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Michael Zarzano attended the December 10, 2011 statewide meeting of the Ohio Liberty Council, or as it’s popularly known, the Tea Party. As one of the early supporters of the movement and a leader of an affiliated “Patriot” group, Zarzano brought his videocarmera to the meeting on behalf of his Internet Media Services for anybody to watch. He claims he was completely surprised when he was grabbed by three males and forcibly removed from the meeting.

The Ohio Liberty Council not only barred Zarzano and his camera from their meeting, but they won a temporary restraining order against him on January 13 and on March 21 they won a preliminary injunction barring him from participating in the movement. The preliminary injunction issued by the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas forbids Zarzano from “…entering, interfering with, and/or blocking ingress and/or egress to any meeting held by” the Ohio Liberty Council.

Code Pink announced a new campaign to prevent an attack on Iran, a campaign encouraged by our sisters in Iran and Israel. Since then over 11,000 people have contacted three powerful women—Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice—imploring them to stop an attack on Iran. Will you join the rising chorus for peace?

Nine years ago CODEPINK sisters stood in front of the White House in an act of civil disobedience to try to stop our government from bombing Iraq. None of us could live with ourselves if we sat by and did nothing while a country filled with children was blown to bits using money we needed in the United States to build hospitals, housing and schools. Our government refused to listen, and now we see the tragic costs of that war and the continued war in Afghanistan. Have we learned nothing?

Please join me, Gloria Steinem, and Eve Ensler in calling for peace with Iran. Sign this petition today. Share it with your friends. Tweet it. Post it to your facebook. And consider making a donation to help this message get out farther.

Yours,
Protest against Keystone XL pipeline during Obama's visit to Columbus Ohio on March 22, 2012(Photo by Bill Baker) A couple of hours before President Obama spoke at the Ohio State University on March 22, about 25 demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline project gathered on the sidewalk along High Street in front of the Ohio Union.

A day earlier, Obama announced in Cushing, Oklahoma his decision to fast-track the leg of the pipeline that will run from Oklahoma to Texas. Critics, many of them on the political right, say the president should approve the entire XL project, while environmentalists say he’s backpedaling, and going against his '08 campaign promise to address Climate Change.

When I lived in New York 20 years ago, the United States was beginning a 20-year war on Iraq. We protested at the United Nations. The Miami Herald depicted Saddam Hussein as a giant fanged spider attacking the United States. Hussein was frequently compared to Adolf Hitler.

On October 9, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl told a U.S. congressional committee that she’d seen Iraqi soldiers take 15 babies out of an incubator in a Kuwaiti hospital and leave them on the cold floor to die. Some congress members, including the late Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), knew but did not tell the U.S. public that the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, that she’d been coached by a major U.S. public relations company paid by the Kuwaiti government, and that there was no other evidence for the story. President George H. W. Bush used the dead babies story 10 times in the next 40 days, and seven senators used it in the Senate debate on whether to approve military action. The Kuwaiti disinformation campaign for the Gulf War would be successfully reprised by Iraqi groups favoring the overthrow of the Iraqi government twelve years later.

The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, by Michele Norris, Pantheon Books: Michele Norris, an award winning journalist with National Public Radio (NPR), originally set out to write a book about what she called “the hidden conversation” on race she was sure was taking place across the country in the post-racial age of Barack Obama.

As Norris put it, “The rise of a black man to the nation’s highest office has lowered the barrier for painful conversations among Americans of all colors, especially those who lived through the trials and tumult of forced segregation.” Along the way she stumbled over some shocking and somewhat painful family secrets which made her reassess what she thought she knew about her family, race relations and her own identity. In the process she places the story of her family and every other African American family smack in the middle of the American story.

PREAMBLE
Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not self-enforcing,
Whereas statement of the inherent dignity and of the equal and supposedly inalienable rights of all members of the human family achieves little without a struggle against greed, injustice, tyranny, and war,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights could not have resulted in the barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of humankind without the cowardice, laziness, apathy, and blind obedience of well-meaning but unengaged spectators,

Whereas proclaiming as the highest aspiration of the common people the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want doesn't actually produce such a world,

Whereas nonviolent rebellion against tyranny and oppression must be a first resort rather than a last, and must be our constant companion into the future if justice and peace are to be achieved and maintained,

Whereas governments do not reliably conduct themselves humanely toward other nations' governments unless compelled to do so by their own people and the people of the world,
[New York Monday March 19] Our photographer ZD Roberts was beaten by New York City cops with nightsticks while covering Occupy Wall Street's attempt to re-take Zuccotti Park Saturday night.

Zach yelled several times, "I'm PRESS! PRESS!" yet was slammed on the head twice after he'd been thrown to the ground when the police shoved back the protesters. Zach, whose photos of Occupy Wall Street have been seen all over the world on the front page of The Guardian, showed his press badge, an act for which his hair was grabbed, head pulled back and slammed again with a club.



If you remember, Zach was arrested while covering the story three months ago. His trial is coming up (he refused to cop a plea).

We've covered the world … but who thought that the toughest combat assignment would be New York?

Here's Zach's story and comment in his own words and photos:

My head hurts. The NYPD did this to me.

The killer was in his fourth deployment. He walked from his base to one village, then another, leaving behind the lunacy and spiritual wreckage of American foreign policy. Then he walked back to his base and calmly turned himself in.

I've been staring at the words for hours now:

"This terrible incident does not change our steadfast dedication to protecting the Afghan people and to doing everything we can to build a strong and stable Afghanistan." - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and their entire community." - deputy American ambassador to Afghanistan, James B. Cunningham

The words are meant to soften this PR disaster, to muffle the cries of the survivors.

"And obviously what happened this weekend was absolutely tragic and heartbreaking. But when you look at what hundreds of thousands of our military personnel have achieved under enormous strain, you can't help but be proud generally." - President Barack Obama

The first Israel missile sped down to its target, scorching the Gaza earth and everything in between. Palestinians collected the body parts of two new martyrs, while Israeli media celebrated the demise of two terrorists.

Zuhair Qasis was the head of the Popular Resistance Committee. He was killed alongside a Palestinian prisoner from Nablus, who had recently been freed and deported to Gaza.

Then, another set of missiles rained down, this time taking Obeid al-Ghirbali and Muhammad Harara.

Then, a third, and a forth, and so on. The death count began on March 9 and escalated through the day. The Hamas government urged the international community to take action. Factions vowed to retaliate.

In these situations, Western media is usually clueless or complicit. Sometimes it’s both. The Israeli army was cited readily by many media outlets without challenge.

In the wake of Fukushima, grassroots citizen action is shutting the worldwide nuclear power industry.

A Solartopian tipping point is upon us in the US, Europe and Japan which will re-define how the human race gets its energy.

States rights and local democracy are at the core of the battle.

The definitive breaking point looms in Vermont.

By mid-March a state board is likely to deny the Yankee reactor licenses to operate or to create radioactive waste.

If that happens, a Vermont shutdown could mark a critical moment in establishing state power over an atomic reactor. A critical domino would fall---as it has in Japan and Europe---and we will begin taking down old reactors all across the US. Four new reactors barely under construction will go down with them, making inevitable the end America's age of atomic power.

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