Gary Null's Blog, page 33
June 25, 2012
Shamus Cooke - Obama's Second Latin American Coup
The recent coup against Paraguay's democratically elected president is not only a blow to democracy, but an attack against the working and poor population that supported and elected President Fernando Lugo, whom they see as a bulwark against the wealthy elite who've dominated the country for decades.
The U.S. mainstream media and politicians are not calling the events in Paraguay a coup, since the president is being "legally impeached" by the elite-dominated Paraguayan Congress. But as economist Mark Weisbrot explains in the Guardian:
"The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust the president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment proceeding for which he was given less than 24 hours to prepare and only two hours to present a defense. It appears that a decision to convict him has already been written...The main trigger for the impeachment is an armed clash between peasants fighting for land rights with police...But this violent confrontation is merely a pretext, as it is clear that the president had no responsibility for what happened. Nor have Lugo's opponents presented any evidence for their charges in today's ‘trial.’ President Lugo proposed an investigation into the incident; the opposition was not interested, preferring their rigged judicial proceedings."
What was the real reason the right-wing Paraguay Senate wanted to expel their democratically elected president? Another article by the Guardian makes this clear:
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Action Alert: The Rockaway Pipeline
The Rockaway Lateral is yet another high-pressure, large-diameter gas pipeline, proposed to run across newly restoredwetlands in Jamaica Bay, under Riis Park beach, Floyd Bennett Field, all the way to Avenue U, near the always-crowded Kings Plaza shopping center in Brooklyn.
All the same problems with fracking and radon that apply to the Spectra pipeline also apply to the Rockaway Lateral––and more: grave risks to delicate wetlands as well as risks from frequent brush fires at Floyd Bennett field. And the safety record of this pipeline builder (Williams Transco) is just as bad as Spectra's. In fact, since 2008, there's been only one month out of the past 45 in which they have not operated under a federal Corrective Action Order. Just this past March, they were fined $50,000 for failures related to corrosion control on pipes running through Staten Island.
Comments Due by Monday, 5pm, June 25, 2012!
Public comments are needed by 5pm June 25th. It's easy to e-comment on the FERC website. Reference Docket No. PF09-8-000. In a rush? Cut and paste from this sample comment.
A New York Strangled by Pipelines?
This pipeline is another piece of the pie in Mayor Bloomberg's plan to convert all of NYC to methane. Lawmakers are buying into the false promise of cleaner skies via boiler conversions, and ignoring the health risks from air pollution, water contamination and radon that come with use of fracked gas. Even uber-liberal Congressional leaders and Senators have been unabashedly supportive of this shale gas takeover.
Did you even HEAR about the Congressional ok for this pipeline? It snuck through Congress in February, and is now up for grabs in the Senate. Watch this clip from "Inside City Hall" for some background. Schumer and Gillibrand have been tough nuts to crack on this issue, but we urge you to communicate your opposition to this plan. We want a New York run on clean energy--wind, water and solar--not on polluting shale gas!
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Chris Hedges - Why We Fight
I park my car in the lot in front of the rectory of Sacred Heart in Camden, N.J., and walk through a gray drizzle to Emerald Street. My friend Lolly Davis, whose blood pressure recently shot up and whose kidneys shut down, had been taken to a hospital in an ambulance but was now home. I climb the concrete steps to her row house and ring the bell. There is an overpowering stench of garbage in the street. Her house is set amid other brick and wooden residences, some of which have been refurbished under Monsignor Michael Doyle’s Heart of Camden project at Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic parish. Other structures on Davis’ street sit derelict or bear the scars of decay and long abandonment.
Lolly’s grandson, nicknamed Boom Boom or Boomer, answers the door. He tells me his grandmother is upstairs. I enter and sit on a beige chair in the living room near closed white blinds that cover the window looking out on Emerald Street. The living room has a large flat screen television and two beige couches with brown and burnt-red floral patterns that match the chair. There is a stone fireplace with a mantel crowded with family photos. Her grandson, one of numerous children from the neighborhood whom she adopted and raised, yells upstairs to let Lolly know I have arrived.
Read More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_we_fight_20120625/
June 22, 2012
GOV. NIKKI HALEY REJECTS GARDASIL: A MOMENT OF SANITY IN A SEA OF CORPORATE-SPONSORED CONFUSION
While we support Governor Haley’s courage in standing up for a parent’s right to determine the health care given to their children, which is laudable, we would offer Governor Haley, along with every governor in America, every state and federal legislator, and every pediatrician, pharmacist, and nurse, a reality check. Mandating, or even encouraging or supporting, the human papillomavirus vaccine is tantamount to promoting a public health fraud, and intentionally and with malice aforethought, placing millions of young girls’ and boys’ lives at risk for debilitating injury, including death. Our public health policies, including vaccination, have been formed not by independent, qualified scientists, but rather by lobbyists who have paid for access to politicians at the state and federal levels, bringing forth hand-picked, highly compromised scientists and physicians to promote a fallacy and make it codified by law that the HPV vaccine will prevent cervical cancer and save countless lives when, in fact, independent science shows just the opposite. Therefore, we are offering you an opportunity to review actual scientific evidence that would convince any responsible and reasonable parent, politician, or physician that this vaccine should be banned, not mandated. While the Democrats in South Carolina moan about lost opportunities to save lives and to cut back on health care costs, what they seem clueless and grossly irresponsible about are the facts; once again allowing ideology to trump science. Even Governor Jerry Brown of California, demonstrated his unbridled promotion of the Gardasil vaccine by signing into law in October 2011, a bill which gives 12 year-old children the right to choose the HPV vaccine not only without parental approval, but without even parental notification!2 The scientific facts are that the HPV vaccine is dangerous, even deadly. The major HPV vaccine in question is of course, Gardasil, Merck’s premier product that has lifted it out of the financial doldrums since the ignominious removal of Vioxx from the market in 2004. We spoke with Cindy Bevington, an investigative journalist, who says we should all be very concerned about these repeated attempts to force Gardasil on our children because there is absolutely no proof that using this vaccine will lead to the prevention of cervical cancer. Bevington broke the story in 2007 that Dr. Diane Harper, the lead investigator for the clinical trials of both Gardasil and its competitor, Cervarix, considered the HPV vaccine to be not only unnecessary, but “a huge public health experiment.” Dr. Harper revealed to Bevington that the current rate of cervical cancer in the US is so low, that every single 12 year-old girl would need to be vaccinated for the next 60 years to reduce the rate of cervical cancer at all.3 The news was a disappointment to the legislative campaign to mandate Gardasil across the nation to 12-year old girls, which was being heavily pushed by Merck together with ALEC and their spokespeople, Women in Government. Since then, despite all the advertising, Gardasil is nowhere near as successful as Merck was hoping for. During the push to require Gardasil for children in Indiana, Bevington went to the hearings and observed Indiana legislators actually weeping, begging for the vaccine to be mandated as they spoke about lives lost to cervical cancer without it! Why have we become such an anti-scientific nation? We have been misled scientifically into believing that this vaccine will save lives when in fact the opposite is true. The remarkable claims of Gardasil’s benefits to women in the war on cancer are quite simply ridiculous, inaccurate, fraudulent, and are not supported by the science -- even that science funded by Merck itself. We could ask where is the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, CBC, Fox, or CNN? Where are the journalists and the resources they have at their disposal to uncover these facts? Is this a truth they do not want to know because they would then be forced to report it? The Gardasil story is just one example of the bias in official media, both conservative and liberal. Here, then, are 10 facts that would seem that no Governor, Federal official, or legislator has taken the time to study. If so, we would have a different approach to mandating Gardasil in the 50 states.
June 21, 2012
[Call to Action] URGENT! Tell your Senators to support GMO labeling – Americans shouldn’t have wait to find out what’s in their food!
Urgent Calls needed – Senate votes on GMO labeling amendment today!
Yesterday was a better day in the U.S. Senate for family farmers, eaters and the environment, with several key amendments protecting vital conservation programs passing in floor votes. (Please see below for the updates).
We want to thank Food Democracy Now! members and our allies for achieving some significant victories in the Farm Bill this week. As you know, we are up against some of the most powerful corporations on the planet, but this shows if we all work together we can help create significant change. In the past week Food Democracy Now! members have made more than 15,000 phones calls to the Senate, but we have one more hurdle this week.
Another urgent vote will take place in the Senate in the next few hours and your Senator could cast the deciding vote on the Sanders amendment #2310 that clarifies state’s existing rights to require labeling of genetically engineered foods. This vote will require 60 affirmative votes to pass so we need A LOT of calls!
In the past year, more than a dozen states have introduced legislation to allow their citizens the right to know what’s in their food and how it’s produced, but massive corporate lobbying by Monsanto and thebiotech industry has brought these bill to a halt in key states like Connecticut and Vermont.
Americans can no longer allow the threats of corporations to deny us our simple Right to Know what’s in our food, nor live under the hypocritical and pseudo-scientific theory of “substantial equivalence”, which was established by the FDA in 1992 and continues this politically motivated charade of not allowing the labeling of food that has been genetically engineered in laboratories.
Tell your Senators, “I support GMO labeling and you should too!“
Last week Senator Sanders introduced amendment #2310 (the Consumers Right to Know About Genetically Engineered Food Act) in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.
Senator Sanders’ words were a welcome relief of reasonable and common sense logic on a topic that has long since been plagued by bureaucratic double-speak.
“All over this country, people are becoming more conscious about the foods they are eating and the foods they are serving to their kids, and this is certainly true for genetically engineered foods. I believe that when a mother goes to the store and purchases food for her child, she has the right to know what she is feeding her child,” Sanders said on the Senate floor.
Senator Sanders went on to state basic facts about food labeling policies in the U.S. and abroad that should make all Americans think long and hard as to why GMOs are not labeled in America.
“In the United States, food labels already must list more than 3,000 ingredients ranging from gluten, aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats or MSG, but not genetically altered ingredients. Around the world, by contrast, 49 countries require labels on foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients,” said Sanders.
Who knows what the biotech industry is afraid of? But that’s not our concern. As an American, we each have a basic inalienable right to know what’s in our food, whether it was raised on an organic farm or genetically engineered in a laboratory.
Corporations shouldn’t be allowed to deny us our fundamental rights and neither should your Senators!
Tell your Senators, “I support GMO labeling – and you should too!“
Senate Food and Farm Bill Floor Vote Roundup
We want to thank everyone who made urgent phones calls in the past week and let you know that your persistence and hard work paid off!
Here’s a updated list of the amendments that Food Democracy Now! and our allies for a healthy, sustainable food system supported during the Senate vote on the 2012 Food and Farm Bill.
VICTORY – Chambliss Amendment No. 2438 Links the receipt of federally subsidized crop insurance to basic conservation requirements.
VICTORY – Durbin-Coburn Amendment No. 2439 Limits the amount of insurance subsidies for the wealthiest farmers.
LOSS – Gillibrand Amendment Restores funding for vital nutrition programs and limits excessive payments to crop insurance companies.
VICTORY – Merkley Amendment Creates a fair crop insurance program for organic farmers.
VICTORY – Brown Amendment Provides mandatory funding for Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development.
LOSS – Tester Crop Diversity Amendment to maintain access to the best varieties of seeds for farmers and future generations.
The sad news is that there were important amendments that we lost in this fight, but Food Democracy Now! proved once again, that if we work together, we can accomplish victories.
Together we can make GMO labeling a reality!
Thanks for participating in food democracy,
Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team
June 7, 2012
Matt Stoller - Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage
On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal activists. The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were ugly, in favor of the Republican. But this wasn’t just any Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue state. Walker waged a direct and very public attack on the major constituencies of the Democratic Party, rolling back rights for women, the working class, and the young with measures such as ending collective bargaining for state employees, privatizing state assets, and repealing Wisconson’s equal pay provisions for women. His agenda provoked a fierce reaction – – Wisconsin citizens occupied the Statehouse for months - and then a recall.
Yesterday, Walker’s agenda was ratified by the voters of Wisconsin, the state where public sector unions were born. It’s hard to overstate how bad this is – Wisconsin is now on the road to becoming a right-to-work state, in what is likely to become a right-to-work country. Right-to-work laws are provisions that allow individual employees to withdraw from unions, and they make it much harder for unions to organize.
And the deeper you look into the race, the worse it looks. By calling for a recall instead of a general strike after Walker stripped collective bargaining rights and cut benefits for workers, labor and Democratic leadership in the state diverted and then subverted populist energy, channeling it into an electoral process (at least one union, one very active in the occupation of the Capitol, stood apart from the electoral stupidity). Then, Barrett, an anti-labor centrist, won the Democratic primary by crushing his labor-backed opponent, Kathleen Falk. Finally, Barrett himself was destroyed by Scott Walker, who outspent Barrett 7-1 with corporate money. In other words, first, liberals lost a policy battle, then they failed to strike, then they lost a primary election, then they lost a general election to the most high-profile effective reactionary policy-maker in the country. The conservative beat the moderate who beat the liberal. And had Barrett won, he wouldn’t even have rolled back Walker’s agenda. Somehow, in a no-win electoral situation, Democrats and labor managed to lose as badly as they possibly could.
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Is Occupy Wall Street Dead?
"Most of the social scientists who are at all like me - unsentimental leftists - ... think this movement is over," says Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol, speaking to Reuters about the grassroots 'Occupy' movement that began in Manhattan last fall and sparked nationwide encampments of public spaces and opened a long-ignored dialogue about income inequality and unaddressed Wall Street malfeasance.
The guffaws of OWS activists and organizers can already be heard as the news that a Harvard professor has called the movement null and void.
But even Adbusters, the 'culture-jamming' magazine that help spawn the original Wall Street occupation, says that things have changed dramatically for the movement. "Our movement is living through a painful rebirth..." began its frontpage essay this week, and then quoted a Zuccoti park regular who declared, "We are facing a nauseating poverty of ideas.”
Bill Dobbs, a member of Occupy New York's press team, challenged Skocpol's view, explaining to Reuters that he compares the OWS struggle to that of America's civil rights movement - long and uphill, with broad goals to radically alter American society. The first step, he said, has been to re-animate America's long-dormant spirit of social activism.
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Renee Parsons - The Lost Forgotten Americans of 2012
As the austerity budget crisis continues to plague diverse Euro countries, American voters may breathe a sigh of relief that even with an economy that remains sluggish, the harsh level of austerity cuts being proposed in Greece and Spain and elsewhere have not happened here. At least that's what conventional wisdom espoused by those who have not suffered from the 2008 financial collapse or experienced the $1 trillion budget cuts in 2011 would have you believe.
As the early weeks of the presidential campaign have shown, the American electorate can expect a mind-numbing election season devoid of a real debate on real issues offering real solutions for millions of desperate citizens living on the edge, confronting the daily hopelessness of an utter catastrophe, abandoned by a government that once claimed to be 'Of, By and For the People". Lost in the shuffle of birth certificates or whether a private equity multi-millionaire is qualified to be president more than a community organizer is any discussion of the impacts on the upcoming second round of $1.2 trillion budget cuts.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-lost-forgotten-americ_b_1574213.html
[Video] American Veterans: Discarded and Forgotten - The Lecture Series
This is a playlist containing the three part lecture from Gary Null at the premiere of his documentary, American Veterans: Discarded and Forgotten.
June 6, 2012
Paul Craig Roberts - Financial Collapse At Hand: When is "Sooner or Later"?
In other words, financial deregulation leading to Wall Street’s gambles, the US government’s decision to bail out the banks and to keep them afloat, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy have put the economic future of the US and its currency in an untenable and dangerous position. It will not be possible to continue to flood the bond markets with $1.5 trillion in new issues each year when the interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation. Everyone who purchases a Treasury bond is purchasing a depreciating asset. Moreover, the capital risk of investing in Treasuries is very high. The low interest rate means that the price paid for the bond is very high. A rise in interest rates, which must come sooner or later, will collapse the price of the bonds and inflict capital losses on bond holders, both domestic and foreign.
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