of what that really meant.

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