Hawaiians make move for national sovereignty and occupy historic palace, declaring it would take over the official government duties. The Hawaii Kingdom Government is a constitutional monarchy of the rightfully independent nation of Hawaii. They do not recognize Hawaii as a U.S. state, but as an autonomous nation occupied by the United States.
Radiohead joins MTVexit to make this video about sweatshop labor.
Because the project is funded in part by USAID, I’m surprised how not terrible it is. Sure, it’s cliche and not insightful, but at least, it’s not dehumanizing and it makes the connection between the two kids.
It just doesn’t offer any analysis about the problem — why is the white kid wearing the shoes made by the other kid? And who is profiting from the exploitation of child labor? Corporations — like those who sponsor MTV programming and that of other Viacom networks.
And it doesn’t really offer any solutions. But MTVexit isn’t really about stopping sweatshop labor. Their mission statement says they want to increase awareness about human trafficking through education and outreach with local anti-trafficking organizations. Sounds like they’re trying for an easy PR boost.
Few would deny that child labor and human trafficking are bad — besides Nicholas Kristof, Milton Friedman and a few other insane ideologues who deny reality and ignore human suffering — so I can’t see what this campaign actually hopes to do — besides give MTV the false appearance of caring.
By the way, MTV’s website has a whole section on activism, listed under the subtitle “Movies, Games & More.”
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former first lady who hasn’t driven a car or pumped gas in many years because of Secret Service restrictions, joined a blue-collar worker at a filling station Wednesday to illustrate how the high price of gasoline is squeezing consumers.
The Democratic presidential candidate and sheet metal worker Jason Wilfing, 33, pulled into the station in a large white Ford 250 pickup truck, Clinton riding shotgun. Never mind that it wasn’t even Wilfing’s truck — he had borrowed his boss’s larger vehicle to accommodate Clinton’s security agent and personal assistant, who rode in the back.
Trailing Wilfing and Clinton was a Secret Service motorcade consisting of six gas-guzzling Suburbans, two squad cars and a green SUV bearing photographers and TV cameras. Several other reporters and cameramen stood shivering in unseasonably cold temperatures, ready to capture the multi-vehicle arrival.
Clinton and Wilfing stepped out of the car and approached the pump. Wilfing chose regular unleaded gasoline, and began filling the tank. The two engaged in chit chat, with New York senator mentioning her proposal for a temporary gas tax holiday to ease the price pinch on consumers.
The tank filled, Clinton looked at the price recorded at the pump and shook her head.
“Sixty-three dollars,” she said. “For just about half a tank.”
First they randomly (racially profiling) targeted Sean Bell and two of his friends as they leave a club after celebrating his bachelor party. As he got into a car, the police began shooting at them - firing 50 rounds and killing Sean Bell.
The police claimed that they were fired on, but no gun was found on the other side. The men were completely unarmed and guilty of NO CRIME.
The trial only lasted two months.
This is a disgusting outcome. Shame on Judge Arthur J. Cooperman.
And why was there no jury trial? oh right, the three police didn’t want it and opted to go before the superior court. Good ‘ole democracy.
Civil rights leaders demanded a federal investigation and vowed to march through the streets in protest after three police officers were cleared of all charges in the killing of an unarmed black man. (April 25)
“We’re going to demonstrate to the government that New Yorkers will not take this abortion of justice lying down,” said Al Sharpton, prominent civil rights leader.
George Bush has set a new record: the lowest approval rating in the 70 year history of the Gallup Poll. The poll taken over the weekend found that 69 percent of people in the United States disapprove of Bush’s job.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Hillary Clinton declared to an early morning audience on Good Morning America. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Not quite what I want to wake up hearing. What the fuck. She may as well have sang it as McCain did, “Bomb, bomb, bomb. bomb-bomb Iran.”
It’s official. I despise her.
But at least she’s now being honest about how hateful she really is. No more of those silly lies about diplomacy and measured action. Is this truthfulness a new shift in her campaign strategy?
Next up: “I supported and still support NAFTA - it was good for my friends at Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and other former clients.”
Yesterday during a radio interview, Bill Clinton said, “[Obama and his campaign] played the race card on me.” Right, because black people have a special card - not only does it help them win the presidency (so successful in the past!), but it can also get them out of jail free and let them off with a warning when police pull them for speeding.
Come on, Billary, stop being such a supercilious racist. Race privilege doesn’t mean that black people have a card they can pull, but that white people have a knapsack full of shit they didn’t earn.
“Hold on a second,” Obama responded when asked about Clinton’s recent remarks. “So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?
“You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.”
His words? Bill says they’re not. Billary’s now denying he made the comments that he made while on-air. Frankly, by now, he should know the futility of disavowing something recorded. Ridiculous.
People are dieing younger in many of our nation’s worst off counties, a new study has found. The study authors conclude, “[T]he 1980s and 1990s marked an era of increased inequalities in mortality in the United States.”
“[These inequalities are] particularly troubling,” the researchers explain, “because an oft-stated aim of the U.S. health system is the improvement of the health of all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities.”
Despite its stated goals, our health system is leaving many people without the care they need to live. The insurance driven healthcare is not covering everyone. It is inadequate and the price is deadly.
We need universal, single payer healthcare to remove these unjust inequalities, so no one’s life is needlessly cut short.
A recent poll found that 35 percent of corporate executives think the heads of their companies are paid too much. Last year, 21 percent said the same. The median compensation for a CEO of a large U.S. company is $8.8 million.
Over the past decade, CEO pay (for the companies of the Dow Jones industrials) increased at a whooping annual rate of 15.1 percent - while the median household income rose at a rate of 0.68 percent annually from 1996 to 2006.
Today the Haartz editorial board spoke against Israel’s boycott of Jimmy Carter - who Israel PM Ehud Olmert refused to see because of his visit with a Hamas leader - declaring that “he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.”
More to the point, Haartz agreed with Carter’s characterization of the situation in Palestine and acknowledged that it “begs” such a comparison to Apartheid South Africa: “the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel’s control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed.”
Facebook. Officials in Israel Defense Forces have identified a “new threat to Israel’s national security - the popular social networking Website Facebook.”
Jimmy Carter. Carter - you know, the Nobel Peace Prize winner - is meeting with Hamas officials, whereas Obama said he would never “until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.” But he at least wouldn’t condemn Carter, “I’m not going to comment on former president Carter.”
Whereas, Condi Rice has no qualms taking on the Nobel Peace Prize winner saying, “Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace.” And she has previously characterized the party - that holds a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority - as a “terrorist organization.” But as it goes, it was IDF that has killed 16 people in the last two days - including four teenagers and two children.
Who’s the terrorist? Brothers and sisters of twelve-year-old Riad Al-Oweisi, sit next to his body at his family house in al-Bureij refugee camp in the middle of Gaza Strip, April 11, 2008. Israeli forces launched air strikes and a ground raid on Gaza Friday, trading fire with fighters in clashes that killed seven Palestinians including the 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said. The deaths drove the Palestinian death toll to 15 in Israeli strikes retaliating for a fighter attack that killed two Israeli civilians at a vital Gaza fuel depot Wednesday. MaanImages/Wissam Nassar.
And who’s kissing some Israel booty?
Obama. He launched a Hebrew blog today in Israel. The blog declares his staunch support of Israel’s security.That’ll show you, LA Times. Launching it the day after the times accused him of having Palestinian friends (oh no!) was no strange coincidence.
20 percent of scientists polled by Nature Magazine use either ritalin (66 percent of users), provigil or beta blockers (this was just an April Fool’s Day joke)
Republicans boo latest addition to the U.S. Congress - Jackie Speier (D-CA).
“The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately,” she told Pelosi. “The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one.”
She’s not particularly different from other democrats, so why the hostile reception? If anything, her life is just tragic.
including parts for F-14 fighter jets, unused chemical-biological canister and a used Nuclear Biological Chemical protective suit, all stolen from the Department of Defense, of course.
Obama is a friend of Palestine? So says an article on the front page of the L.A. Times.
The Nation implies it is poor and misleading reporting on the LA Times part, and I agree. By hyping up the article and catering to Anti-Palestinian groups, the author confounds the facts and obscures the truth.
The evidence that Obama supports Palestine? He attended events with prominent literature professors and scholars of Arab history - Edward Said [an influential critical theorist and major contributer to the founding of postcolonial theory] and Rashid Khalidi [the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University].
From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 [TEN YEARS AGO] Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. Electronic Intifada
I think it’s great that Obama heard lectures from the late Edward Said - I wish I could have! Said as “a Palestinian and a leading American intellectual” wrote one of the most important critiques of Western constructions of the East - Orientalism. (more…)
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a recent NYT article.
When facing charges for bribery and fraud, corporations can sideswipe criminal indictment by merely paying small token fees - “peanuts” compared to damages paid after criminal conviction.
For example, a medical supply company [Zimmer Holdings Inc.] avoided criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice by paying up to $52 million to the consulting firm of John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, to act as an “outside monitor.” Sounds like a little conflict of interest, no? or a “a backroom, sweetheart deal” in the words of the chairperson of a House Judiciary subcommittee. (more…)
The Atlantic Monthly offers a good assessment of the media’s reaction to Jeremiah Wright and his condemnation of racist U.S. policies. The uproar of many white pundits was less to do with the content of Wright’s message - as demonstrated by their rampant de-contextualizing - and more to do with how that message shattered their dearly-held conceptions of who Obama is.
Many white people finally realized Obama cannot be colorblind because he, in fact, is a black man with the lived experiences of a person of color in a racist society. And because of that, he may very well - let’s hope - share some of Wright’s opinions.
No matter the rhetoric he employs, Obama cannot be “post-racial” in a world that still churns profits and white comfort out of oppressions based on race.
His glamour explains a campaign paradox: how a man who wrote a race-conscious coming-of-age memoir about his search for a black identity could be touted as a “post-racial” candidate. The allure of his origins obscured his own account of his inner life.
That’s one reason the revelation of his religious mentor’s racially charged sermons proved so potent. Obama’s association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright revealed to white audiences that the senator is a self-defined black man who listens sympathetically to—and might even share—the angry grievances of other African Americans. His rhetoric may be inclusive, but he is not colorblind. He does not, by his mere existence, make America’s racial divisions disappear.
The Huffington Post has received an advanced copy of Cliff Schecter’s biography of John McCain - The Real McCain.
Schecter’s research reveals that McCain got into a physical brawl with his fellow Arizona congressman Rick Renzi (R). I think it has something to do with gender roles.
In 2006, the Arizona Republican congressional delegation had a strategy meeting. McCain repeatedly addressed two new members, congressmen Trent Franks and Rick Renzi, as ‘boy.’ Finally, Renzi, a former college linebacker, rose from his chair and said to McCain, “You call me that one more time and I’ll kick your old ass.” McCain lunged at Renzi, punches were thrown, and the two had to be physically separated. After they went to their separate offices, McCain called Renzi and demanded an apology. Renzi refused. Apparently this posture made McCain admire him, as they became fast friends.
Oh, what good friends he keeps: On February 22, 2008 Rick Renzi was indicted on 35 criminal counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and official extortion stemming from land deals in his state.
McCain also called his wife a “cunt.” The vagina as an insult. What a misogynist.
Bill Clinton, who passed NAFTA during his reign, supports a free trade agreement with Colombia. The agreement would undercut environmental regulations, unions and workers’ rights to fill the pockets of multinational corporations.
Hillary Clinton says she would vote against such a deal and has recently employed a little “historical revision” to her initial stance on NAFTA, now claiming she has always had reservations about it. Will she fire her husband like she fired her top strategist Mark Penn for supporting the Colombian deal?
We’ll see if she sticks to her word. On Monday Bush sent the agreement to congress, which has 90 days to act on it.
And what about the violent oppression of trade unions in Colombia, Bush/Clinton? And NAFTA’s legacy of jobloss and economic hardship for U.S. workers and Mexican farmers?
Fortunately, Mike Michaud (D-Maine), co-founder of the House of Representatives Trade Working Group, says, “The Colombia FTA is dead on arrival.”
Three pro-Tibet activists scale the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to hang huge banners in protest the coming Olympic torch and China’s violent repression of the Tibetan uprising.
While men are more likely to tolerate of discrimination, everyone tended to accept the most prejudice against poorly educated immigrants and Arab American airplane travelers, according to a study by the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.
Through both phone and internet surveys, researchers asked more than 3,300 people to evaluate five scenarios, each of which dealt with a form of discrimination targeting a distinct class of people: Arab American airplane travelers, seriously overweight people, the genetically disadvantaged, poorly educated immigrants and African American motorists.
Based on the phone interviews, men were 7.6 percent more likely to tolerate discrimination against the obese and 8.9 percent more likely to accept racial profiling of African-American motorists. And men were even more tolerant of discrimination in the Web survey: men were 19.6 percent more likely to tolerate discrimination against the obese and 17.4 percent more likely to accept racial profiling.
Tolerance Index: A ranking of acceptance of discrimination
Poorly educated immigrants - around 30 percent
Arab-Americans airplane travelers - around 20 percent
Seriously overweight people - around 14 percent
African American motorists - around 13 percent
Genetically disadvantaged people - around 5 percent
Conclusions: nearly one-third of people surveyed tolerate racism against brown people, one-third of the respondents suck and men suck more.
We should never tolerable discrimination and oppression.
While U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton in the polls, Palestinians in Gaza are launching their own attempt to boost his campaign.
Isn’t this support a bit bizarre? Obama has made considerable effort over the last year to demonstrate his allegiance to Israel. And in his appeal to U.S. Jewish communities, the deputy speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Josh Shapiro proclaimed Obama’s “100 percent voting record on Israel issues.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Israel is increasingly turning away sick Gazans who seek medical treatment. Several Palestinians die each month because Israel refuses to let them leave Gaza for necessary medical care.
In the last five months, 32 people have died while waiting for travel permits. “All these tragedies could have been easily avoided,” said Ambrogio Maneti, WHO’s head of office for the West Bank and Gaza.
Egypt has allowed some Gazans in for treatment but has agreed with Israel to keep its border largely closed.
A Palestinian carries his sick son as they make their way to Egypt after crossing the destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 24, 2008. Reuters
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza say more than 100 Gazan patients have died since June after Israel denied them permits to seek medical treatment. That’s really sick.
A medical officer points to a wound on the head of a newborn Palestinian baby, who Palestinian medics said was killed by Israeli forces gunfire, in the central Gaza Strip March 4, 2008. Reuters
Wal-Mart has ended its ridiculous effort to collect more than $400,000 in health-care reimbursement from a former employee, Deborah Shank, who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident. The corporation was seeking a refund of the medical expenses it paid because Shank also collected damage money from the trucking firm of the driver that hit her.
Finally. What bullshit to try that.
And I can’t believe we still don’t have universal health care. We’re such fools for not having it. Pawns of the corporate lobby.
The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr. for nearly five years from 1963 until his assassination in 1968. After approving the wiretaps, attorney general Robert Kennedy specifically requested to be personally informed about any findings.
After his “I have a dream” speech, the FBI called him, the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
When King learned he would be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the FBI decided to take its harassment of King one step further, sending him an insulting and threatening note anonymously. A draft was found in the FBI files years later. In it the FBI wrote, “You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.” The letter went on to say, “The American public … will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast,” and “Satan could not do more.”
It really begs the question of what was blacked out, a friend points out. If all of that horribleness was deemed acceptable, what could be so bad to warrant the censorship?
The letter’s threat was ominous, if not specific: “King you are done.” Some have theorized the intent of the letter was to drive King to commit suicide in order to avoid personal embarrassment. “King, there is only one thing left for you to do,” the letter concluded. “You know what it is … You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
“Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity Unity Church of Christ.” — Barbara Ehrenreich, March 2008
“It’s hard sometimes for me to understand how Obama is able to milk so much reaction out of speeches that are not only pedestrian, but which contain truly startling statements. The speech he made yesterday, for example: how can he manage to dedicate a whole address to the importance of overcoming racism, and in the middle of that talk not only essentially smear his pastor with the ‘Angry Black’ stereotype, but also endorse the ongoing US policy of racism and injustice towards the Palestinians, and then somehow come out of the whole thing smelling like roses, sending hyperventilating progressives all over the country to their smelling salts, believing that they’ve heard the ‘greatest speech’ of modern times!” — “epppie,” an e-mail correspondent, March 19, 2008
——–
I just read Barack Obama’s Latest Greatest Speech – his celebrated address on race, titled “A More Perfect Union” [1], yesterday (I am writing on the morning of March 19 2008), in Philadelphia. Sparked by recent broadcasts of his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright’s angry denunciations of U.S. imperialism and racism, the speech changes nothing for me.
Deluded Obamanists can stop sending me e-mails saying (to quote one this morning) “wow he really knocked them dead in Philly telling it like it is on Race. Now will you please finally get on board with the Great Barack?”
As his most recent Grand Oration shows, the Chosen One is not about to sacrifice political ambition for the sake of truth and justice.
Yesterday’s address was all about Obama using his former pastor as a pretext for yet more triangulation [2]. Wright was employed as a foil for Obama to pose as reasonable on race and racism while he continued his project of deepening public confusion on racist and other United States oppression structures at the heart of American society.
During a fundraiser for diabetes research at North Dakota State University — the Mr. NDSU Pageant– , a white student in blackface portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance from another guy dressed as the Obama girl.
In the background, two other students dressed as cowboys simulated anal sex while holding an Obama sign, which was ripped at the end of the 30-second performance.
At North Dakota State University only 1.5 percent of the students are black or African American.
I wonder if fox news will even mention this. It was on the front page of cnn.com, but a simple search for it on foxnews.com yields no results. They covered Obama’s “typical white person” comment and Rev. Wright’s speeches enough that you would think they like stories on race and Obama.
Rev. Wright, however, was not racist. He merely pointed out racism in society and U.S. policies. I guess Fox may just like stories on Obama that provide the opportunity for reporters to deny the existence of white privilege and structural racism.
But I still thought that it would cover such blatant racism that does allow simple reporting without challenging their dearly held white privileges. Perhaps Foxnews fears coverage would benefit Obama by countering all their hard work through the Wright story to whitewash racism in society. Weren’t their talking points trying to make Obama seem divisive and Wright seem racist and to imply that most racism today is against white people (ridiculous)? (more…)
I heard this on CNN last night, but someone convinced me that the anchor must have just misspoken. Alas, though, it is true. Mike Gravel, presidential candidate from Alaska, has jumped the Democrat ship and landed in the Libertarian sinkhole.
“I’m joining the Libertarian Party because it is a party that combines a commitment to freedom and peace that can’t be found in the two major parties that control the government and politics of America. My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy.”
Does Gravel not know that the libertarian party of the United States is the capitalist party? It wants to end all taxes, extend neoliberal trade and stop social programs (refer to Ron Paul). The party doesn’t support the war because it doesn’t support any government spending. (more…)
The U.S. subsidies for corn producers may be having global impacts on the food supply. Many U.S. agricultural business switched from growing food crops to corn for ethanol, as a result of the federal money. Big businesses are also clear cutting the Amazon rainforest to grow what Bush touts as “alternative energy” that reduces the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
With intensifying food shortages and mounting prices, the sad irony is that corn ethanol is a net negative for energy. Because it uses more energy to produce than it yields, it contributes to the growing energy crisis and thus further to the escalating price of food.
Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), March 28, 2008. Perhaps his slip suggests what he really believes would happen. Would Clinton really concede if the delegate count was not in her favor or would she try to woo the superdelegates?
This is obviously satire, but I want to point out that their estimate of the Iraq death toll is low. While there are around 90,000 documented deaths, the deaths of many people go unrecorded. A January 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 151,000 Iraqis died violent deaths because of the Iraq war through June 2006.
During the San Francisco antiwar protests on March 19, a security officer outside of a closed Bank of America branch flicked off a protester for taking photographs. The bank was closed because of the protests that marked the five year anniversary of the Iraq War.
I love it. The state protecting capitalism reduced to using the finger against resistance.
Life. In the United States, more than 2,200 people are sentenced to life in prison for crimes they committed as minors. Only 12 people outside the United States face such sentences.
Health. The best doctors are the worst people. The top scoring medical students just want to make money by tending to narcissism of wealth.
Food. Big Business consumes organic food. The NYT found a neat graphic that shows how small organic companies have been bought up by big corporations and private investment firms. The whole organic labeling system itself makes it difficult for local farmers to become certified, so it is no surprise that multinationals own most organic foods. Buy local. Unlike organic food, it’s cheaper.
The U.S. Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are investigating the South Carolina Highway Patrol. In series of videos, dash-board cameras have recorded South Carolina police officers intentionally hitting black suspects with cars and using racial slurs in their pursuit. (more…)
Brothers and sisters of twelve-year-old Riad Al-Oweisi, sit next to his body at his family house in al-Bureij refugee camp in the middle of Gaza Strip, April 11, 2008. Israeli forces launched air strikes and a ground raid on Gaza Friday, trading fire with fighters in clashes that killed seven Palestinians including the 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said. The deaths drove the Palestinian death toll to 15 in Israeli strikes retaliating for a fighter attack that killed two Israeli civilians at a vital Gaza fuel depot Wednesday. MaanImages/Wissam Nassar.
Apparently, the punishment for corporate fraud is further bribery in Bush’s Department of Justice, according to a 
During a fundraiser for diabetes research at North Dakota State University — the Mr. NDSU Pageant– , a white student in blackface portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance from another guy dressed as the Obama girl.
I heard this on CNN last night, but someone convinced me that the anchor must have just misspoken. Alas, though, it is true. Mike Gravel, presidential candidate from Alaska, has jumped the Democrat ship and landed in the Libertarian sinkhole.
