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Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi gains freedom & challenges regime

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Freed after seven years under house arrest, Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Sunday (November 14) she will investigate "many allegations of vote-rigging" in last week's election, but offered to talk with the ruling military junta and consider the effects of U.S.-led economic sanctions.

After years of monitoring her radio, Mrs. Suu Kyi said she now wants to "listen to human voices" to learn from Burma's masses about their woes and suggestions.

She also marveled at the ubiquitous use of mobile phones, revealing a sense of culture shock after her shuttered existence.

"I am for national reconciliation. I am for dialogue," soft-spoken Mrs. Suu Kyi (pronounced: "Sue Chee") said during a speech to 5,000 cheering people at the headquarters of her recently disbanded National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Hours later, she told the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) on Sunday: "I think we have to sort out our differences, across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree, or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our disagreement, if we possibly can."

Foreign Affairs - remaking the Middle East

The title from this issue of Foreign Affairs struck me as rather odd, in particular the subtitle “New Challenges Call for New Policies. Are the U.S. and Israel Ready to Change Course?” (September/October 2010) The U.S. has been trying to remake the Middle East for quite some decades now as it gradually took over the role of the British and French as the local imperial power.

Re-Activation of Subpoenas - Emergency Action Plan

Day: to be announced - we expect it may be soon
Where: Your local Federal Building or government office
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges everyone who is working for peace and justice to organize protests the workday after anti-war activists get the word to appear in front of the Grand Jury. The subpoenas are likely to be re-activated soon.

Activists are already holding organizing meetings this week--gathering to make signs, line up speakers, contact the press, and prepare to mobilize for the day after anti-war and international solidarity activists are called to appear in front of a Chicago-based Grand Jury. If the news of the call to appear is received on Friday, the protests will take place on Monday at Federal Buildings or government offices.

Yes to wards: At-large City Council is owned by the developers of Columbus

The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio’s capitol city daily monopoly, asserts that Columbus’ seven City Council members are “accountable to the entire city.” The Dispatch professes that the current system “remains preferable [to a system] made up of ward politicians pushing for the interests of their neighborhoods above all others.”

What the Dispatch conveniently leaves out is that the Titans that run Columbus, for the most part, live in the affluent suburbs of Bexley, New Albany, Powell, and Dublin. The Wolfe family with their closely held control of their central Ohio media empire, has long found it easier to deal with seven at-large Council members than to face the wrath of the neglected southwest and east sides of the city.

Open letter to Congress on Veteran's Day 2010

We write to you on Veterans Day 2010, and just weeks before the expected appearance of a report from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, to urge you to consider a change of course from the skyrocketing military spending that is driving our federal budget and our economy into the ground, while producing ever more veterans from America's wars who need postwar care.

Many Americans do understand there's a priorities problem here: are you listening? When the Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed Americans in 2005, 65 percent wanted the military budget cut. Majorities wanted war spending slashed but spending on veterans increased. Americans also called for increases for education, job training, and employment.

World Public Opinion

Where are these funds for jobs and education? It's obvious to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz:: shift them out of the military budget.

Bloomberg

Money and ethics in politics

Canada stands by Israel...

A couple weeks after being rejected by the General Assembly for a position on the Security Council, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed his sour grapes at the rejection stating that Canada will not "pretend" to be an "honest broker." The other option then is dishonesty.

There is plenty of that in Canada's position. In his speech supporting Israel at a “gathering of international parliamentarians and experts,” he performed the old standard of conflating the Holocaust with the creation of Israel, yet he should know that the Zionist cause began well before there were any indications of that genocide. Christian Zionism could be argued to have begun even before the European variety showed its colours at the turn of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Both Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists understood that to occupy Palestine meant the displacement by some means - some form of ethnic cleansing or genocide, of the indigenous people - the Palestinians - who resided there and had since the beginning of the Christian era.

No Child Left Behind scam: Purchase orders bypass Columbus School Board approval to funnel millions of federal dollars to questionable vendors

The Columbus City School Board has abandoned its role to monitor the district's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) funds. The Board has remained silent after the district's Internal Auditor, Carolyn Smith, revealed the Board had not approved 20 million dollars in purchase orders referred to as Super P.O.'s. for the last four years. With preferential treatment in place and no incentive to provide quality-tutoring services, our students are being miserably shortchanged. (Super P.O.'s)

There is no better example of this shortchange than the district's Effectiveness Reports submitted to the Ohio Department of Education for fiscal year 2010 for Supplemental Educational Services (SES) vendors. The report shows only 4 out of 72 vendors received an effective rating. This means the other 68 SES vendors allegedly serving our students received well over $3,000,000 for FY 2010, but were considered either not effective or needing improvement in tutoring basic reading and math.

One place to cut spending: Kidnapping and torture

I know it seems like more of a noble sacrifice to cut spending on things people less fortunate than ourselves need, but can somebody explain to me why it wouldn't be at least that noble to eliminate the budget of the CIA, which serves no one?

The Washington Post and the Obama administration have been busy telling us that it's legal to kidnap people and send them to countries that torture. They may call it "renditioning" to nations that use "enhanced interrogation techniques," but a new book details what this means in English.

Bush Boasts of Waterboard Order

Former President George W. Bush continues to be beyond shame. Those favored with an advance copy of Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, say it paints a picture of a totally unapologetic Bush bragging, for example, about authorizing the CIA to waterboard 9/11 “mastermind,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

According to a newspaper account of the memoir, Bush says he is asked by the CIA for permission to subject KSM to the technique that creates the sensation of imminent drowning. His response is: "Damn right."

For such a frank admission of high-level criminality, we can say, with ample justification, Shame on Bush. But that shame also sticks like Saran wrap to the rest of us – and especially to the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), which has soft-pedaled the significance of Bush’s confession, and to his make-nice successor, Barack Obama, who has refused to demand any accountability.

However, if we are still a democracy, we are all complicit.

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