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No More Pretense for Health Reform
By Kevin Zeese
CBO Estimates 36 million will still be uninsured ten years from now under most robust Democratic Plan
Well, cloudy rhetoric of “universal health care” is being clarified with the first Congressional Budget Office initial scoring of a health care bill. The two key issues of cost and coverage are not going to be solved with the health care reform being considered.
The CBO scored the Kennedy-Dodd proposal, the most robust of the reform proposals actually being considered, and the bottom line is that it will leave 36 million without coverage a decade from now. That is not what the Democrats and Obama have been promising. It is nowhere near universal coverage.
In response to Netanyahu’s speech
The Palestinian Return Centre
In a key policy speech coming at the back of seeming US pressure for a move towards peace in the Middle East, the right of return, a fundamental pillar for lasting peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, is gravely threatened as the Israeli Prime Minister; Benjamin Netanyahu, lays out his vision of a Palestinian State.
Stating for the first time that he would accept an independent Palestinian State, his overtures to peace, warmly greeted in the US, is full of conditions on the Palestinian side, with no substantial concessions on the Israeli side. The “right of return”, which Netanyahu so easily dismissed in his speech, is for Palestinian refugees, a core pillar for any lasting peace recognised by various UN resolutions and international law. ‘These are the fundamental rights of Palestinians, behind which is the force of the world community and any peace initiative which detracts from this formula will fail miserably’, said Majed Al Zeer, Director of the Palestinian Return Centre.
Time to Emancipate the Airwaves: The Airwave Abolition Movement
Paul Scott
Back in 1865, two years and some change after Abe Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves in Texas finally got the memo that chattel slavery had been abolished. Better late than never I suppose. However, if the right wing talking heads had their way, black folks would still be picking cotton in 2009.
This is the week of Juneteenth week (June 15-19th) a time when African Americans celebrate the end of the last vestiges of that peculiar institution. It is a time to celebrate the freedoms of this country that were so long denied African Americans.
But some things are still in bondage; the airwaves.
While this country prides itself as being a diverse melting pot of ideals and a plethora of differing opinions, the airwaves have long been dominated by a right wing conspiracy to control all conversations concerning race, class and all things political.
Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal - An interview with Aviva Chomsky
By Hans Bennett
Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts. The most recent books she has written are Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. (Duke University Press, 2008) and They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration. (Beacon Press, 2007). She has also recently co-edited The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights/Bajo el manto del carbón: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas del Cerrejón, Colombia (Casa Editorial Pisando Callos, 2007) and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2003).
LIGHTS-OUT ON THE TUBE
From post by nimda/‘In the Public Interest’ on Nader dot org
Excerpted, edited by Carolyn Bennett
“Television today—over the air and cable—with the usual exceptions, could empty the dictionary of disparaging adjectives.…”
Television is “… second-rate movie reruns, insipid sitcoms dependent on canned laughter, dramas so spilt-second violent they eliminate any kind of memorable suspense.… Some time slots—such as daily afternoon talk-entertainment shows—are so bad, so sadomasochistic and exploitive, they escape media critics.…
“…On weekends, the shows swing from slick infomercials pushing cutlery and real estate wealth, to sports that become duller play by play—especially golf—to Sunday morning news programs where evasions of predictable questions run on and on.
A Sunday with Vanunu
eileen fleming
Occupied East Jerusalem, June 15, 2009- Mordechai Vanunu and I, first crossed paths on the first day of summer in 2005, which was five days before my return to the USA from my first 16 Days in Israel Palestine [1]
On my last evening of my seventh trip to occupied east Jerusalem, Vanunu and I had a drink at the American Colony. Vanunu had a Taybeh beer, which is produced in the last remaining self-sufficient and last remaining Christian village in the entire West Bank.
I ordered a Vodka tonic and Vanunu warned me, that I should never have more than one shot a day. I replied, it was only my first and I had my last in the taxi on my way to Ben Gurion Airport. I knew it would be hours before I cleared SECURITY and the game we played had gotten tiresome for me- and I imagine it a death unto them who make a paycheck for interrogating those who are Telling the Truth at Ben Gurion... [2]
Does Israel Really Have a Right to Exist?
Susan Abulhawa
Following Netanyahu’s much anticipated policy speech, politicians and journalists, like mindless automatons, have set about repeating Israel’s tired mantra that Palestinians should recognize Israel’s right to exist. Never mind the fact that the PLO and Palestine Authority have obliged this ludicrous call, not once, but four times. And never mind that Israel has always denied Palestine’s right to exist, not only as a nation, but as individuals seeking a dignified life in our own homeland.
Does anyone find it interesting that Israel is the only country on the planet going around with this incessant insistence that everyone recognize her right to exist? Given that we Palestinians are the ones who have been dispossessed, occupied, and oppressed, one might expect that we should be the ones making such a demand. But t hat isn’t the case. Why? Because our right to exist as a nation is self-evident. We are the natives of that land! We know we have that right. The world knows it. That’s why Palestine doesn’t need Israel or any other country to recognize her right to exist. We are the rightful heirs to that land and this can be verified legally, historically, culturally, and even genetically. And as such, the only true legitimacy Israel will ever have must come from us abdicating our inheritance, our history, and our culture to Israel. That’s why Israel insists we declare she had a right to take everything we ever had – from home and property, cemeteries, churches and mosques, to culture and history and hope.
Steadfastness and solidarity at the Rafah border
from International Movement to Open Rafah Border
Palestinians wait in line to buy bread at a bakery in Gaza
Under pressure from the Egyptian army and the police, the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border ( IMORB), is maintaining their camp at the Rafah Border. The group is growing; now 26 people from France, USA, Germany, Egypt, Belgium, and Sweden.
Yesterday, our Italian friend left us for his job in Italy, but a German woman, Alona, married to a Palestinian from Rafah, joined us with her six children, aged 2 to 12. She wants to return to live with her husband and other three children in Gaza. After Egyptian authorities denied her entrance, she said, “I am coming from Germany and I don’t wish to go back to sleep in El Arish. I come here and I only want one thing: to go to Gaza.” By phone, her husband asked his family to join the IMORB camp.
AMA Does Not Speak for Doctors
From Kevin Zeese
As the American Medical Association (AMA) begins its annual convention in Chicago, we want to take this opportunity to make it clear to the American public, to the media, and to the President and members of Congress, that the AMA does not represent us. It is a common misconception that this organization speaks on behalf of most American physicians but that is a misconception with very serious consequences at such a critical time in the healthcare reform debate. So long as the public, the media and our elected officials lump all physicians together as "the AMA", then we are guilty by association of a failure of our Hippocratic oath to "first, do no harm".
Extremism and Suffering Children
William John Cox
What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is "children," and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.
In 1981, acting as a public interest lawyer, I represented a Holocaust survivor who had been a 17-year-old boy when his entire family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps. We sued a group of radical right-wing organizations that denied the Holocaust and, as a publicity ploy, had offered a reward for proof it had occurred.
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