Just a few hours ago Boulder’s Unity Church hosted a talk given by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and author of Standing Up to the Madness. I was turned on to the website and this book (she has others) a couple of months ago by my friend Jeff and have since checked the website everyday as one of my sources of news. The site contains videos and transcripts from their daily newscasts that are also available on radio stations and television stations across the US.

Goodman talked a decent amount about the importance of independent media in her talk. Because of the corporate media’s agenda and desire to maintain the status quo, people need sources that don’t warping the truth or lie for the sake of profiting from higher ratings. Much of the large news organizations are dominated by pundits and commentators that, as has often put it, “know so little about so much, explain the world to us, and get it so wrong.”

Other topics were covered as well. Apparently, Senator Obama was a supporter of single-payer health insurance, but clearly this is not what President Obama now advocates. Health care companies use their millions of dollars to influence his policies to ensure that they continue to make ridiculous profits, and he probably has other less than satisfactory reasons as well. Meanwhile, 45,000 people die each year because they don’t have health insurance – 123 a day.

When Goodman asks large media outlets why they don’t really cover anything about single-payer, they say it takes too long and cannot fit it in to their 8-second soundbites. Well, saying “It’s Medicare, but for everyone” probably only takes half that. Obviously, something fishy is going on there. Just another reason to avoid the corporate media. (Hey, weird fact: did you know Keifer Sutherland’s grandfather, Tommy Douglas, was the man who introduced universal health care in Canada?)

Is it not ironic that just as Obama is expected to announce an escalation in the war in Afghanistan, he will also be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize? Goodman pointed this out to the audience, which BTW was quite large. Among other issues addressed in this talk were climate change and the importance of dissent in democracy.

As far as speakers go, her voice isn’t the most incredible. But listening to her was quite the experience. She is surprisingly funny while also being informative, engaging, and inspiring. No better way to spend a Saturday night.

Earlier this week, The Nation published a report about Blackwater and its operation in Pakistan.  Also, Jeremy Scahill who did the Nation article and a number of other articles and a book on Blackwater did an interview on Democracy Now! on Tuesday.

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan (from The Nation)

Democracy Now! from November 24, 2009

As UC Berkeley Investigates Police Brutality Against Students Protesting Fee Hikes, a Report From Inside the Takeover of Wheeler Hall.

More and more the actions on the UC campuses make me really want to attend UCSC, but at the same time think about waiting until next year.

Just watched this ‘explosive’ piece! A must watch for all.

Democracy Now – Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan: Jeremy Scahill Reveals Private Military Firm Operating in Pakistan Under Covert Assassination and Kidnapping Program*

 In an explosive new article in The Nation magazine, investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reveals the private military firm Blackwater is part of a covert program in Pakistan that includes planning the assassination and kidnapping of Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects. Blackwater is also said to be involved in a previously undisclosed U.S. military drone campaign that has killed scores of people inside Pakistan. The article says the program has become so secretive that top Obama administration and military officials have likely been unaware of its existence. In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Scahill joins us for his first interview since the story broke.

Listen/Watch/Read

(more photos from UCB by Andrew Stern)

From Student Activism:
Tomorrow is the one-week anniversary of the first University of California protests (and arrests) against the regents’ decision to impose huge new fees on the students of the system, and UC’s activists show no signs of letting up.

Today saw a rally and march on the main administration building at UC Irvine, and the first arrest of the week at that campus. It also saw a candlelight vigil — still ongoing — at UC Berkeley, in the wake of the news that the university will be investigating charges of excessive police force at protests there last week.

And at UC Davis, where 52 protesters were arrested in an occupation of administration building Mrak Hall last Thursday, students are hunkering down for the night at Mrak again. The Davis activists’ blog reports that between sixty and seventy students are in Mrak now, and they’ve “made a commitment to stay the night.” They’re dancing, they’ve ordered pizza, and they’re settling in to chat about demands.

Follow the Davis occupation on twitter.

From Democracy Now:

As UC Berkeley Investigates Police Brutality Against Students Protesting Fee Hikes, a Report From Inside the Takeover of Wheeler Hall

The University of California, Berkeley is investigating allegations of police brutality against students and workers protesting fee hikes and budget cuts last week. 40 students were arrested Friday night after campus police entered Wheeler Hall, which the students had taken over earlier in the day. The students were part of a statewide movement protesting the UC Board of Regents decision to raise tuition by 32 percent. Independent journalist Brandon Jourdan, who was embedded with the students inside the occupied building on Friday, files a report for Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now talks with Raj Patel on America’s growing hunger crisis. You can find her indepth video report here.

It was said by Thomas Jefferson that all democracies end when the people realize that they have control of the treasury.  It seems that we have fully heeded that advise with the set-up of the Federal Reserve with its secrecy, independence, and non-accountability.  We the people seem to have no control of how big the bubbles get, how worthless our currency becomes, weather we vote for one side of the aisle or the other, we do not effect our overall monetary policy.  I believe it is now time to ignore the advise of our forefather and take the secrecy, the independence, and add an incredible amount of accountability, if not altogether rid ourselves of the Federal Reserve!

Over the past few months it has been increasingly interesting to me to see both conservative and liberal extremes agree with one another.  The libertarian and far left both agree that the corrupt wall street in full partnership with central banker is both irresponsible and immoral.  Yet the mainstream conservative and liberal (republican and democrat) seem to also agree, that is to maintain the status quo, and learn nothing from the past year.  Truly if nothing changes then nothing changes; and it is that “true change,” that inspired both a nation and a world, that seems to be failing us.

As Wall Street Posts Record Profits and US Hunger Rate Grows, Robert Scheer Asks: “Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?”.

Während allein in den USA annähernd 50 Millionen Menschen hungern, strichen im September diesen Jahres die 4 größten Bankkonzerne Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley und JPMorgan Rekordgewinne in Höhe von 22,5 Millarden Dollar an der New Yorker Börse ein.

democracy now!

(Ps.Man sollte seine Blogeinträge lieber nicht mit Kind auf ‘m Schoß schreiben, Zahl oben im Text wurde korrigiert, hab leider erst jetzt gemerkt, daß da noch Nullen dran waren.)

UPDATE: siehe auch Jean Zieglers aktuelle Kolumne zur Welternährungskonferenz

[...] DER WESTEN SPART. Vor drei Monaten hat die Uno die Mahlzeit für 1 Million Schüler und Schülerinnen in Bangladesh ersatzlos gestrichen. Als Folge der Finanzkrise stellten die EU-Staaten 1700 Milliarden Euro bereit, um den Kreditmarkt zwischen den Banken wieder zu beleben. Für das Welternährungsprogramm hatten sie danach kein Geld mehr. Dessen Budget brach von 6 auf 3,2 Milliarden US-Dollar ein. Der französische Schriftsteller Alphonse Allais schrieb: «Wenn die Reichen abmagern, sterben die Armen.»
In Rom fand soeben die dritte Welternährungskonferenz statt. Westliche Staats- oder Regierungschefs zeigten sich kaum. Zwingende Beschlüsse wurden nicht gefasst. Auch künftig dürfen Hunderte von Millionen Tonnen Getreide und Mais zur Herstellung von Agrartreibstoffen verbrannt werden. Auch künftig darf die EU mit ihren subventionierten Agrarprodukten die Märkte Afrikas überschwemmen. Die Wünsche der Hungerländer zerschellten an der Betonwand des westlichen Kollektivegoismus.
Alle fünf Sekunden verhungert ein Kind. 47000 Menschen sterben pro Tag an Hunger oder seinen Folgen. Erstmals in der Geschichte stieg im April die Zahl der permanent unterernährten Menschen auf über eine Milliarde.[...]

Anmerkung: Nein, nicht wenn die Reichen abmagern sterben die Armen, sie sterben weil die Reichen nicht fett genug sein können!

Before surrendering to authorities on Wednesday afternoon to begin serving a measly 28 month sentence for providing material support to Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993), Maoist sympathizer, terrorist enabler and traitor Lynne Stewart took time out for an interview with Marxist Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! network. It was a spectacle reminiscent of the way the state-controlled newspaper Pravda would conduct its fawning interviews of Josef Stalin during the days of the old Soviet-Union.

Stewart, you will recall, was the attorney for Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”), and after his conviction for his role in the 1993 bombing was arrested herself for passing information from her imprisoned client to Rahman’s “Islamic Group,” a terror organization based in Egypt with connections to al-Qaeda. Stewart was disbarred and convicted, and although she faced a 30-year prison term, in a bizarre judicial twist was ultimately sentenced to only a fraction of that.

Although she vigorously fought her slap on the wrist sentence, claiming she was merely a “zealous advocate” for Rahman, a three-judge panel revoked Stewart’s bail and ordered her to begin serving the sentence immediately, ruling: “a genuinely held intent to represent a client ‘zealously’ is not necessarily inconsistent with criminal intent.”

Stewart remains defiant, and her interview with Goodman shows that she is just as dedicated to the cause of America’s enemies in 2009 as she was in 1993.  When asked by Goodman for her reaction to the initial ruling, for example, Stewart tried to portray her treasonous act as a larger constitutional issue:

LYNNE STEWART: Well, in its sweeping and negative tone, I must say I was first a little bit shocked, because we had expected, or had hoped, at least, that some of these important constitutional issues would be decided, and then very disappointed, on my own behalf, certainly—personally, you can’t discount—but actually, for all of us, Amy, because these important constitutional issues—the right to speak to your lawyer privately without the government listening in, the right to be safe from having a search conducted of your lawyer’s office—all these things are now swept under the rug and available to the government.

Despite the fact that some of the information she passed on to Rahman’s minions may have actually tipped Osama Bin Laden off that our forces were closing in on him in Afghanistan, Stewart believes that her actions constituted no big deal and that her arrest was politically motivated!

LYNN STEWART: Interestingly enough, we found out later that the [Bill] Clinton administration, under Janet Reno, had the option to prosecute me, and they declined to do so, based on the notion that without lawyers like me or the late Bill Kunstler or many that I could name, the cause of justice is not well served. They need the gadflies… And it was only after 9/11, in April of 2002, that John Ashcroft came to New York, announced the indictment of me, my paralegal and the interpreter for the case, on grounds of materially aiding a terrorist organization. One of the footnotes to the case, of course, is that Ashcroft also appeared on nationwide television with Letterman that night ballyhooing the great work of Bush’s Justice Department in indicting and making the world safe from terrorism.

There it is, then. The predictable degeneration of the interview into a bashing of former President George Bush for being too overzealous in prosecuting terrorists and their sympathizers!

It’s evident from this interview that Stewart has no regrets, no remorse and no understanding of how damaging her actions have been to this country. In fact, when asked by Goodman if she would do anything differently, her answer vividly demonstrates that she is still a danger to the security of this country and was deserving of a much longer sentence.

AMY GOODMAN: Lynne, would you do anything differently today, or would you do anything differently back then, if you knew what you knew today?

LYNNE STEWART: I think I should have been a little more savvy that the government would come after me. But do anything differently? I don’t—I’d like to think I would not do anything differently, Amy. I made these decisions based on my understanding of what the client needed, what a lawyer was expected to do. They say that you can’t distinguish zeal from criminal intent sometimes. I had no criminal intent whatsoever. This was a considered decision based on the need of the client. And although some people have said press releases aren’t client needs, I think keeping a person alive when they are in prison, held under the conditions which we now know to be torture, totally incognito—not incognito, but totally held without any contact with the outside world except a phone call once a month to his family and to his lawyers, I think it was necessary. I would do it again. I might handle it a little differently, but I would do it again.

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, is on a national speaking tour to launch her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier..

Goodman will be speaking tomorrow first at Skylight Books,  1818 N. Vermont Ave. in Los Angeles, from noon to 1:30 pm, and then at All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave. in Pasadena, at 7:30 pm. Click on the link above for more information. Her book will be available for sale. Goodman has been a tireless champion of independent media for years, and a fierce critic of the corporatization of the news. What we have in this country is a “majority of the silenced,” Goodman says, whenever public opinion on war, the economy, healthcare goes against the establishment, but is largely ignored by mainstream news coverage. This event would be well worth attending.

Democracy Now! can be heard on weekdays from 6–7 am and repeats from 9-10 am on KPFK 90.7 FM. You can also watch online at www.democracynow.org.

Hunger, Armut, Gift und Gene

Rückblick (Textauszug aus einem Spiegelartikel vom 12.11. 2008)

Obama will Rechte von Lobbyisten einschränken

Ein grundlegender Wandel im Washingtoner Politikbetrieb war eines der zentralen Wahlversprechen von Barack Obama. Jetzt will der künftige US-Präsident erste Fakten schaffen und die Rechte von Lobbyisten massiv einschränken.

Washington – Es soll ein Zeichen sein, ein Signal für den von Barack Obama so oft versprochenen Wandel: Der künftige US-Präsident und sein Übergangsteam wollen den Einfluss von Lobbyisten eingrenzen und dabei mit aller Konsequenz vorgehen: Obama werde die “schärfsten und weitreichendsten ethischen Richtlinien” anwenden, die es je bei einem Übergangsteam gegeben habe, sagte John Podesta, Chef von Obamas Übergangsmannschaft. (…)

so lautete noch im letzten Jahr Obamas Kampfansage.

Islam Siddiqui

Neben der Nominierung des Agro-Gentechnik und Monsanto Lobbyisten Rajiv Shah zum Leiter der Entwicklungshilfebehörde USAID, wurde kürzlich ein weiterer Lobbyist dieser Kategorie von Obama für das  Amt des Chef-Unterhändlers  für Agrarfragen vorgeschlagen. Islam Siddiqui, der derzeitige Vizepräsident von CropLife America, einem Dachverband von  Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer und BASF.

Ein Zusammenschluss von über 80 Umwelt-, Landwirtschafts- und Verbaucherschutzorganisationen  versuchen nun Obama dazu zu bewegen, diese Nominierung rückgängig zu machen und erinnern ihn an sein Wahlversprechen.

Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Wissenschaftlerin und Aktivistin im Pesticide Action Network of North America gehört mit ihrer Organisation zu den führenden Protestlern, die sich gegen die Nominierung Siddiquis stark machen.

Amy Goodman führt ein Interview mit ihr auf democracy now!

Die Sendung im Anschluss mit  Raj Patel, Autor des Buchs “Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System” ist ebenfalls zu empfehlen, es geht darin um die Farce des  Welternährungsgipfel, auf welchem vor allem die  “Führer” der reichsten Länder dieser Erde mit Abwesenheit glänzten, um Hunger und wachsende Armut, auch  in den USA, wo mittlerweile  fast 50.000 Menschen an Hunger leiden.

noch eine Leseempfehlung:

Freitag: Hunger nach Profit

Finanzinvestoren haben in den vergangenen Jahren Millionen Hektar Ackerfläche in Entwicklungsländern gepachtet – der Landraub bedroht Hunderttausende Kleinbauern

This is Amy Goodman, the host and producer of the news show “Democracy Now”. She is an amazing journalist and author. Her books and her reporting expose the corrupt nature of the corporate media. I have been listening to Democracy Now for a few years now, and was so excited to see that see was the keynote speaker at this year’s Green Fest in San Francisco. I was at the festival representing Livity, and had the chance to hear her speak. She received a standing ovation from the huge crowd for her courageous reporting. I have read her book “Static”, and she just came out with another. It was awesome to see her speak in person…

From Democracy Now:

We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty?, interviewing Bolivia’s vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?

JOHN PERKINS: [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?

VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That’s why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.

JOHN PERKINS: [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?

VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos, Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic’s political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of “a continent in movement” as a synthesis of what’s been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There’s a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.

John Perkins spricht mit Amy Goodman über sein neues Buch “Hoodwinked”,  über die Krise,  den Putsch in Honduras, über die schmelzenden Gletscher im Himalaya und über Wege aus der Misere.

Sein neues Buch erschien bei Random House und ist seit heute im Handel erhältlich.

P.s. Zu John Perkins These zu Honduras siehe auch unseren Blogbeitrag vom 6. August 2009: Chiquita, Dole, die CIA und der Putsch in Honduras

I typically distrust most of the political talking heads on television. My feeling is that most of them are muppets who are speaking on behalf of their owners … you know who they are. Their donors. Additionally, when corporations own the media outlets it’s difficult not to question why something is or is not being reported. I give you Fox News and MSNBC as prime examples. My faith in the judicial and political system is on the very low end of the spectrum, but I am not just a whiner. I actually do call and write the people who “represent” me and I exercise my right to vote, boycott, etc.

As I watched the debate on the House floor regarding the Health Care Reform Bill it dawned on me that this may not be a very good bill. Not because of what the lobbyist had written for the people speaking but more because no one was really saying anything at all. It’s difficult to figure out what people are fighting for when they make no sense. There is one news channel I feel does a good job on actually reporting and that is Democracy Now. Yes, they tend to slant towards the Liberal’s but for the most part they are right on point. So, this morning Representative Dennis Kucinich was on discussing why he did NOT vote for this bill. The sum of it is that it seems to provide incentives for insurance companies AGAIN and it says women absolutely cannot have an abortion paid for by a plan they pay for. Some nut job from Michigan, Bart Stupak added an amendment to the bill prohibiting insurers from providing any plan to allow abortions that is subsidized with government money. WTF? There was no provision in there on how to pay for the unwanted child but they never talk about that do they.

This is disheartening people. Small groups of people with a gang load of money in the United States have swayed this bill while many of are sitting wondering what this bill is in the first place. It’s a load of crap and if you think President Obama did not have anything to do with turning this into a pile of doo-doo you are wrong. His administration was reportedly the prime suspects in taking out the single payer option and Speaker Pelosi who used to be a defender of women’s rights was the one who gave in to the douche bag from Michigan.

Way to go people. Way to mother effin go. Guess it’s time to get out my pen and paper so I can write some letters.