Ralph Nader's Blog, page 58
September 15, 2011
Bill McKibben: Environmentalists ARE Criticizing Obama
Bill McKibben, well-known environmental activist, wrote a response to Nader's article earlier this week: "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire."
(You can read that column here)
McKibben:
Mr. Nader didn't get to talk at the rally because everyone else there had gotten arrested; they'd put their bodies on the line. As for not criticizing the president, we just had 1253 people arrested at the White House. Does that sound like criticism? We're busy bird-dogging the president around the country, with actions in four states in the last five days. We've staged 'interventions' at several of his campaign headquarters, with many more to come. I think the Nation got it right: "After Obama's Broken Promises, Will Green Voters Sit Out in 2012?"
(You can read that column here)
McKibben:
Mr. Nader didn't get to talk at the rally because everyone else there had gotten arrested; they'd put their bodies on the line. As for not criticizing the president, we just had 1253 people arrested at the White House. Does that sound like criticism? We're busy bird-dogging the president around the country, with actions in four states in the last five days. We've staged 'interventions' at several of his campaign headquarters, with many more to come. I think the Nation got it right: "After Obama's Broken Promises, Will Green Voters Sit Out in 2012?"
September 13, 2011
Obama's Pipeline Quagmire
It was the most extraordinary citizen organizing feat in recent White House history. Over 1200 Americans from 50 states came to Washington and were arrested in front of the White House to demonstrate their opposition to a forthcoming Obama approval of the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast.
Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in open non-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many people pay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. The first round of arrestees - about 100 of them - were brought to a jail and kept on cement floors for 52 hours - presumably, said one guard, on orders from above to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the two weeks ending September 3, 2011.
Continue reading "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire"
Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in open non-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many people pay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. The first round of arrestees - about 100 of them - were brought to a jail and kept on cement floors for 52 hours - presumably, said one guard, on orders from above to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the two weeks ending September 3, 2011.
Continue reading "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire"
September 12, 2011
Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader
Nader's Update #2 to Upset Cisco Shareholders
September 9, 2011
Dear Cisco Shareholder:
On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 you can register for a live webcast on Cisco's upcoming Financial Analyst Conference led by CEO John Chambers.
Since my last letter to you on June 30, 2011, we have all read the second quarter earnings report from Cisco. For what it is worth, Goldman Sachs upgraded Cisco from neutral to a buy, declaring that Cisco is cutting costs and is not a "broken franchise."
Continue reading "Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader"
September 9, 2011
Dear Cisco Shareholder:
On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 you can register for a live webcast on Cisco's upcoming Financial Analyst Conference led by CEO John Chambers.
Since my last letter to you on June 30, 2011, we have all read the second quarter earnings report from Cisco. For what it is worth, Goldman Sachs upgraded Cisco from neutral to a buy, declaring that Cisco is cutting costs and is not a "broken franchise."
Continue reading "Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader"
September 6, 2011
Roundtable Discussion on 9/11 - Monday, September 12 in D.C.
For Immediate Release:
Event date: September 12, 2011
Time: 12:30- 2 p.m.
Location: 2021 14th St NW; 14th and V St NW
(Washington, D.C.) - Ralph Nader and Busboys & Poets will host an unusual roundtable discussion on Monday, September 12 looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a forthright way that promotes forward thinking.
Nader recently suggested in a "USA Today" article that many Americans might want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have gravely harmed our country and other regions abroad. He says we should do this so we don't allow such serial blowbacks in the future.
Roundtable participants will include:
- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and adjunct professor of government at William & Mary University;
- Mike German, policy counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy at the ACLU and former FBI agent;
- Bruce Fein, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and former executive editor of World Intelligence Review.
- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and people's lawyer.
This memorable presentation will be held at 2021 14th St NW, and is open to the public.
Event date: September 12, 2011
Time: 12:30- 2 p.m.
Location: 2021 14th St NW; 14th and V St NW
(Washington, D.C.) - Ralph Nader and Busboys & Poets will host an unusual roundtable discussion on Monday, September 12 looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a forthright way that promotes forward thinking.
Nader recently suggested in a "USA Today" article that many Americans might want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have gravely harmed our country and other regions abroad. He says we should do this so we don't allow such serial blowbacks in the future.
Roundtable participants will include:
- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and adjunct professor of government at William & Mary University;
- Mike German, policy counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy at the ACLU and former FBI agent;
- Bruce Fein, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and former executive editor of World Intelligence Review.
- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and people's lawyer.
This memorable presentation will be held at 2021 14th St NW, and is open to the public.
September 2, 2011
Obama's Laborious Labor Day
Dear President Obama:
Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity as President to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.
You could convey to 150 million workers that you
Continue reading "Obama's Laborious Labor Day"
Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity as President to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.
You could convey to 150 million workers that you
Continue reading "Obama's Laborious Labor Day"
August 31, 2011
10 painful lessons of 9/11
The commemorative ceremonies that are planned for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 massacre are those of pathos for the victims and their families, of praise for both the pursuit of the supporters of the attackers and the performance of first responders and our soldiers abroad.
Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.
But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.
2. Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries - a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
3. Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.
4. Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.
5. Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.
6. Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.
7. Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers - so many harmed for life - from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.
8. Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.
9. Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
10. Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?
In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.
The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."
All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on Sept. 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.
Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.
But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.
2. Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries - a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
3. Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.
4. Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.
5. Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.
6. Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.
7. Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers - so many harmed for life - from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.
8. Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.
9. Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
10. Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?
In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.
The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."
All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on Sept. 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.
August 29, 2011
Sun and Sanity
This is the second week of protests, led by Bill McKibben, in front of the White House demanding that President Barack Obama reject a proposed 1700 mile pipeline transporting the dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada through fragile ecologies down to the Gulf Coast refineries. One thousand people will be arrested there from all fifty states before their demonstration is over. The vast majority voted for Obama and they are plenty angry with his brittleness on environmental issues in general.
Continue reading "Sun and Sanity"
Continue reading "Sun and Sanity"
August 24, 2011
Nurses to Converge on 60 Congressional Offices in 21 States Sept. 1
From Maine to California, nurses, joined by others fed up with the ongoing economic crisis, will call on members of Congress in their local district offices September 1 to ask the members to support a tax on Wall Street financial speculation, a revenue source fast becoming an international norm, to pay for healing the nation.
Events, from hosting soup kitchens to help feed the hungry and homeless, to community speak outs to street theater are planned in major urban centers like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando, to smaller cities and towns, such as Corpus Christi, TX., Marquette, MI., Bakersfield, CA., Dayton, OH., and Worcester, MA. National Nurses United is sponsoring the actions.
Nurses will visit the home offices of Republicans and Democrats alike, with a common message. Everyday Americans are hurting, and they need jobs, healthcare, housing, quality education, nutrition, and a secure retirement, not more cuts, as has been the obsession of Congress.
For more information on the event itself and to see if there is something going on near you visit the California Nurse's Association's website: http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/sept-1-event-list
Events, from hosting soup kitchens to help feed the hungry and homeless, to community speak outs to street theater are planned in major urban centers like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando, to smaller cities and towns, such as Corpus Christi, TX., Marquette, MI., Bakersfield, CA., Dayton, OH., and Worcester, MA. National Nurses United is sponsoring the actions.
Nurses will visit the home offices of Republicans and Democrats alike, with a common message. Everyday Americans are hurting, and they need jobs, healthcare, housing, quality education, nutrition, and a secure retirement, not more cuts, as has been the obsession of Congress.
For more information on the event itself and to see if there is something going on near you visit the California Nurse's Association's website: http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/sept-1-event-list
August 23, 2011
Dark Horizon for Verizon
It was only a matter of time before the "pull down" NAFTA and WTO trade agreements on U.S. wages and jobs would be followed by "pull down" contract demands by U.S. corporations on their unionized workers toward levels of non-unionized laborers.
The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon
Continue reading "Dark Horizon for Verizon"
The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon
Continue reading "Dark Horizon for Verizon"
August 12, 2011
Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist
He took his position as the founder and CEO of Interface, the world's largest modular carpet manufacturing firm, and made environmental history that is extending into many sustainability commitments for the industrial managers he educated.
The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.
Continue reading "Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist"
The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.
Continue reading "Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist"
Ralph Nader's Blog
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