Town Hall Meeting

We have a whole page dedicated to protest songs here, but the peace jukebox actually got the rights to songs so you can listen to them online. Go to www.peace.fm and check it out. Power to the people, music for the soul!

…and other propaganda like that make this story even more sad. A 12 year old boy died from a toothache is the headline. This article does a good job of going into all the details of how it happened. Basically what occurred is he got a toothache, his family had been dropped from Medicaid, and his brother was dealing with 6 rotten teeth, so they didn’t take Deamonte to a dentist. Then the tooth got infected and the bacteria spread to his brain. He spent 6 weeks in the hospital before he died. “God Bless America” and “This is the greatest country on Earth” make me wince a little more after reading this story. This should not happen, especially in such a wealthy country. America is still the only industrialized nation in the world without a national health care system.

This is a great story about giving a much needed water buffalo to a poor family in China. The amazing part is how this can be done so cheaply for the typical American yet it is so life changing for this family. Its an inspiring story. Check out the video by clicking the link below, it is only about 7 minutes.

http://www.thompsonjazz.com/movies/waterbuffalo/

Thanks Quinn for the link!

Surge the twins, George W. Bush! When will you listen: we reject your manifest destiny for capitalism. Click on the picture below for some images of the protest.

This picture is of a sign on the corner across from the protest. I am amazed at just how much Americans yearn for and idolize power and wealth. I don’t claim to be immune myself, but while protesting war and staring at this sign I have to ask, is there any virtue in wealth and power?

A song about a merger between MBNA and Bank of America. Wow, you have to see it to believe it. I hope you enjoy this try at heartfelt, touching capitalism…bank conglomerate-style!

This blog was started two years ago in the wake of the George Bush victory**. We held a phone call with about 25 people from around the country to figure out why on earth that happened. Well, this election turned out the way we believed it should have in 2004: with those who are liars and for this debacle in Iraq voted out of office. Of course there is a long way to go. Who knows if the Dems really will have the courage to stand up to the real power of America, big business. I believe the takeover of Congress is a postive step. Cheers to all you voters out there and volunteers who helped make this whole thing happen.

**I know he barely won, if at all due to the cheating in Ohio, but it shouldn’t have even been that close as far was we are concerned.

Wow, watch this film if you can. It documents in great detail the 2002 coup of Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. This coup was perpetrated by the elite of Venezuela, with the alleged backing of the CIA. Two Irish filmakers happened to be making a documentary when the coup took place, and this film is the result. One side note that I think is very interesting is when you see the interviews of people united against Chavez, they are wealthy of course, but they are also much more light skinned than the average Venezuelan. I have noticed that in many countries the affluent tend to be more light skinned, just like in the US. This is a side note when it comes to the film, but it was something that kinda got to me while I was watching. Can racism be more blatant? Look around you the next time you are with mostly rich or mostly poor. The film is about 75 minutes.

Answer by George Carlin.

Some names that give me concern because they are powerful and they are Democratic presidential hopefuls and they are sometimes considered liberal or centrist: Biden, Clinton, McCain, and Schumer.

Some names that give me relief are all 30 (not one Republican) who voted for it. You can see how everyone voted at the senate website: Cluster Bomb Vote Breakdown.

Who would vote against such a thing, it is beyond comprehension. This issue has been around for a while but was reignited when Israel dropped cluster bombs on Lebanon in the last days before the recent cease fire. Many of the bomblets go undetonated, and then days or weeks later innocent people might walk by and trigger them, killing or maiming all near it. This is the exact same problem with land mines and the reaosn why land mines have been made illegal all over the world. But here we have the US Senate voting 70-30 against stopping the use of cluster bombs! In case you are wondering, the US uses cluster bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan and NATO used them in Yugoslavia in 1999.

1. Torture
2. Held prisoner without a trial
3. No access to lawyers
4. No right to hear the charges (if any) against them
5. Taken prisoner without charges

Go to shutitdown.org to show your leaders you want the Guantanamo Bay prison center shut down immediately.

I went to a 10pm showing last night and the place was full, which is great, and the parking lot looked like 5% of the cars were hybrids! I think this film is excellent. It is a documentary of Al Gore doing a presentation about global warming that he has performed over 1000 times, as he says in the movie. The reason I liked it is it lays out the problem piece by piece, including the history, the science, the arguments against it, and then gives solutions at the end that we can all do to fix the problem. And it is fixable. He gives the example of the great progress we have had as a global community in fixing the ozone layer.

A part of the movie that I was waiting for and it did deliver on was showing just how much America pollutes compared to the rest of the world. I think the average American (as do some in my own family) thinks that America has the strictest environmental laws in the world and thus does not pollute nearly as much as most others. Well, neither of those things are true, as this film points out. America’s fuel economy standards are half that of China, Europe, Taiwan, and Japan. And American pollutes more global warming causing chemicals than all other countries, and if you remove Europe, all other countries combined.

They have a website called climatecrisis.net which you can check out for ideas on how to start living a life that contributes less and less to global warming. You can see the trailer here.

Philip Zimmermann, who brought us PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) for encrypting email for free, has just released encrypted VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol aka internet phones) software. See the story in the NY Times here. The name of the free software is Zfone. You can download Zfone free here.

Working For Change has sent out an email asking people to email their phone company if you disagree with the NSA spying program and are not happy with paying a company for this kind of phone service. Here are the links:

* Contact AT&T: www.consumer.att.com/contact?source=body
* Contact Verizon: www22.verizon.com/CustomerSupport/ContactUs/
* Contact BellSouth: www.bellsouth.com/contactus/index.html

If you need any more motivation other than just being angry, I truly believe that direct action against a corporation is more effective than asking a politician to do it for you!

I went to the immigration protest today in downtown Los Angeles. I posted pictures here. I arrived late, missing the march but making it to the rally at city hall. It was another great showing of peaceful citizens demanding respect for their opinions. I’d say there were about 3,000 people at the rally when I got there, which is usually less crowded than the actual march. A lot of the speeches were in Spanish, which as a typical American, I couldn’t understand. You ever hear this one?

What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 1 language? American.

Here’s to making sure immigrants and the people that help them aren’t made felons – hell no to H.R. 4437.

I would like to summarize a thought put forward by Noam Chomsky recently that I think is highly relevant today. When watching or reading non-Iraqi people debate whether or not America should withdraw, consider his words.

When asked whether or not the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq immediately, Chomsky said that invading armies have no rights whatsoever. In fact, they have two responsibilities: (1) heed the will of the victims of the war (2) pay war reparations. And so in terms of withdrawal, his answer is that his opinion does not matter, so long as the Iraqi people want America out, as they overwhelmingly do. The reporter then asked him what about the concern that Iraq will turn into chaos and civil war. Chomsky replied that Germany could have said the same about France during WWII (and that in fact when the Germans pulled out of France, perhaps 10,000 people were killed as collaborators), and Japan could have said the same about the Asian countries it occupied, and the Soviet Union about the Russian satellite countries it occupied.

I just wanted to put this point on the blog for the record because daily I hear these debates between presumably well-meaning people, about how the U.S. has a responsibility to stay in Iraq. I strongly agree with Chomsky’s assertion that the U.S. has a responsibility to adhere to what the victims want from us. Coincidentally, isn’t that how democracy works anyway?

I marched in the Los Angeles protest on Saturday to mark the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq invasion by U.S. led troops. The turnout was once again great, I would say around 5,000-7,000 people came to represent. You can see my pictures here. This march was another sign of hope that we are not alone and in fact huge numbers of us want peace and justice. Los Angeles is such a huge, disconnected place with no open spaces and to see such a huge group gather like this for the 3rd time in a year is very promising.

I just added this song called “Message For Freedom” by Sarah Thompson to our protest songs page. You can listen to it from a segment on DemocracyNow! Watch it here or you can download it here. This is licensed under Creative Commons, so don’t worry, it is legal to download! This song is very moving.

MoveOn has started a petition to be sent to your local Senator to stand up with Senator Feingold to censure Bush. The Bush administration is using fear to get Americans to allow themselves to be illegally monitored. Information came out this morning, as reported here on Democracy Now!, that at least one pacifist group has been monitored. I believe the Bush administration is using this power to eliminate dissent, and so I signed the petition. Go to this site to sign up: political.moveon.org/censure/.

This clock is from a cool site called zFacts.com. According to the about page, the site is done by a PhD in Economics who asks good questions and tries to look only at the facts. What a novel idea!!! This clock I think tells a lot. I thought about just displaying the debt clock, but I think comparing it to the social security clock puts the social security issue in greater context.

The anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is coming up again. There will be mass protests all around. Demonstrate your disgust for militarism, greed, nepotism, cronyism, or just go out and meet a bunch of fellow peaceful citizens. Try a google search to find a protest near you, or any of the following links:

www.internationalanswer.org
www.unitedforpeace.org
www.campusantiwar.net
www.warresisters.org