Tell Google "Don't be evil!"

Google's motto is "Don't be evil," but Google is about to cut a deal with Verizon that would end the Internet as we know it.

According to a front-page New York Times story, the deal would allow "Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content's creators are willing to pay for the privilege."1

It would create fast Internet lanes for the largest corporations and slow lanes for the rest of us.

That is why CREDO is joining MoveOn, Free Press, and Color of Change in rallying Google users to tell Google, "Don't be evil."

Speak up for a free and open Internet by clicking here to automatically sign the petition to Google. With massive amounts of public pressure, we can stop this deal.

Google is furiously backpedaling on its closed door negotiations with Verizon over the future of the Internet — a direct result of a strong and immediate public backlash. The company has denied some details from the New York Times story, but won't say definitively that it is not striking a deal with Verizon that will stop the FCC from imposing net neutrality rules.

Whose Hands? Whose Blood? Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq

Consider the following statement offered by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference last week. He was discussing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks as well as the person who has taken responsibility for the vast, still ongoing Afghan War document dump at that site. "Mr. Assange," Mullen commented, "can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

Now, if you were the proverbial fair-minded visitor from Mars (who in school civics texts of my childhood always seemed to land on Main Street, U.S.A., to survey the wonders of our American system), you might be a bit taken aback by Mullen's statement. After all, one of the revelations in the trove of leaked documents Assange put online had to do with how much blood from innocent Afghan civilians was already on American hands.

Agent provocateurs of Russia

Smoke on a bridge: Lebanon awaits a verdict

Jamal is a Lebanese driver in his late 50’s. He appeared unshaven and terribly exhausted as he drove his old passenger van from the airport in Beirut to the Bekaa Valley. Although it was not a particularly arduous trip, it was made more grueling by the way Jamal drove, negotiating the elevation, the hectic traffic and the many army vehicles speeding by.

In Lebanon, a sense of urgency always seems to prevail, even when there are no urgent matters to tend to. Jamal’s driving style has probably changed little through the successive Israeli wars and bombardments of Lebanon in past years (the last being the 2006 war, which destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure and killed hundreds of civilians).

Although no bombs were falling now, Jamal could feel something in the air. “They are cooking something big,” he said, “but what it is, no one really knows for sure.”

Elderly Thai kickboxers' brains suffer after fights

BANGKOK, Thailand -- When a Muay Thai kickboxer's brain is battered by the star-twinkling impact from too many hits, and the fighter becomes spaced-out and forgetful, retirement can mean a dismal life far from the maddening crowd of cheering and jeering fans at sweaty boxing arenas.

The elderly Amnuay Kesbumrung and his aged colleague, Sompong Janpatrak, however, are defying those black-and-blue odds and they continue to enjoy Thailand's most popular sport.

Muay Thai allows fists, elbows, feet, shins, knees and jumps to be used.

During Thailand's history, several kings became great boxers or patrons, and kickboxing was also taught to their security forces. Early competitive boxers often wrapped rope around their fists, resulting in brutal injuries, until gloves were introduced in the early 1900s.

"I was born December 14, 1935, and am now 73 years old," Amnuay said in Thai language during an interview.

The next war

“I’m going to be killing people. I’m actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life.”
War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post:

“We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran’s nuclear and supporting military facilities.”

Remembering Bill Moss

I AINT GONNA BE LONG HERE CUZ I WANT YALL TO READ THE STUFF I WROTE ABOUT BROTHER BILL BEFORE AND RIGHT AFTER HE PASSED WELL BEFORE HIS TIME 5 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK.

ILL ALSO JUST SAY THAT WE MUST NAME A SCHOOL OR STREET AFTER HIM. A BUILDING SOMETHING. WE GOT BUILDINGS NAMED AFTER SAMBOS IN THIS TOWN SO WHY CANT WE HAVE A BUILDING NAMED AFTER THE STRONGEST POLITCIAN WE EVER HAD IN THIS CITY!

I THOUGHT KAHARY WAS GONNA LEAD THE EFFORT. HE WAS TALKIN BOUT IN ON HIS SHOW BUT LET IT GO. WELL I AINT LETTING IT GO AND I HOPE WE CAN GET A MOVEMENT GOING FOR IT TO HAPPEN. AND HOW MANY YALL STILL AINT BUYING THE DISPATCH. CHECK IT OUT I AINT BOUGHT ONE SINCE THEN. BUT THEN AGAIN I WASNT BUYING ANY BEFORE THEN EITHER. WE GOT TO CONTINUE THE BOYCOT FOR HOW THEY DISRESPECTED HIM JUST 2 DAYS AFTER HIS DEATH.

AND BEFORE I FORGET PROPS TO THE STREET SOLDIERS CREW FOR REMEMBERING BROTHER BILL THIS PAST SUNDAY.

NEVER FORGET YALL AND MOST OF ALL KEEP BROTHER BILL MOSS LEGACY ALIVE ON EVERY AUGUST 2ND AND ON HIS BIRTHDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH.

.............PEACE.............D

Pete Seeger's new music video for Solartopia! will open at American Renewable Energy Day

"This is the most exciting time in the world to be living," says Pete Seeger. "There's never been such an exciting time," as we bring on "wind power, solar power..."

Pete should know. The solar panels on his home in the Hudson Valley woodlands turn the meter backwards on sunny days. They also power his pickup, whose front end is filled with batteries.

Pete's unique new music video, Song for Solartopia gets at all that. It'll open on the Big Screen at the 7th annual AREDAY gathering in Aspen, Colorado, on Sunday, August 22. Also playing on a day devoted to Collaboration, Messaging, Solutions and Climate Literacy will be a clip from Carbon Nation and a special environmental director's cut showing of James Cameron's AVATAR.

Moss versus machines: On the fifth anniversary of the death of election protection activist Bill Moss, news reports easy hacking of ATM machines and hence, electronic voting machines

It is fitting on the fifth anniversary of the death of Bill Moss, lead plaintiff in the legendary Moss v. Bush 2004 lawsuit in Ohio, that the Associated Press is admitting the easy hackability of Diebold machines.

“A hacker has discovered a way to force ATMs to disgorge their cash by hijacking the computers inside them,” reads the AP lead.

The AP goes on to warn that, “The attacks demonstrated last week targeted stand-alone ATMs. But they could potentially could be used against the ATMs operated by mainstream banks.”

What the Associated Press and corporate for-profit media fail to report is that Diebold, one of the world’s leading ATM hardware and sofware providers, also manufactures electronic voting machines with similar problems.

The similarities between hacking a Diebold ATM and a Diebold/Premier election machine are startling. For example, the hacker, Barnaby Jack, Director of Security Testing for Seattle based IOActive, Inc., stated “Every ATM I’ve looked at, I’ve been able to find a flaw in. It’s a scary thing.”

Pete Seeger speaks and sings for Solartopia!

"We've got a country full of ambitious people," Pete Seeger tells us. Solar energy is "something direct," a way to "pay our bills, not tomorrow, but today."

By "bills" Pete doesn't just mean the ones from the electric company. He's talking about the Big Bill, the one from Mother Nature.

At age 91, Pete is American folk activism's truest bard. It's no accident that Pete's new CD is Tomorrow's Children and that his new music video is for Solartopia!, a holistic, socially just, post-corporate vision of a green-powered Earth.

Solartopia, he says, "is the wonderful, positive way of approaching the problem" of a polluted planet. "Don't just say ‘don't, don't, don't.' Say ‘DO! DO! DO!'"

This spring, while finishing up Tomorrow's Children, he joined singer-songwriters Dar Williams and David Bernz in a Beacon studio filled with singing schookids, organized by local music educator Dan Einbender, who co-produced the album.

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