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Obama urges swift passage of his cost-cutting health care plan
President Obama spoke Wednesday to press for passage of his health care proposals. His remarks at the White House came less than a week after he hosted a bipartisan health care summit, which ended with no agreement from Republicans to back his plan.
Media commentary leading up to Obama’s remarks Wednesday focused on whether or not he would speak the word “reconciliation,” which refers to a procedure whereby congressional Democrats could approve the health care legislation with a simple majority vote. With the loss of a Senate seat to the Republicans in the recent special election in Massachusetts, the Democrats no longer have the 60 votes to end a Republican filibuster.
Although Obama did not refer to reconciliation by name, his remarks made clear that he will push for passage of the health care legislation through this process, hoping for a bill to sign before the Congress recesses for the Easter break beginning March 29.
What was truly remarkable about the speech, however, was the reactionary scope of the proposals Obama is seeking to implement. Nearly a year after beginning the push for an overhaul of the health care system, his administration has crafted—with input from congressional Democrats—a plan that unabashedly defends the profits of the insurance and drug companies while reducing and rationing health care for ordinary Americans.
Georgia vs Russia: Fanning the flames
Eric Walberg
Will there be another war in the Caucasus? This is a smoldering issue on more than one front, finds Eric Walberg, in the first of a two-part analysis of the spectre of conflict in this crucial crossroads
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world expected a new era of peace and disarmament. But what happened? Instead of diminishing, US and NATO presence throughout Europe, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia rapidly increased, and the world experienced one war after another -- in the Caucasus, Yugoslavia , Iraq and Afghanistan , each one hotter and more horrible than the last. And we are far from seeing the end to the savagery now unleashed by the anti-communist jinni.
Israeli repression in Palestine is escalating - Mazin Qumsiyeh: “The Israeli army wants me”
Silvia Cattori inteviews Mazin Qumsiyeh
The Israeli army invaded Mazin Qumsiyeh’s neighborhood in Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem, on 2 March in the night, waking up his mother, wife and sister. Heavily-armed soldiers blocked roads during "the operation". When his family opened the door, they demanded to see Mazin Qumsiyeh (*). They were told that Mazin already left to the US. He replies here to the questions of Silvia Cattori.
Silvia Cattori: We heard that Israel is pressing hard on nonviolent protests. Can you give the background of this situation?
Mazin Qumsiyeh: Civil nonviolent resistance in Palestine, against the Zionist colonial project, has been going on for over 120 years. It escalated under British occupation between 1917-1947. But it became far more critical under the Zionist direct occupation from 1948 until today. The most visible events were publicized for example during the uprising of 1987 to 1991 when peaceful demonstrators were met with policies of breaking bones, shooting, home demolitions etc. With the effective ending of armed resistance in 2006 when Hamas entered the political process joining the other major factions, the only form of resistance that remained in a way threatening to the status quo of endless occupation was civil or popular resistance. Israeli authorities thus tightened the pressure on all forms of civil resistance. They arrested dozens of leading activists, harassed and beat others, and in several cases injured or killed peaceful demonstrators.
Mossad Comes to America: Death Squads by Invitation
James Petras
The principle propaganda mouthpiece of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO), the Daily Alert (DA), has come out in full support for Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassination.
In the face of world-wide governmental condemnation (except from the Zionist-occupied White House and US Congress), the PMAJO slavishly backs any brutal murder committed by the Israeli secret police anywhere in the world and at anytime. The recent assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Mabhouh, in Dubai is a case in point. The PMAJO has defended all of Mossad’s criminal actions leading up to the murder, including extensive identity theft and the stealing or falsification of passports and official documents from several European countries, presumably allied to the Zionist state. Among the Mossad agents who entered Dubai to kill Mabhouh, twelve agents used stolen or forged British passports, three Australian, three French, one German and six Irish. These agents assumed the identity of European citizens in order to commit murder in a sovereign nation.
An Ominous Drilling Sign for the Truth
By Robert Singer
The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
Bad Faith and Dead Kennedys
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
When Galileo was compelled to recant, it is said that he muttered inaudibly under his breath: "...but it does move". Earth, of course. The Catholic Church had maintained its doctrine of an unmoving Earth in unmoving space, a noumenal 'God's eye view' of absolute space. I may recant if someone holds a gun on me, but I will always be in danger of muttering too loudly and blowing my cover.
If I should ever be compelled to 'recant' my liberal, progressive views of both politics and metaphysics, it will be the because the American right wing will have created and enforced a dictatorship of both the very stupid and those who choose to be ignorant, a 'faith based dictatorship' , a 'faith based tyranny'.
Those who know better but rationalize their accommodation with such a dictatorship epitomize what the Existentialists call 'bad faith'! Any school curriculum, any dictatorship derived from either deliberate ignorance or 'bad faith' must be opposed, nipped in the bud, eventually overthrown, crushed and replaced upon true democratic and egalitarian principles subject to reality checks, pragmatic expectations, good sense, good faith.
Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
by Stephen Lendman
From birth, Israel was a regional menace until America became its benefactor in the late 1960s. Now it's a global one, powerful with a large standing army and the latest weapons and technology, nuclear armed and ready to use them. It's belligerent on the slightest pretext or none at all, and a threat to world peace and security because US administrations since Lyndon Johnson supported a nation of 5.6 million Jews in an area the size of New Jersey, partnering in its worst crimes and abuses.
It's due largely to the Israeli Lobby's influence, or as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in their book, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," America's Middle East policy is driven "almost entirely (by) US domestic politics, and especially (because of) the (Lobby's) activities....This situation has no equal in American political history."
WE'VE BEEN HAD, FOLKS / ARE YOU READY TO FIGHT BACK?
Allen L Roland
The American people have been had by the Oligarchy orEconomicElite and Clinton, Bush and Obama as well as their appointees are all co-conspirators. They all answer to the Business roundtablewhereas mainstream America's needs are seemingly irrelevant ~ fromunwanted wars to true healthcare reform. It's time for real change and it begins with ourselves:
I've used political cartoons by David Dees before but this one touches a special button. Millions of Americans, including myself, voted for true changein 2008 and what we got was not only Bush lite but the distinct feeling that we were not only being used but laughed at by the Economic Elite.Here's the big picture ~ 50 million Americans now live in poverty Half of all American children will need foodstamps at some point in their lives Hunger rates are now at all-time highs 50 million citizens are now without health care 1.4 million filed for bankruptcy last year, 60% of them because of medical bills 13 million are expected to lose their homes before the crisis is over Meanwhile, we incarcerate more people in the world than any other nation, and a new prison opens somewhere in America every week.
America's Permanent War Agenda
by Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11, Dick Cheney warned of wars that won't end in our lifetime. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said America "is engaged in World War IV, and it could continue for years....This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us." GHW Bush called it a "New World Order" in his September 11, 1990 address to a joint session of Congress as he prepared the public for Operation Desert Storm.
The Pentagon called it the "long war" in its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), what past administrations waged every year without exception since the republic's birth, at home and abroad. Obama is just the latest of America's warrior presidents that included Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush preceding him.
Tea-Parties and Progressives, Maybe We Should Listen to Each Other
By Timothy V. Gatto
I’m watching the Tea-Partiers, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones with interest, you see me and people like me are exactly the ones they profess to hate, Liberal Progressives. It makes me chuckle when I hear their complaints. Allow me to bring up some of their major complaints so we are all on the same page here.
One of their chief complaints according to The New York Times article written by veteran investigative journalist David Barstow’s “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right” is an all-powerful Federal Government that tramples on the people’s rights by spying on citizen’s, reading their e-mails and accessing their computers with no oversight. Well, gee folks, seems like this Liberal Progressive has been writing about this very same set of circumstances since the Patriot Acts were imposed by the Federal Government in their phony war on terrorism. It seems that the war is on us; the very citizen’s that the government is supposed to protect.
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