General Interest

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"7 Billion" reflects not only a message of global unity for environmental and social justice, but also acknowledges the struggle and everyday commitment their very own mothers and mothers around the world make to improve the lives of others.

It happened decades ago. That phone exchange in my parents’ kitchen.

It was not long after exiting my college “Camelot”. The steep plunge from grandiose, myopic college senior to insecure, jobless, debt-ridden returning daughter/enabler whose vision hadn’t included re-filling her parents’ empty nest. What in God’s name had happened to the delicious and adventurous fast-lane to an independent adult life? Somehow I had gotten on a wrong entry ramp and was zooming backwards in time.

I could feel four years of amassed self-esteem relentlessly leaking away with each passing, unemployed day – hour – minute.

Needless to say there was no small spurt of interest one listless afternoon when the owner of a perky, female voice at the other end of the phone identified itself as being from the public relations department of my recent, beloved college.

Apparently someone whom this woman could not identify had disclosed to her that I had a strong interest in acting. I was surprised she would bring that up. Yes, I did enjoy acting. I had acted a lot in high school. But when I had gone to the smallish college only theater majors had opportunities to perform so I had had to give the passion up for four years.

Patrick Martin of wsws has posted a provocative article on Barack Obama’s campaign use of the “take out” of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Martin:

There is something particularly degrading about the use of a state killing—in which dozens of heavily armed special ops troops mowed down the fugitive in front of his wives and children—to promote a political campaign. Obama presents himself, not so much even as commander-in-chief, but as “hitman-in-chief,” appealing to the worst social instincts.

snip

In speeches, interviews and a seven-minute web video narrated by former President Bill Clinton, the Obama campaign has hailed his decision to order the commando raid one year ago today on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, while suggesting that Republican Mitt Romney would not have made that choice.

Response to July 16, 2010 E-mail from NJ Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Which Lacked Truth, Integrity, or Merit
Andrew H. Dral ("Janosik" -- "The Rabble")

April 3, 2012

Gateway Center, 23rd Floor
Newark, NJ 07102

Dear Sen. Frank Lautenberg,

In response to your July 16, 2010 e-mail, I found your response completely lacking in any truth, without an ounce of integrity, and completely lacking any merit. It’s clear the United States (U.S.) isn’t your first country of loyalty, it is clearly Israel. From your e-mail, “The Israeli Navy intercepted these ships [Mavi Marmara flotilla] before they reached Gaza and were attacked by a small group of individuals on the lead ship.” The truth, the ships were illegally intercepted by the Israeli Navy in international seas. Second, the Israeli Navy attacked and murdered peaceful activists on the lead ship. In addition, the U.S. congress is the best government money can buy. The U.S. congress is beset by bribery, baksheesh, and wanton immoral greed. The Israelis and their fifth column within the U.S., American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have corrupted our congress. Congress is scared to death of the Israeli lobby. It has been bribed to follow the Israeli Likud Party line, U.S. Middle-east policy is set by Israel.

The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler’s Volkswagen

Finally, the full story behind emergence of Volkswagen, "Hitler's pet project"

We welcome back our contributing writer Paul Schilperoord, whose book “The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz – The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler’s Volkswagen” has just been released in the US and Canada.

On the Black Agenda Report website Jemima Pierre writes:

Clearly, and methodically, “the US government is preparing for domestic insurrection.”

.... In only three years, the Obama administration and its enablers have established, legitimized, and normalized a national security state apparatus that removes any doubt that domestic policing is a prelude to a totalitarian police state. This apparatus has surpassed the Bush administration’s attempts to expand executive power by crushing the civil liberties of US citizens. And it has done so boldly, with only a few prominent critics, and without so much as a whimper from so-called leftists.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a physician and public health advocate:

“A win/win solution is within reach if we can just shake off the Bush/Obama past and embrace a rational, effective drug policy for the 21st century.”

At the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Stein addressed tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates. Dr. Stein declared that one of her first actions as President would be to "order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws."

Stein asserted that hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from chronic pain and cancers are benefitting from medical marijuana. It has been deemed legal in 13 states.

Stein criticized Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee who Obama has promoted to head of the DEA. Leonhart has been behind the “overzealous” attacks on medical marijuana.

It’s been two years. Two years since our collective shock and awe over the worst environmental disaster in American history.

Horrified we watched for three long months as hundreds of millions of gallons of oil relentlessly bled into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP pr handlers and Obama spokespeople asked America to trust that this corporation and our government were seriously responding to the crisis and would do everything possible for future prevention of another such catastrophe.

Here is a stack of resurrected revelations and new revelations about the disaster that we must not let disappear into a national memory hole.

Eleven men died when BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. (Robert Weissman)

The blowout spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil and more than 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. (Common Dreams)

BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety device that could have prevented the blowout. (Robert Weissman)

An angry Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein had this to say about Obama’s certification last Sunday of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

President Obama called it a win-win. No, it's a lose-lose for workers. It's a deadly assault on the freedom of Colombian workers to organize, as well as on the freedom of American workers from unfair competition from workers who make poverty wages because they are violently repressed.

It is a trade pact, explained Stein, in which more than 80 percent of industrial and manufactured products exported from the U.S. and from Colombia will be duty free. More than half of U.S. agriculture exports to Colombia will also become duty free.

Stein:

The U.S. agricultural exports are not so-called free trade but subsidized trade. Many of them receive federal agribusiness subsidies. They will flood Colombian markets, displace Colombian farmers, reduce Colombia's food self reliance, and push farmers and farmworkers into the manufacturing labor market to further lower wages there. The trade deal is job killer for American workers and a wage depressor for Colombian workers.

The nation’s first Black President has taken us on the final descent into international barbarity with his drone offensive. It is a joy stick to Hell. Glen Ford

How can Obamacrats continue to ignore, minimize or even justify Obama’s ever escalating ILLEGITIMATE drone warfare?

Illegitimate war waging is the HIGHEST war crime.

Apparently in this election year, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh.” Don’t begin to call out a Democratic President for throwing out international law for what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report sees as Obama’s drive for “full spectrum dominance” over the planet. Excuse me for uttering this question but wasn't that what Hitler was ultimately challenged for? When if ever will Obama be?

Not easily in Post-Morality America. Of course not, in the smoke and mirrors “lesser evilism” propaganda for one of the two heads of really one amoral corporate party. Propaganda by big media especially the so-called progressive Obama hucksters on MSNBC leading American lemmings horrifyingly to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the terrorism this United States is inflicting all over the globe for corporate agendas NOW. Instead of panicking people about what will happen internationally if a Republican gets at the helm, why not take a hard look at what Obama is doing internationally?