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Wolf Blitzer loses Democratic debate

That does it. It's time for the Democratic Party to stage its own debate, ask its own questions, and offer the video to networks as a completed package. Allowing CNN to not just air a debate but to ask the questions proved on Thursday night (even more dramatically than in the past) to be a soul sickening disaster.

A serious debate would begin by asking each candidate (including Mike Gravel, who was locked out of the room) what he or she would do if elected president. Thursday's debate in the opening 30 minutes had me longing for even the level of honesty and substance of the MSNBC debate hosted by Keith Olbermann in Soldier Field some months back, at which Olbermann managed the superhuman feat of asking things like "Would you cancel NAFTA?"

Columbus janitors win contract

Janitors' Victory Brings Hope to Columbus Families, Creates New Model for Ensuring Good Jobs with Health Care for Region's Low-wage Workers

Historic city-wide contract for nearly 1,200 janitors will double the income of many of lowest-paid in Columbus area, pave way for other service workers to win improvements

Columbus — On the heels of recent high-profile contract victories that made dramatic gains for thousands of working families in Cincinnati and Houston, Columbus janitors have won higher wages, more work hours and health insurance in their first-ever city-wide union contract. The groundbreaking agreement will help lift more than a thousand janitors out of poverty, increasing the income of the majority of workers by an incredible 100 percent over the course of the contract—and nearly doubling the income of workers at the lowest end of the spectrum within the first 14 months alone.

Mayor Coleman, along with Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy and many other community leaders, joined over 150 other community members and janitors to support the campaign on October 31st at a rally for the janitors' negotiations.

Islands of peace: hope of world stability

Charles Mercieca, Ph.D.
President, International Association of Educators for World Peace
Dedicated to United Nations Goals of Peace Education,
Environmental Protection, Human Rights & Disarmament
Professor Emeritus, Alabama A&M University

Sooner or later, the world is bound to experience a lasting peace. Needless to say, we must continue to practice patience and perseverance in our positive and constructive efforts to this end. In doing so, we should always keep in mind that violence begets violence and more violence begets more violence.

History of Military Violence

The reality and consequences of such violence may be brought clearly into perspective if we were to give a glance over the last 6,000 years of recorded history. Each time the military was involved we always witnessed the destruction of entire cities, the infliction of crucial pain on many people along with the brutal massacre of innocent people amounting to millions.

God bless the Senate Republicans

Into every tragically depressing world situation some light must shine if you wait long enough and the planets align just right.

That glimmer of light came yesterday from, of all places, the Death Star known by many as Washington, D.C., from deep within one of the most unfathomable quadrants of that bleakness – the chambers of the United States Senate.  Even more remarkably, it sprang from what some consider a true black hole – the Republican caucus.

But light it is, and in these times we need to celebrate every photon that comes our way. 

Yesterday, the Senate voted 53-45, seven votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, against a $50,000,000,000 “supplemental” funding measure passed earlier this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.  What the Republicans objected to was the limp, inconsequential troop withdrawal plan supported by House and Senate Democrats – something that Groucho Marx would have much more accurately termed, “a sham of a mockery of a sham.” 

People were killed by Three Mile Island & other nuclear disasters

One of the biggest lies ever told in American industrial history is that “no one died at Three Mile Island.”

In the frenzy to get public funding for still more nuclear reactors, some industry backers now say no one has ever been killed by the nuclear industry AT ALL.

These absurd statements reflect atomic energy's desperate need for federal loan guarantees, which have been slipped into the Energy Bill now before Congress. After fifty years of proven failure, no private sources will invest in this lethal, expensive technology.

Meanwhile billions are pouring into the booming business of green power, including wind, solar power and increased efficiency. These technologies are not only profitable and clean, they don't kill people.

And the reality is that people have, in fact, been killed by the fallout from atomic power, and not just at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The road to 9/11

The road to 9/11: wealth, empire, and the future of America By Peter Dale Scott, University of California Press, 432 pages

I have always been fascinated with trying to see the more subliminal/hidden aspects of our world, so long as they are either based in hard-nosed verified fact; or understood as speculative vision (which may possess a metaphoric validity of its own). With The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, University of California Berkeley professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott delivers the preceding.

Tightly non-speculative, meticulous and insightful, Dr. Scott shines the know-glow on a rather extensive and sordid history of U.S. governmental shadow activities; predominantly partial or total cover-ups. Fortunately, in this his magnum opus, he also holds out the promise of an American redemption, so long as the festering boil of turpitude is lanced and drained in the light.

The assassination of Hugo Chavez

Lago Agrio, Ecuador -- Before The Lord spoke unto Pat Robertson and told him to endorse Rudy Giuliani, family man, for President, the Reverend got a message that higher powers wanted him to arrange a hit on another President:

"Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him.  I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

Robertson has a tough time separating Church and Hate. But when the vicious vicar declared it was time to take out the President of Venezuela, he was simply channeling the wishes of the Supreme Authority, Dick Cheney.  

I'm asking you to see the story they don't want you to see in the USA:  from the original investigations filmed for BBC Television, "The Assassination of Hugo"- a special DVD documentary by myself and Rick Rowley.   NOT for general release - ONLY available as a gift to donors to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

Why must they kill Chavez?

With the help of guerrila cameraman Rick Rowley ("Fourth World War"), I flew to Caracas to get the answer - from Chavez himself.  I also talked to the guy who took Chavez hostage in 2002.  (I had to wear a wire for that one.)  

Baghdad in middle America

Honoring vets means nothing at all unless it means honoring the deeply gouged personal truths each experienced during deployment. But the dismissal of such truths is as much a part of war, and its aftermath, as the propaganda and geopolitical whoppers necessary to launch it.

The problem with these individual truths is that they seldom smack of glory. More often, they’re simply mundane and hellish, and slowly eat the vet’s soul. The clinical name for this is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and it’s the phrase I heard most frequently and most distinctly this past weekend, during the grim, pained acknowledgement — I can hardly call it celebration — of Veterans Day.

Ray Parrish, a vets’ counselor and Vietnam vet, was adamantly pessimistic as he spoke to 100 or so people gathered on a bitter, gray Sunday morning at the river in downtown Chicago, about the psychic toll our current wars are exacting on the ones who are fighting them.

Another Clinton campaign fraud

It sounds silly, but for a long time it just didn't occur to me what the implications would be. Thus spake a college student who agreed to ask Senator Clinton a planted question. And thus, alas, must I speak as well.

Senator Clinton asked me to impersonate a citizen of the United States, and I was tempted to play along. The assignment she had marked "(citizen)" on the script on her clipboard, read:

"A citizen is a member of an electorate. A citizen's job consists of voting. A citizen may also spend the two years in between elections thinking about how he or she will vote (but not about who will count the votes). In between elections, citizens should not imagine they can influence their representatives. Public demonstrations, lobbying, media activism, media production, and civil disobedience are not proper citizen activities unless professionally organized to target exclusively Republicans. A citizen's loyalty is to his or her Party. For the sake of your Party you must accept such compromises as voting for a candidate who supports a massive military and empire that you oppose, or corporate

Mentes Peligrosas: confession of an American thought criminal

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
–Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984

If you needed more evidence that most of our “esteemed” members of Congress are members of a criminal class of ruling elites, who regard the likes of us in the poor and working classes with the disdain most people reserve for cockroaches, look no further than H.R. 1955.

93% of the filth “representing” us in the House voted in favor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Once this vile piece of legislation sails through the Senate and the sociopath on Pennsylvania Ave gleefully slaps his endorsement on it, the mechanisms will be in place for our lords and masters to initiate programs that will make Cointelpro and the murder of Fred Hampton look like child’s play.

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