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The Hidden Agenda of Green Party VP Candidate Cheri Honkala

DSCN1866 (Honkala in Romneyville with son Guillermo Santos) We talked with Honkala on August 27th in Tampa, Florida at Romneyville which was part of protests during the Republican National Convention. Honkala is founder and national coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, an organization which set up the encampment.

“Different Christian groups have accused me of having a hidden agenda. It’s absolutely true. My hidden agenda is motivated by love. I’ve been involved in trying to change things in this country for 20 years, because I think it’s totally possible.”

I asked Honkala what she thinks of the idea that the debate among some activists regarding violence and strategic nonviolence is missing the point in that it’s, instead, a question of love vs. hatred.

Love, Hate and Indifference: singer/songwriter/activist David Rovics

Love and social movements Singer, songwriter, and activist David Rovics talked with us on Aug 28 in Tampa Florida at Rommneyville , an encampment set up by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign as part of events to counter the Republican National Convention.

“Love is an integral component of any social movement. Activists usually act out of some combination of self-preservation and concern for the self-preservation of a larger group, like humanity or the working class.”

He said people don’t get involved in activism unless they have a deep concern for their fellow humans.

“Many different people have said this thru out history. And this is true of people whether they are involved in violent or nonviolent struggle.”

Bonnie Raitt lights up the world

Adversity can debilitate and defeat a lesser soul. But for those with the inner strength to make the climb, new heights can beckon.

Along the way---especially for a musician---it helps to have an other-worldly talent, a gift that combines decades of hard work with those inexplicable powers that come from the slipstream of the spirit. A combination like that can light up the world, especially at jam-packed concerts that become joyful communions. Now on the second leg of an epic US tour---to be followed in Asia and Europe---Bonnie Raitt has taken it to a new level. Reading through the show-by-show reviews of her performances is like being witness to an ecstatic coronation.

Bonnie's well-deserved joyride comes after a long ordeal of personal loss. Her parents, brother and a close friend all passed in scary succession. She has also set sail with her own Redwing Records label.

None of which have shaken her political convictions or willingness to act on them (by way of disclosure, I've worked with Bonnie since 1978 and edit the website for NukeFree.org, whose core she comprises with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and benefit producer Tom Campbell).

Gaddafi's revenge

As a direct result of the illegal United States-led attack on Gaddafi and the subsequent coup, pan-Islamic fundamentalists killed the U.S. ambassador and three other American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya Tuesday, on the anniversary of 9/11. As anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan recently noted, "Libya today is the creation of the U.S., NATO, and al Qaeda, acting in a criminal partnership."

The Obama administration referred to their efforts that led to the unleashing of al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists in Libya as a "kinetic humanitarian action." In reality, it was regime change, a hi-jacking of resources, and an illegal war.

Libya, under Gaddafi, was stable. Gaddafi had nationalized Libyan oil resources and his nation had one of the highest standards of living in Africa and in the Middle East. At the time he was overthrown by the U.S.-led coalition, he was busy promoting an African currency and a continental development bank to liberate all the natural resources of Africa from the International Monetary Fund. In fact, Gaddafi bragged that he was the first state leader to issue an international arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden.

We are at war

“We are at War. Somebody is Going to Pay.” George W. Bush, Sept 11th, 2001.
Eleven years later, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for decades to come.

On a single day in Iraq last week there were 29 bombing attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilians and wounding another 235. On Sept 9th, reports indicate 88 people were killed and another 270 injured in 30 attacks all across the country. Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos. In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, Obama claimed he ended the war in Iraq, well… not quite.

The city of Fallujah remains under siege. Not from U.S. troops, but from a deluge of birth defects that have plagued families since the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by U.S. forces in 2004. No government studies have provided a direct link to the use of these weapons because no government studies have been undertaken, and none are contemplated.

The method to the post 9/11 madness

To your average educated careful consumer of U.S. news media, our militarism looks like ad hoc reactionary responses. A crisis flairs up here. We "intervene" there. An irrational foreign dictator threatens the peace over yonder. We get into wars because we have no choice, and then continue them because ending them would be somehow even worse than continuing them.

In fact, there is a method to the madness. I don't mean just the pressure that President Eisenhower warned us would be created by massive military spending. I mean that the war planners have planned far ahead. They have lists of upcoming wars. (In 2001, according to Wesley Clark, the Pentagon sought wars in the coming years with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Tony Blair independently confirmed a similar list.) They invent the public excuses for those wars as the need arises. The actual motivations are not humanitarian, but driven by a crazed desire to dominate the world's economies, waterways, and fossil fuels.

New American judge may help bring five more Khmer Rouge to trial

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A top American United Nations official said attempts to indict five additional former Khmer Rouge for alleged war crimes may be boosted when a new American investigating judge is added to a U.N.-backed court in Cambodia in September.

The Nuremberg-style trial is currently prosecuting only the senior five of the late Pol Pot's leaders.

Five additional suspects who could be brought before the court are "former military commanders and former provincial chiefs, or leaders," who were among Pol Pot's 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, said Ambassador David Scheffer, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Expert on the U.N. Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials.

"They are all retired," and currently being investigated for "war crimes and crimes against humanity," Mr. Scheffer said in a brief interview on August 15 during a stopover in Bangkok.

Mr. Scheffer, who is also a law professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University, declined to name them "because they are not officially designated."

Support Madeline ffitch - arrested for protesting fracking in Ohio

The first direct anti-fracking action in Southeast Ohio ended shortly before noon on Tuesday June 26, 2012 when Madeline ffitch voluntarily released herself from concrete barrels blocking the gate to a Class 2 Injection Well on Ladd Ridge Road in Athens County. Having occupied the spot for almost 6 ½ hours her decision to unlock herself came after the arrival of an airlifted Highway Patrol tactical team from Columbus took over operations from Albany police, Albany fire department, county sheriff, Athens fire department, ODNR wildlife officers already present. Choosing to release herself rather than endanger either herself or the officers present, ffitch declared the action a victory. The injection well was closed for half a day, media spread through out the state, and attention was brought to the negligence of our regulating bodies, including lack of nonbiased testing, not enforcing weight restrictions on local bridges, and allowing brine to deliveries to exceed daily limits.

Pledge to Libya

Pragmatic Racism

No, it’s not the brutal, hate-twisted racism of the old days. Today’s Republicans are capable of adoring select right-wing African-Americans. The Jim Crow revival they’re pushing — the large-scale disenfranchisement of primarily minority voters — is pragmatic.

They’re outnumbered. They couldn’t win a fair national election. What a dilemma for such a righteous political organization. Winning — securing power, implementing their agenda — is the whole point, and that means they have no choice but to put the big squeeze on Democrat-leaning voting blocs. And the most obvious of those blocs are racial and ethnic.

Democracy is as vulnerable to abuse when it’s several centuries old as when it’s brand new. And though the United States proudly waves its flag as the world’s oldest democracy, at the beginning that concept was seriously limited — to white, male property owners. And as enfranchisement spread, a tradition of virulent vote suppression spread right along with it. Democracy is never far from its own demise.

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