eye opening to be sure...Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos ..A MUST SEE!

Anna Baltzer presents...

Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos

This was an eye-opening 59 minutes to be sure and then the hour after with a handful of folks who showed up was very helpful. My question to this moment is “what is the end game?” so far, all I can come up with is it’s a natural resource grab by a group who is dominating some of the people who have been living and using the resources of the region also. Palestinians have been designated “the other” in the same way other groups of indigenous peoples have many times in the past. As I have explored more at Anna Baltzer’s site, I have seen a movement that I can really stand with. Oh and I really recommended the 2 clips from her quest appearance on Jon Stewart that are linked from her home page.

As a human community I believe we have to constantly recognize each other and stand with those who stand for the common human values we share. It is my belief that humans everywhere want the same things. We all want to live on planet earth with enough water, food, shelter, safety and our communities are the ways we can work together for that life for all humans.

I was very touched by a Jewish woman visitor from New York who attended. She was very knowledgeable and she introduced the word “genocide” and said that she rarely did that because it immediately took on a life of its own and ended any discussion. It’s hard not to ask the question when you witness the living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. I put myself in their place and I can’t even imagine getting through one day. I travel freely at any time I choose. Just having to wonder if it will take 30 minutes or 8 hours to work 25 miles away seems unimaginable and this is a daily fact for many Palestinians. Not knowing if me or my family would be able to reach a hospital if we had an emergency, because it was on the other side of a checkpoint (aka roadblock, in my world), is chilling.

I am horrified that my tax money is going to support a country continuing to violate human rights and my country continues to block UN efforts to hold Israel accountable. Occupations are not won, occupations are ended.
I will be exploring what ways I can be part of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement. It is the nonviolent organized movement that makes sense and gives hope for our human future.
Thank you Code Pink Rebekah for bring this to us.

this issue of Newsweek explains alot to me......we are not getting the facts about what is happening there.

hope is fading.....

This “health care reform” (without the public option and medicare buy-in and with the mandate) is just a big sloppy wet kiss to the gangster profiteers who have been stealing from us all along. This Bill Moyer’s journal speaks to how this is happening. His 2 guests agree and come to opposite conclusions about voting for this sorry bill. Matt Taibbi has it right. If this bill passes, it will load this gang of robbers with even more money to prevent the people from ever getting our hands on our own health care. We need to entirely remove the profiteering middle men and this bill will keep them firmly in place. We don't need the middlemen. We the people can hire good people, our fellow citizens, accountable to us, to administer payment to good people, our fellow citizens, accountable to us, to provide our healthcare. There is a system set up now, running at 3% (max) administrative cost- Medicare. And if there are people who don't wish to buy in to Medicare part E-verybody, they can opt out and purchase insurance from the private profiteers, whose administrative costs run upward to 30%. It costs alot of money to pay huge CEO compensations, with stock options added, and pay stockholders to sit by the pool and wait for the dividend checks. It isn’t even about whether the bill has got any "good qualities." "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." (ad nauseum) It’s about filling the trough for these pigs to continue bilking us. The losers will be the people....AGAIN. We are held hostage by these greedy selfish corporatists and there is no end in sight. And there is no hope in sight. So much for “hope” “yes, we can” and empty slogans.

December 18, 2009

Amidst fading hopes for real reform on issues ranging from high finance to health care, economist Robert Kuttner and journalist Matt Taibbi join Bill Moyers to discuss Wall Street's power over the federal government.

watch this episode of Bill Moyer's Journal here

sign firedoglake "kill the bill" petition here


addendum....*if a good enough bill is reconciled in conference committee and the House of Representatives and the Senate to vote on it and they pass it to President Obama and he signs it, you will hear me cheering and giving credit.

real hope for the future

Evan so eloquently put into words much of what I am feeling these days and he gives me hope for the generations to come. I remember listening in horror to Obama's Afghanistan speech, screaming at the radio practically the whole time. And then, when I talked to fellow Democrats, many supported his position and praised the good speech. Now I hear from Evan that many young folks are not falling for this war mentality and it gives me the hope I felt was lost. Thank you Evan for being the wonderful human you are and for continuing on. You bring a very important perspective at a time when corporate marketing seems to rule the day.

here is Evan's piece published at Common Dreams.....

The Betrayal of Generation Hope
by Evan Knappenberger
Published on Sunday, December 13, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

As I sit here preparing for my final college exams, I can't help but think back on the ups and downs of the past two years. Ups: the defeat of the Republican Party in 2008, my own graduation from college, and the formation of progressive student and veteran movements; and downs: suffering through a war and hospitalization due to post-traumatic stress, watching my friends die in foreign countries, and now, the betrayal of my generation by a President who we put our utmost faith in.

full article

and here is a summary of the 7 day tower vigil by Evan back in june of 2007 where he educated many folks about stop loss, myself included.

Healthcare rally... the time for action is now!!

Health Care Reform Rally

a call to action!!




citizens from all over the county gathered to (joined by citizens in nine Washington cities to hold Health Reform Rallies) ask that we move to healthcare reform that brings healthcare to all citizens.


it was a cold, clear day and the energy of a community coming together

for our common good was palpable.
thanks once again to the tireless amazing folks who never give up working for healthcare for all of us.
and thanks to all of us who showed up......amazing!

killing by the numbers

this, over at Air America by Megan Capentier, is enough to kill the holiday spirit.

is this who we are???

Is The Military Fudging Civilian Casualties To Avoid Pentagon Oversight? Thursday December 10, 2009 6:19 p.m

Sar Bland, an Afghan man who was injured in Monday's rocket attack in Tagab, lies on bed at a hospital at the U.S. base at Bagram, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009. An official said the deaths of 14 civilians in the rocket attack on Monday presumably aimed at military officials and local leaders underscores the inability of NATO to successfully defeat the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

By Megan Carpentier
On Monday, the anonymous blogger Security Crank noticed something interesting: all the U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan seemingly kill exactly 30 people every time. How can that be?

Security Crank documented no less than 12 occasions in which news reports, relying on field commanders' estimates, noted that exactly 30 suspected Taliban were killed in airstrikes and, occasionally, artillery attacks. He said:

But the much more important point remains: how could we possibly have any idea how the war is going, here or anywhere else, when the bad guys seem only to die in groups of 30? The sheer ubiquity of that number in fatality and casualty counts is astounding, to the point where I don’t even pay attention to a story anymore when they use that magic number 30. It is an indicator either of ignorance or deliberate spin… but no matter the case, whenever you see the number 30 used in reference to the Taliban, you should probably close the tab and move onto something else, because you just won’t get a good sense of what happened there.

So, why is it always 30? Do thirty casualties seem like enough to justify a military attack, or few enough to not attract too much attention to an incident?

Another blogger, Joshua Foust of the Central Asia blog Registan, seemingly stumbled upon the answer. In a tweet, he noted:

In 2003, an air strike killing 30 civilians could be launched w/o issues. 31 dead civilians and Rummy had to approve.

Foust then linked to an LA Times article from last July by Nicholas Goldberg that documented what field commanders were told.

full article

stop the reappointment of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

here are a couple of places to sign petitions in support of Senator Sanders hold on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's reappointment.