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Congress must pass single-payer health care now!

Cynthia gives a radio interview under the watchful eye of her Aunt Hazel.

I never want you to take the journey that I’m currently on. So, I want to tell you about it. It starts on the front of the refrigerator: “The Healthiest Foods on Earth,” a two-page primer from apple to watermelon, touting issues from immunity to male fertility support. Inside the refrigerator: natural and organic foods only. On the countertop is the Jack LaLanne juicer, the Magic Bullet, the handy food chopper plus, the food saver vacuum sealer – all items familiar to us because they are constantly hawked on the midnight cable channels. Hanging from the kitchen cabinet door are plastic bags for recycling: one for plastics, the other for aluminum cans. The house and car are filled with reusable shopping bags made of recycled materials.

Stop Executions Now!

Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009, Ohio had its third botched execution in as many years. It is unacceptable to put people to death under a system that is fundamentally flawed. Please call Governor Ted Strickland and tell him to put an immediate stop to all executions indefinitely. His number is (614) 466-3555 or contact him electronically here. After over two hours of excruciating needling, the execution team could not locate a viable vein in Romell Broom to conduct the lethal injection. Governor Strickland delayed his execution for one week, so officials can devise a way to put him to death.

Broom’s failed execution follows the similar experiences of Joseph Clark in May 2006 and Christopher Newton in May 2007. If we continue using this system next week with Mr. Broom or the following month with the next condemned person, it is simply a question of when, not if, another horrible problem will occur. Please call Governor Strickland today and urge him to stop executions in Ohio.

Where were you?

G-20 Protests are not about abstractions

On Sept 20, The Toledo Blade published an article in which President Obama is quoted as saying, in reference to the G-20, “protests about abstractions [such] as global capitalism or something, generally, are not really going to make much of a difference." While I am not sure what the opposition to the G-20 accomplished last week in Pittsburgh, I found that many of the activists there were quite concrete about what they don’t like about the elite economic club.

(To express the details of what you do or don’t like about the G-20 and other global financial institutions or about the protests, contact the Columbus Free Press at truth@freepress.org or phone 614-202-0178 and your input will be added to this article).

On Sept 24, about 150 people gathered for the People’s Tribunal against the G-20 at the Emanuel Episcopal Church in an area of Pittsburgh called the North Side. This part of town was quiet with no more than the usual amount of police I have seen in various cities.

Robocops come to Pittsburgh

...and bring the latest weaponry with them.

No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of “crowd control munitions,” including one that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last week’s G-20 protests.

Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups charged the many thousands of police (most transported on Port Authority buses displaying “PITTSBURGH WELCOMES THE WORLD”), from as far away as Arizona and Florida with overreacting…and they had plenty of weaponry with which to do it.

Bean bags fired from shotguns, CS (tear) gas, OC (Oleoresin Capsicum) spray, flash-bang grenades, batons and, according to local news reports, for the first time on the streets of America, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).

Marchers for Falun Gong at G-20 demonstrations in Pittsburgh

At the main protest against the G-20 in downtown Pittsburgh on Friday, Sept 25, Falun Gong marchers played calm, recorded music as they carried signs four lanes wide, some of which had gruesome photographs of people who’ve been mutilated and tortured. Kui Huang was one of the demonstrators. He urges people to “write to the president…and Congress” so as to get China to stop its persecution of Falun Gong, which includes not only imprisonment and torture, but also organ harvesting.

Stopping the atrocity against practitioners of Falun Gong will take a lot of public pressure in the United States because, as Huang said, “many officials in the U.S. are afraid of the Chinese government” and so are not inclined to make this an issue in nation to nation relations.

“Chinese media tell lies about Falun Gong.” said Huang, who was imprisoned for 5 years. But Huang said in an email a couple of weeks after the protests in Pittsburgh, " nowadays, more and more people in China who don't practice Falun Gong are starting to stand out to protest the persecution."

Why the right wing hates and wants to smash ACORN

The level of the current right wing frenzy against the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) can only be understood within the dynamics of President Barack Obama's 2008 election and John Kerry's "official" loss in 2004.

ACORN, more than any other political organization, was responsible for Obama's victory. ACORN in Ohio, and in key swing states, did what the Democratic Party used to do, but now seems incapable of doing – registering large numbers of low income and working class voters.

Instead of going after the real whores at Chase, CitiBank, and assorted other financial institutions that pimped our system and our people, undercover right wing videographers went for a target that fit their pre-fabricated agenda – a fake Daddy Mac and whore trying to open up a brothel with an ACORN member's advice. Of course any ACORN people involved in illegal practices should be investigated, as should anyone in the elite financial community and anyone out there misusing federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) money.

Obama's LBJ moment

Lyndon Johnson was once on the verge of becoming one of America's greatest presidents.

But with a single wrong turn into Vietnam, LBJ plunged himself and the nation into a ghastly tragedy that still makes us all weep and bleed.

It is NOW! up to us to make sure Barack Obama does not do the same.

Even the corporate media shows signs of understanding the parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan. So many of us are alive today who remember March, 1965, and all the horror that followed, that there is simply no excuse for allowing this lethal mistake to be repeated.

LBJ inherited the momentum of the New Frontier, the murder of John Kennedy and a huge 1964 electoral mandate. He turned them into a string of civil rights and social welfare victories that still vastly enhance all our lives.

But LBJ also inherited from JFK the beginnings of the war in Vietnam. LBJ's choice was to escalate or pull out. Recent biographies indicate he had a strong premonition that the war was futile, and that it would do him in. A century from now, historians will still agonize over why he took the plunge anyway.

March passes through neighborhood that may be gentrified

On Friday, the permitted march began in a section of greater Pittsburgh called Oakland. This initial march was modest in size and intensity, but as it made its way from Oakland to downtown, a number of other marches combined with it, resulting in a demonstration whose size and intensity was perhaps what activists, reporters, and spectators were hoping for. The route from Oakland to downtown involved passing through an area called SoHo where there were many run-down buildings. Nearby, the new stadium for the Pittsburgh Penguins is being built.

The BNY Mellon arena may lead to the neighborhood being gentrified, said Lois Mufuka Martin who helps to run a homeless shelter in this neighborhood. "They will want to make this area more inviting for people to come here, but what's going to happen to the people living here? I'm not against the transition if we're not displaced," Martin said, in front of the Bethelehem Haven homeless shelter. The building appears to have housed a bank long ago. A bronze plate near the door of the homeless shelter read "Merchant Banking and Trust Company."

The G-20 and anarchists

Many of them wore kerchiefs over their faces, along with goggles during the protests today. It seems that anarchism has things in common with neo-conservatism with its emphasis on a lack of government control so as to enable huge corporations to escape accountability to the general public.

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