I, Citizen

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Workers are Angry! ~ Egypt

CENTER FOR TRADE UNION WORKERS AND SERVICES (CTUWS)
Winner of the Prize of the French Republic for Human Rights

Press Release On 1/2/2011 (Translation from French Version)

The workers are angry!

Tens of thousands of Egyptian workers (men and women) join the Millions Persons demonstration/protest events being organized today in the capital, Cairo, in Alexandria and in other parts of Egypt with the aim of overthrowing the regime.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) in Egypt which has always been against workers ... the federation which has continued to betray the workers since its creation ... the federation has won rigged elections and has always complied with the orders of the Egyptian Secret Service ... the federation dares to go out in the darkness of the night to announce that workers support the current regime, this is the same regime that has been effectively overthrown and actually we are waiting for the departure of one who represents it.

We proclaim loudly that we have turned the page away from this ETUF federation that is full of corruption and despotism when we have turned a new page away from the former regime. Egyptian workers, men and women, announced on January 30, 2011, the creation of the founding committee of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, determined to build a federation based on the principles of democracy and an organization that will be managed with full transparency. Our new Federation will defend workers' rights and will work to improve their living conditions. A democratic federation in a democratic society.

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Obama seeks to expand arms exports by trimming approval process

By Maggie Bridgeman
McClatchy Newspapers
July 29, 2010

The United States is currently the world biggest weapons supplier — holding 30 per cent of the market — but the Obama administration has begun modifying export control regulations in hopes of enlarging the U.S. market share, according to U.S. officials.

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Thursday, July 1, 2010

South Africa's Female Tribal Chiefs Often Rule in Fear

By CLAIRE L. BELL
Time Magazine
June 7, 2010

...Until South Africa's female chiefs can rule without fear and with the cooperation of the government, their long walk to freedom and equality continues.

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

A Zionist State of Mind, A Dreamscape Of Ghosts: One Jew's Hard Awakening

By Phil Rockstroh
OpEd News
June 16, 2010

Although my mother fled Nazi Germany, as a child, on a Kindertransport, with a few family valuables sown into her clothing, and I was brought up on the myths and hagiography of the Zionist state, I, over time, came to recognize the folly of the whole colonialist enterprise -- the folly of ethnic exclusion and expulsion, the inherent tragedy of nationalism based on the delusion of religious birthright. With much sorrow, I came to the sad realization that the dream of the State of Israel was based on European chauvinism and exceptionalism. This reckoning has been a difficult one for me to bear -- the hardest awakening of my adult life...

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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Paul Loeb: What It Means to Be a Citizen

by: Rose Aguilar | Your Call
truthout
Thursday, May 06, 2010

...“How can we make sense of a world where Nike pays Michael Jordan more to appear in its ads than it pays all the workers at its Indonesian show factories combined? Or where the planet’s 500 richest people control more wealth than the bottom three billion, half of the human population?"...

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Emerging Powers Cooking Up New International Order

Analysis by Beatriz Bissio
April 16, 2010
Inter Press Service

Since the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement, there has been no louder and more compelling call for a rethinking of the international economic system as the one issued this week in Brazil by the leaders of the main emerging powers...

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Sunday, March 7, 2010

Ralph Nader on the GOP Filibuster of Unemployment Benefits Bill, the Collapse of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Proposal, and the Latest Aut

DemocracyNow!
March 02, 2010

Senate Republican Jim Bunning is continuing to filibuster a key spending bill to extend unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of American workers. The blocked bill also affects several governmental agencies, rural television customers and doctors receiving Medicare payments. At the same time, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd has abandoned an idea proposed by President Obama and favored by consumer groups to create an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect consumers against abuses in mortgages, credit cards and other forms of lending. Meanwhile, General Motors announced today it is recalling 1.3 million compact cars in North America because of a power steering problem that has been linked to fourteen crashes. GM blamed the fault on a supplier partially owned by Toyota. We speak to longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

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Monday, January 25, 2010

ACLU slams Senators: The Constitution is not ‘optional’

By Stephen C. Webster
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
The Raw Story

..."It is extremely disturbing that members of the U.S. Congress are essentially calling for Obama administration officials to discard the Constitution when a terrorist suspect is apprehended – as if the Constitution should be applied on a case by case basis."...

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Actor and Activist Danny Glover on Legacy of US-Haitian Relations Dating Back to 1804

DemocracyNow!
January 19, 2009

Danny Glover is an acclaimed actor, director, producer and longtime friend of Haiti. His directorial debut, Toussaint, focused on the life of François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who became one of the fathers of Haiti’s independence from France in 1804.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

One Year After Israeli Assault on Gaza, Survivors from Samouni Family Remember the Tragedy that Killed 29

DemocracyNow!
January 11, 2009

One year after Israel’s assault on Gaza, we go back to a deadly attack that took place on one Gazan neighborhood. The Samouni family, who live in an agricultural area in the Zaytoun area of Gaza City, lost twenty-nine members of their family in the attack. Anjali Kamat and Jacquie Soohen visited the surviving members of the family in March...

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Friday, December 18, 2009

NOAM CHOMSKY: “The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism”

EXCLUSIVE DemocracyNow!
December 17, 2009

Noam Chomsky delivers the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism at Columbia University School for International Affairs...

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Friday, December 11, 2009

Author & Journalist Naomi Klein: Fate of Planet Rests on Mass Movement for Climate Justice

DemocracyNow!
December 11, 2009

Hundreds of activists from across the globe are gathering every day in downtown Copenhagen for the people’s climate summit, the Klimaforum. On Thursday night, Shock Doctrine author and journalist Naomi Klein addressed a packed hall at a panel on ecological debt and climate justice.

We go now to people’s climate summit, the Klima Forum taking place in the heart of Copenhagen where hundreds of activists from across the globe are gathering every day. Reparations, justice, models of alternative development, sustainable consumption, non-market solutions, climate refugees, indigenous rights. These are some of the many concerns being raised at the People’s Climate Summit away . On Thursday night, Shock Doctrine author and journalist Naomi Klein addressed a packed hall at a panel on ecological debt and climate justice...

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Monday, November 23, 2009

As Wall Street Posts Record Profits and US Hunger Rate Grows, Robert Scheer Asks: “Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?”

DemocracyNow!
November 19, 2009

A pair of new government reports released this week paint a startling picture more than a year after the economic meltdown. On Tuesday, the New York Comptroller Office said Wall Street profits are set to exceed the record set three years ago. The four largest firms took in $22.5 billion in profits through September. Meanwhile, far more people are going hungry in the United States than previously thought. The Department of Agriculture estimates 50 million Americans, including a quarter of all children, struggled to get enough to eat last year. We speak to veteran journalist Robert Scheer...

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

PATRIOTs and Secrets Hearing, Day One Wrap Up

By emptywheel
November 4, 2009

A quick overview of Wednesday’s doings in House Judiciary Committee’s mark-up of the PATRIOT Act renewal.

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Friday, October 2, 2009

Sportswriter Dave Zirin On Obama’s Olympic Error

DemocracyNow!
October 2, 2009

As President Obama lobbies the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago for the site of the 2016 summer Olympics, Dave Zirin looks at why Chicago may not want to be the host city. Zirin argues Olympic Games have economically hurt cities in the past. And, he writes “To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest.”...

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Friday, September 25, 2009

Police Crackdown on G20 Protests: Democracy Now! Reports from the Streets

DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2009

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit under the shadow of a police crackdown on protesters in the streets. Heavily-armed riot police are out in force all over the city, using tear gas, stun grenades, smoke canisters, and sound cannons, which direct extremely loud shrill sounds. This is believed to be the first time sound cannons have been publicly used in the United States. Democracy Now! producer Steve Martinez reports from the streets of Pittsburgh...

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Ralph Nader on the G-20, Healthcare Reform, Mideast Talks and His First Work of Fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

DemocracyNow!
September 21, 2009

As the United States prepares to host the Group of Twenty nations summit in Pittsburgh later this week, we speak with longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, author and presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Nader discusses Congress’s failure to pass any meaningful financial reform on Wall Street over the past year and critiques Obama’s healthcare reform proposal. Ralph Nader also talks about his first work of fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” Nader describes the book in terms of a practical utopia, a fictional vision that could become a new reality...

Monday, September 14, 2009

Afghan Detainees Allowed To Question Detention

AP via NPR
September 13, 2009

The Pentagon has begun putting into place a new program under which hundreds of prisoners being held by the military in Afghanistan will be given the right to challenge their detentions, a defense official said Sunday.

Prisoners at Bagram military base are all to be given a U.S. military official to serve as their personal representative and a chance to go before new so-called Detainee Review Boards, to have their cases considered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss a program that has not been formally announced.

The initiative amounts to the first time prisoners will be able to call witnesses and submit evidence in their defense. There are some 600 detainees at the facility, some who have been held for up to six years...

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Real Lessons of 9/11

by Robert Parry
Consortium News
September 11, 2009

On this eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s worth reflecting on how even a mildly competent U.S. President might have prevented the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and drove the United States into a spasm of revenge that has wasted untold blood and treasure...

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Friday, September 11, 2009

Eight Years After 9/11, Ground Zero Volunteer Dying of Lung Disease is One of Many Still Fighting For Justice

DemocracyNow!
September 11, 2009

Today marks the eighth anniversary of 9/11 with vigils being held to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks. We look at a group of victims that are often forgotten in the Sept. 11 narrative–the thousands of rescue workers who became sick after being exposed to contaminants at Ground Zero. Hundreds have died. We speak to Joe Picurro, a New Jersey ironworker who worked as a volunteer on the Pile for 28 days. He is now dying of lung disease. We also speak with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D–NY), she is co-sponsoring the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, and we talk to Dr. Jacqueline Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine...

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President Eisenhower's Farewell Address: A Warning to Americans to control the MIC

Good evening, my fellow Americans.First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.Like every other -- Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling -- on my part -- of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations -- corporations.Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations -- past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament -- of the battlefield.Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that -- in that -- in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources -- scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.Thank you, and good night.http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.htmlALSO: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90

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President Eisenhower's Farewell Address: A Warning to Americans to control the MIC

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