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“If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models.”
-– B. Lester
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 | Action Alert: A Call for Nationwide Response to Entergy Nuclear's Attack |
 on the People of Vermont
Entergy Nuclear of Lousiana is giving those of us who care about our futures a golden opportunity to exercise our power. This multi-national corporation is a poster boy for the callous pursuit of profit at the expense of health, safety and even state sovereignty.
Consider the current pox that Entergy has brought down upon the people of Vermont. In their negotiations to get permission to buy Vermont Yankee, corporate officials agreed to abide by future state statutes, and promised to forgo the right to sue the state over any statutes that might be contrary to Entergy's interests. But they were lying through their teeth, have sued the state, and have just won the first round in a federal court suit that reverses the state legislature's refusal to extend Vermont Yankee's operating license. The judge has empowered only the Public Service Board to decide the reactor's fate.
In the last few years, Entergy has lied repeatedly in testimony at the Vermont State House, from topics as varied as the aforementioned promise, to the non-existence of underground pipes that turned out to not only exist but also to be leaking tritium. Entergy lobbyists have been a noxious presence in our citizen legislature's House, cajoling and threatening but not succeeding in having their way. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, January 27 @ 20:12:42 EST (10 reads)
(Read More... | 3980 bytes more | Comments? | Action Alert | Score: 0)
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| Occupy: Foreclosure Auction: Occupied! |
 press release from: occupywallst.org
BREAKING: One hundred Brooklyn community members and Occupiers peacefully disrupt foreclosure auction. Approximately 35 people arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience, singing in courtroom
Brooklyn, NY — This afternoon approximately one hundred people peacefully and powerfully disrupted a foreclosure auction by bursting into song. At 3pm the foreclosure auctioneer attempted to start bidding on homes that had been foreclosed upon. When the bidding started, the courtroom burst into song:
“Mr. Auctioneer
All the people here
Are asking you to stop all the sales right now
We’re going to survive, but we don’t know how”
Video clip: http://yfrog.com/mq9hsz
The National Lawyers Guild estimated that approximately 35 people were arrested. Those arrested continued to sing as they were handcuffed and escorted out of the courtroom. ...
Note: Inside: #OWS Builds Momentum for Spring Resurgence: Launches 5-Week Bus Trip
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, January 26 @ 18:51:11 EST (20 reads)
(Read More... | 4218 bytes more | Comments? | Occupy | Score: 0)
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| Peace News: What Kind of Christianity Is This? |
 By Gary G. Kohls
From time to time, I read about condemnations of religion coming from non-religious groups, especially concerning the all-too-common violence perpetrated in the name of religious gods. Indeed there is plenty to condemn.
Altogether too many religions sects of both major and minor religions, despite verbally professing a desire for peace and justice in the world, are actually pro-war, pro-homicide and pro-violence in practice (or they may be silent on the subject, which is, according to moral theology, the same as being pro-violence).
Obvious examples include those portions of the three major war-justifying religions of the world: fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity.
I use the term fundamentalist in the sense that the religious person, who ascribes to a fundamentalist point of view, believes, among other dogmatic belief, that their scriptures are inerrant and thus they can find passages in their holy books that justify homicidal violence against their perceived or fingered enemies, while simultaneously ignoring the numerous contradictory passages that forbid violence and homicide and instead prescribe love, hospitality, mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 25 @ 20:52:44 EST (27 reads)
(Read More... | 13448 bytes more | Comments? | Peace News | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: Patients May Die When Doctors Moonlight |
as Big Pharma's "Key Opinion Leaders"
by: Kathleen Sharp, Truthout | News Analysis
As the crimson sun slipped into the gray Pacific Ocean, a multibillion-dollar drug deal took shape. A group of board-certified doctors greeted each other in a private room at a luxury hotel in California. The oncologists were big buyers of an anti-anemia drug called Procrit, sold by Ortho Biotech, a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) division. That Friday evening, the company toasted its top clients and their wives with bottles of Beaujolais, porterhouse steaks and free weekend accommodations.
The event could have been just another "grin and grip" affair, but there was a catch: J&J wanted to pump the sales of its biotech drug to beat its rival Amgen and its anti-anemia drugs. "The idea," as J&J drug rep Dean McClellan later explained, "was to get the docs to increase their Procrit dosage to 40,000 units."
There was just one problem. Regulators had approved a weekly drug dose of 30,000 units, and J&J was prohibited by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDAC) from marketing its drugs in unapproved ways. But the doctors could prescribe in any "off-label" manner they wanted. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, January 24 @ 22:35:00 EST (28 reads)
(Read More... | 10967 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: Wealthy Tax Cheats |
The rich don't much like paying taxes when tax rates run high -- or low.
By Sam Pizzigati
Tax systems that heavily tax the rich are asking for trouble — or so the politicians who cater to the 1 percent incessantly argue. The higher the tax rate on high incomes, their argument goes, the greater the incentive the rich have to waste time and energy figuring out ways to pay less.
In 2001 and again in 2003, this convenient excuse helped the Bush White House chop away at the taxes the IRS expects rich people to pay. The government trimmed the tax rate on top tax-bracket income from 39.6 to 35 percent and slashed the rates on capital gains and dividends to 15 percent from 20 and 39.6 percent, respectively.
According to rich-people-friendly right-wing rhetoric, these cuts should have boosted tax compliance.
Instead, tax evasion actually increased, rising to $385 billion in 2006 from $290 billion five years earlier, according to a new IRS study. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, January 23 @ 19:06:06 EST (28 reads)
(Read More... | 4856 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| The News: Beating Up on Chavez |
 by Stephen Lendman
Since inaugurated in February 1999, he's faced open US hostility, including by go-along major media scoundrels.
New York Times writer Simon Romero's among them. On January 6, he and William Neuman played both Chavez and Iranian cards headlining, "Increasingly Isolated, Iranian Leader Set to Visit Allies," saying:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visiting "some of the United States' most ardent critics: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador."
Chavez "is Mr. Ahmadinejad's most vociferous ally in the region." Central University of Venezuela Professor Elsa Cardozo said his visit gave Chavez a chance to "project his own style and radical message. His core supporters are very radical and he doesn't want to lose them."
Indeed they're radical for social justice. Chavez delivers so they support him. Imagine the difference from America. Poverty's unprecedented. Recent Census data show half US households impoverished or bordering on it. Millions have no jobs and can't find one. Homelessness and hunger keep growing. When need's greatest, austerity drives people to the edge. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, January 21 @ 22:51:29 EST (39 reads)
(Read More... | 10783 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| Occupy: Lynching the Dream |
 by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
This past Monday, this nation celebrated the memory of one of our greatest minds, one of our tallest souls, one of our lost children. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrates the memory of our American Gandhi, a man who dedicated his life - and, in Memphis, gave his life - to the idea that is America: all are created equal.
To be sure, the "Negro" was counted only as 3/5ths of a man in the document that first established the ridiculous experiment that became America, and women were counted not at all, but more than two hundred years have passed since that original ink was put to paper. Ours is a self-improving republic, thanks to the genius of those founding documents. A "Negro" now sits in the highest office of the land, and a woman (who lost the chance to sit in that exalted seat by only an eyelash or two) now commands the most important and influential position in the Federal government, save the one enjoyed by her immediate superior.
Ours is a nation of genius, and of assassins, in equal measure. We reached the moon, cracked the genome code, we feed millions, liberated Europe and Asia from horrific tyranny sixty years ago, and daily export the idea that one should be able to speak their mind without fear of the gulag or the work camp or the executioner's bullet...and yet we do this even as the souls of slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and ten times ten thousand Iraqis shriek their condemnation from the blood this nation has spilled in its pursuit of "greatness."
I have been preaching this gospel, in word and deed, for almost twenty years: America is an idea. You can take our cities, our roads, whatever is left of our manufacturing base, our crops, our armies, our weapons, you can take the land itself from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon...you can take it all, and the idea that is America will still remain, as robust and vital as the day it was first conceived. It is the idea that sustains me, the brilliant simplicity of actual equality, and it is the offenses to the idea that I have pledged my life against. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, January 20 @ 23:05:27 EST (42 reads)
(Read More... | 6880 bytes more | Comments? | Occupy | Score: 0)
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| Truth To Power: A Watchbird Is Watching You |
The shortage of real terrorism in recent years has been a challenge for our law enforcers.
By William A. Collins
Careful when
You text your friend;
Spooks are reading
What you send.
The FBI now employs 36,000 people and focuses ever more on dissenters. The CIA, supposedly prohibited from spying domestically, now stations agents in local police departments. Homeland Security may legally confiscate your computer and smart phone at the airport, copy their contents, and eventually give them back. Civilian agencies have drones to follow you.
And that's just the beginning. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, January 19 @ 18:54:13 EST (37 reads)
(Read More... | 4453 bytes more | Comments? | Truth To Power | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: America Wakes Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters |
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Truthout | Op-Ed
If you're part of the 1 percent, even getting fired comes with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, "Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million." That's each.
The report's authors, Paul Hodgson and Greg Ruel, write, "These 21 CEOs walked away with almost $4 billion in combined compensation. In total, $1.7 billion in equity profits was realized by these CEOs, primarily on the exercise of time-vesting stock options and restricted stock."
This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, "At Risk: America's Poor during and after the Great Recession." Its researchers conclude, "The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010 ... Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment."
In fact, the white paper finds that we now have the largest number of long-term unemployed people in the United States since records were first kept in 1948 - four million report they've been unemployed for more than a year. Not necessarily counting the former CEO's gently floating to earth from those golden parachutes. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 18 @ 21:01:23 EST (37 reads)
(Read More... | 6759 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Screwed Again: Censorship in the Green Mountains |
By Rosemarie Jackowski
"When Fascism came, it was not brought by uniformed troops.
It was not imposed at the point of a gun.
Fascism came because citizens were too distracted to pay attention.
Voters were too misinformed to cast intelligent ballots.
And the mass of people failed to recognize the inherent danger in the censoring of speech and the banning of books."
In Vermont there is a Movement toward Secession. Most citizens are unaware of this because news reports that oppose the status quo are censored. Newspapers have an ethical obligation to report news, but the obligation is not a legal one. The First Amendment does not apply to privately owned publications. Newspapers have the right to print, or not to print, anything they want.
How ironic it is that citizens look toward secession, which may or may not ever be achieved, while those in power have already successfully seceded from the Union. How did this happen? Those in power have successfully rendered the First Amendment irrelevant in Vermont - that is secession from the Constitution... secession of the worse kind. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, January 17 @ 19:41:55 EST (38 reads)
(Read More... | 7654 bytes more | Comments? | Screwed Again | Score: 0)
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| Occupy: We're No. 27! |
Being at the bottom of the heap in terms of social justice confirms the reality of both economic and political inequality that the Occupy movement is protesting.
By Jim Hightower
"USA: We're No. 1!"
Oh, wait — Iceland is No. 1. But we did beat out Poland and Slovakia, right? Uh...no. But go on down the rankings and there we are! No. 27, fifth from the bottom. So our new national chant is, "USA: At Least We're Not Last!"
A foundation in Germany has analyzed the social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ranking each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty. The overall performance by the United States — which boasts of being an egalitarian society — outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the United States on the prevention of poverty. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, January 16 @ 22:17:35 EST (49 reads)
(Read More... | 2825 bytes more | Comments? | Occupy | Score: 0)
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| Environment: In the Clearing Stands a Boxer: One Man's Fight Against Fracking |
 by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
There is a natural prejudice against fasting as part of a political struggle. It is considered a vulgar interpolation in politics by the ordinary politician, though it has always been resorted to by prisoners. My fast should not be considered a political move in any sense of the term. It is obedience to the peremptory call of conscience and duty. It comes out of felt agony.
- Mahatma Gandhi, January 1948
What can the "little person" do?
We live in a country dominated by Citizens United, by "super-PAC's," by corporate wealth and power of such vast depth and breadth that to even contemplate a challenge against such powers is paralyzing. They are watching, they are listening, and if you step on the wrong set of toes, as the song goes, "The Man come and take you away."
It is all well and good to be inspired by the words of men like Mario Savio, who said, "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop!" ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, January 14 @ 12:18:21 EST (49 reads)
(Read More... | 24076 bytes more | Comments? | Environment | Score: 0)
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| The News: Climate Change Disaster Has Struck |
Extreme weather is now commonplace, thanks to global warming.
By William A. Collins
Terrorists
May worry you;
But our big foe
Is CO2.
Rats. I'd been counting on climate change. By some genetic quirk, my Scandinavian-bred body has always suffered badly from the cold. It's a good thing that my grandfather settled near New York City rather than boarding the "Swede train" for Minnesota. Connecticut's winters are bad enough.
Salvation loomed in the form of global warming. Hallelujah! Palm trees would soon fringe Long Island Sound. Snow shovels would disappear from the hardware store, which would have to stock rubber rafts year-round.
Hah. Instead, that vaunted warming has focused itself on the Arctic, melting endless stretches of ice and tundra. All that evaporated water filled our latitude's skies with gloomy clouds and pelted us poor Yankees with record levels of rain and snow. Connecticut's hardware stores now make a killing on snow blowers. It's not fair. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, January 13 @ 20:01:43 EST (51 reads)
(Read More... | 3710 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: Obama, Sarkozy and Taxing Wall Street |
by: Jeff Cohen, Truthout | Op-Ed
With US media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, which already has a conservative president. This week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take the lead - even go it alone within Europe, if need be - in introducing and pushing a financial transaction tax in his country.
That's right - the CONSERVATIVE president of France wants to tax the financial traders and speculators.
Referring to the tax as a "moral issue" and blaming deregulation and speculation for the global economic meltdown, Sarkozy has said that traders must "repay for the damage they have caused."
What does it tell us about US politics that the conservative president of France - on this issue and others - is way to the left of President Obama? The US president has not publicly promoted a Wall Street transaction tax (even though Wall Streeters, not the French, were largely responsible for the global financial crisis). ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, January 12 @ 20:51:55 EST (48 reads)
(Read More... | 4815 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Occupy: Occupy Wall Street Honors the Spirit Of Dr. King With Year’s Largest Action |
Hundreds Gather for Global Candlelight Vigil at Historic Riverside Church
Press Release From: www.occupywallst.org
New York, NY: Religious leaders, artists, and members of the Occupy movement will unite globally on January 15th, 2012 to honor the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
At 6:30 p.m. hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists will assemble on the steps of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine (1047 Amsterdam Avenue) and at 7:00 p.m. begin a massive candlelight march to nearby Riverside Church (490 Riverside Drive). The group will join additional feeder marches and members of the community at Riverside Church for a candlelight vigil and celebration renewing King’s message of peace, justice, and equality for all, regardless of race or economic class. The action will culminate in an assembly featuring performances and speak-outs from artists, celebrities, religious leaders, and activists. Performances by Patti Smith, Steve Earle, Stephan Said, and Kozza Olantunji, as well as many more, will complement the inspirational words of Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Yoko Ono, Russell Simmons, Reverend Stephen H. Phelps, Daisey Kahn, Norman Siegel, Sumumba Sobukwe and Malik Rhasaan.
“Poverty, an issue to which King showed increased focus in the years just before his death, finds its way into the darkest chapters in American History. Dr. King sought to shine a light of justice against those dark chapters of war, repression and racism, our candles symbolize that light,” says Abigail Keegan of Occupy Wall Street. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 11 @ 14:34:44 EST (67 reads)
(Read More... | 3534 bytes more | Comments? | Occupy | Score: 0)
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| Shop AlienLove | |
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| Old Articles | |
| Tuesday, January 10 | | · | South Carolina on my Mind |
| Monday, January 09 | | · | If You Liked the A-Bomb - You'll Love the Smart Grid |
| Sunday, January 08 | | · | Targeting Journalists Covering OWS Protests |
| Saturday, January 07 | | · | Killer Cops Aren't Heroes: |
| Friday, January 06 | | · | WHY THE NDAA NOW? |
| Thursday, January 05 | | · | Alabama's Immigration Aftershock |
| Wednesday, January 04 | | · | Avoiding Another Long War |
| Tuesday, January 03 | | · | The Anti-Empire Report - January 2012 |
| Monday, January 02 | | · | Fumbling Foreign Policy |
| Friday, December 30 | | · | 75 Years Ago Today, the First Occupy |
| · | America's Welfare "Reform" Laws Deepen & Perpetuate Poverty |
| Wednesday, December 28 | | · | Better than Obama: Why the Establishment is Terrified of Ron Paul |
| Tuesday, December 27 | | · | Resolve to Keep Science Experiments off Your Dinner Table in 2012 |
| Saturday, December 24 | | · | Occupy Interfaith Celebration in Liberty Square |
| Thursday, December 22 | | · | Protest, Tentions, Poetry and Christmas |
| Wednesday, December 21 | | · | We Should Buy More White Flags |
| Monday, December 19 | | · | Missoula's Supremely Important Vote |
| Saturday, December 17 | | · | How Now, Brown Cloud: What Smog Hath Wrought |
| Friday, December 16 | | · | The Way To Occupy A Bank Is To Own One |
| · | Occupy the Food System |
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