Israel Attacks, kidnaps Justice Boat Humanitarians, Grief and Dispair in Gaza

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
30 June 2009

ISRAEL ATTACKS JUSTICE BOAT; KIDNAPS HUMAN RIGHTS WORKERS; CONFISCATES
MEDICINE, TOYS AND OLIVE TREES

For more information contact:
Greta Berlin (English)
tel: +357 99 081 767 / friends@freegaza.org

Caoimhe Butterly (Arabic/English/Spanish):
tel: +357 99 077 820 / sahara78@hotmail.co.uk
www.FreeGaza.org

[23 miles off the coast of Gaza, 15:30pm] - Today Israeli Occupation Forces
attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY,
abducting 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble
laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (see
below for a complete list of passengers). The passengers and crew are being
forcibly dragged toward Israel.

"This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat
was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza
Strip," said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential
candidate. "President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and
reconstruction supplies, and that's exactly what we tried to do. We're
asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume
our journey."

According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released
yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are "trapped in despair."
Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during Israel's
December/January massacre are still without shelter despite pledges of
almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other
building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals
are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel's
disruption of medical supplies.

"The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of Gaza, hope
that the sea route would open for them, and they would be able to transport
their own materials to begin to reconstruct the schools, hospitals and
thousands of homes destroyed during the onslaught of "Cast Lead". Our
mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that
they are not alone" said fellow passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble
Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.

Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement
chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, stated that: "No
one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of
threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and
children's toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a
former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security
clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did
we ever approach Israeli waters."

Arraf continued, "Israel's deliberate and premeditated attack on our unarmed
boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand our immediate
and unconditional release."

###

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Justice
tel: +972 2646 6666 or +972 2646 6340
fax: +972 2646 6357

CONTACT the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
tel: +972 2530 3111
fax: +972 2530 3367

CONTACT Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
tel: +972 5 0620 3264 or +972 2670 5354
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il

CONTACT the International Committee of the Red Cross to ask for their
assistance in establishing the wellbeing of the kidnapped human rights
workers and help in securing their immediate release!

Red Cross Israel
tel: +972 3524 5286
fax: +972 3527 0370
tel_aviv.tel@icrc.org

Red Cross Switzerland:
tel: +41 22 730 3443
fax: +41 22 734 8280

Red Cross USA:
tel: +1 212 599 6021
fax: +1 212 599 6009
###

Kidnapped Passengers from the Spirit of Humanity include:

Khalad Abdelkader, Bahrain
Khalad is an engineer representing the Islamic Charitable Association of
Bahrain.

Othman Abufalah, Jordan
Othman is a world-renowned journalist with al-Jazeera TV.

Khaled Al-Shenoo, Bahrain
Khaled is a lecturer with the University of Bahrain.

Mansour Al-Abi, Yemen
Mansour is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera TV.

Fatima Al-Attawi, Bahrain
Fatima is a relief=2 0worker and community activist from Bahrain.

Juhaina Alqaed, Bahrain
Juhaina is a journalist & human rights activist.

Huwaida Arraf, US
Huwaida is the Chair of the Free Gaza Movement and delegation co-coordinator
for this voyage.

Ishmahil Blagrove, UK
Ishmahil is a Jamaican-born journalist, documentary film maker and founder
of the Rice & Peas film production company. His documentaries focus on
international struggles for social justice.

Kaltham Ghloom, Bahrain
Kaltham is a community activist.

Derek Graham, Ireland
Derek Graham is an electrician, Free Gaza organizer, and first mate aboard
the Spirit of Humanity.

Alex Harrison, UK
Alex is a solidarity worker from Britain. She is traveling to Gaza to do
long-term human rights monitoring.

Denis Healey, UK
Denis is Captain of the Spirit of Humanity. This will be his fifth voyage to
Gaza.

Fathi Jaouadi, UK
Fathi is a British journalist, Free Gaza organizer, and delegation
co-coordinator for this voyage.

Mairead Maguire, Ireland
Mairead is a Nobel laureate and renowned peace activist.

Lubna Masarwa, Palestine/Israel
Lubna is a Palestinian human rights activist and Free Gaza organizer.

Theresa McDermott, Scotland
Theresa is a solidarity worker from Scotland. She is traveling to Gaza to do
long-term human rights monitoring.

Cynthia McKinney, US
Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken advocate for human rights and social
justice issues, as well as a=2 0former U.S. congressperson and presidential
candidate.

Adnan Mormesh, UK
Adnan is a solidarity worker from Britain. He is traveling to Gaza to do
long-term human rights monitoring.

Adam Qvist, Denmark
Adam is a solidarity worker from Denmark. He is traveling to Gaza to do
human rights monitoring.

Adam Shapiro, US
Adam is an American documentary film maker and human rights activist.

Kathy Sheetz, US
Kathy is a nurse and film maker, traveling to Gaza to do human rights
monitoring.

###

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=32762

Carter: Palestinians treated like 'animals' under Israeli siege

Former US president 'holds back tears' after seeing 'deliberate destruction'
of Gaza by Israeli F16s.

Middle East Online: 2009-06-16

GAZA CITY - Former US president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday met democratically
elected Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a
lifting of Israel's blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated "like
animals."

Following the talks, Carter called for an end of "all violence" against both
Israelis and Palestinians.

"This is holy land for us all and my hope is that we can have peace... all
of us are children of Abraham," he said at a joint news conference with
Haniya, prime minister of the Hamas government in the Palestinian enclave.

Carter was expected to pass on a letter from the parents of Gilad Shalit, an
Israeli soldier seized by Gaza resistance including Hamas in a cross-border
raid almost three years ago, and who remains in captivity.

Earlier Carter denounced the Israeli blockade and the destruction wrought by
its 22-day military offensive against Gaza in December and January.

"My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of
anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people,"
Carter said as he toured the impoverished territory.

"Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for
help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like
human beings," he said.

"The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life --
never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by
bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself," Carter said
at a UN school graduation ceremony in Gaza City.

The United States and Europe "must try to do all that is necessary to
convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza," he said.

"At same time, there must be no more rockets" from Gaza into Israel, said
Carter, who brokered the historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and
Egypt.

"I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has
been wracked against your people," he said at a destroyed American school,
saying it was "deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my
country."

"I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis,"
Carter said.

Shortly after entering Gaza, Carter's convoy of white UN 4x4 vehicles
stopped briefly in the area of Ezbet Abed Rabbo, one of the most ravaged
during the Israeli onslaught at the turn of the year.

The massive destruction in the area has made it a regular stop for the
succession of foreign dignitaries who have come to Gaza since the war.

As Carter briefly emerged from his vehicle to look at the damage, one
resident ran up, yelling that he wanted to talk to the former US leader, and
getting into a brief shoving match with bodyguards.

"They all come here and look at us like we're animals and then they go
home," said Majid Athamna. "We're not animals, we're human beings."

"If he wants to come and visit us, he has to listen to us."

In an interview with an Israeli daily published earlier in the week, Carter
urged Israel to lift its blockade and stop treating the 1.5 million
aid-dependent residents of the Palestinian territory like "savages."

"To me, the most grievous circumstance is the maltreatment of the people in
Gaza, who are literally starving and have no hope at this time," Carter told
the Haaretz newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

"They're being treated like savages. The alleviation of their plight to some
means I think would be the most important (thing) the Israeli PM could do."

Israel's war on Gaza killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and
wounded 5,450 others.

Among the dead were 437 children, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and
four journalists.

The wounded include 1,890 children and 200 people in serious condition.

The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their
residents remained homeless.

Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded
to Hamas's win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely
blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007,
although a 'lighter' siege had already existed before.

Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel's siege
of Gaza, branding it "collective punishment."

A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused
Israel of committing "genocide" through its crippling blockade of the Strip.

Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air,
sea and land access to the Strip.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses
Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to
keep the crossing shut.

Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and
has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied
by Israel in 1967.

Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian
Golan Heights.

__._,_.___

An apology, Zelaya at the UN, Rich: 40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans

Hi. Yesterday, I sent you information from 2 sources on the Honduran
coup. The first item was incorrect, as stated here. My sincere apology.

From: "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz" <rdunbaro@pacbell.net>
To: <epearlag@earthlink.net>;

Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: Updates on Honduras

False rumor, Hamm is alive
From my I-phone

Ed, I know; it was quite irresponsible of Narcosphere to put that
misinformation out without confirming it, and then not to put out a
mass mailing correcting it. When I first received it early this
morning, I went to their website to check and found that they had
retracted the claim. I see that the url got lost in the shuffle by
the time you sent it out. It's important that we on the left don't
discredit ourselves by making false claims, as is happening with the
Iran situation.

Roxanne

----- Original Message -----
From: Williams Camacaro
To: bosanovanuevoyazul@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 7:23 PM

EMERGENCY RALLY TO RECEIVE HONDURAN PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA AT THE UN

Grassroots movements and the solidarity organizations in NYC are
mobilizing to receive Manuel Zelaya, President of Honduras, who will be
attending to the General Assembly at the UN to denounce the coup d'etat
against his government and the people of Honduras

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2009, from 10 AM to 12:30 P.M.

WHERE: Ralph Bunch Park
(to the west of 1st Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd streets), Manhattan, NYC

END THE COUP NOW! RESTORE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED MANUEL ZELAYA TO POWER!

NO TO US INTERVENTION! YES TO SELF DETERMINATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS
AND ALL OF THE AMERICAS!

Manuel Zelaya is backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements
in Honduras. This coup was carried out in a way that mirrors the removal of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti and the attempted coup against
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was brought back to power by the
Venezuelan people. Clearly, this is an act of economic and political elites
in Honduras, the US, and elsewhere who are desperate to prevent Honduras
from continuing to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in
Latin America.

Following the kidnapping of Zelaya, Honduras' foreign minister and
ambassadors from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua were also kidnapped - in
clear violation of international laws. Now, the people of Honduras of taken
to the streets in protest and Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela, and others have made public statements condemning the coup
d'etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to
ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated.
Washington, on the other hand, remains silent as of now.

JOIN THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN CONDEMNING THE
COUP D'ETAT AND DEMANDING THAT MANUEL ZELAYA BE REINSTATED.

(Some of the information above is excerpted from an article by Eva Golinger
at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4554. Additional information is
available at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com)

This rally is sponsored called by the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY
and other progressive organizations and movements throughout NYC. For more
information, email cbalbertolovera@gmail.com.

----- Original Message -----
From: Williams Camacaro
To: bosanovanuevoyazul@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 7:23 PM

EMERGENCY RALLY TO RECEIVE HONDURAN PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA AT THE UN

All the grassroots movements and the solidarity organizations in NYC are
mobilizing to receive Manuel Zelaya, President of Honduras, who will be
attending to the General Assembly at the UN to denounce the coup d'etat
against his government and the people of Honduras

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2009, from 10 AM to 12:30 P.M.

WHERE: Ralph Bunch Park
(to the west of 1st Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd streets), Manhattan, NYC

END THE COUP NOW! RESTORE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED MANUEL ZELAYA TO POWER!

NO TO US INTERVENTION! YES TO SELF DETERMINATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS
AND ALL OF THE AMERICAS!

Manuel Zelaya is backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements
in Honduras. This coup was carried out in a way that mirrors the removal of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti and the attempted coup against
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was brought back to power by the
Venezuelan people. Clearly, this is an act of economic and political elites
in Honduras, the US, and elsewhere who are desperate to prevent Honduras
from continuing to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in
Latin America.

Following the kidnapping of Zelaya, Honduras' foreign minister and
ambassadors from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua were also kidnapped - in
clear violation of international laws. Now, the people of Honduras of taken
to the streets in protest and Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela, and others have made public statements condemning the coup
d'etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to
ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated.
Washington, on the other hand, remains silent as of now.

JOIN THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN CONDEMNING THE
COUP D'ETAT AND DEMANDING THAT MANUEL ZELAYA BE REINSTATED.

(Some of the information above is excerpted from an article by Eva Golinger
at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4554. Additional information is
available at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com)

This rally is sponsored called by the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY
and other progressive organizations and movements throughout NYC. For more
information, email cbalbertolovera@gmail.com.

----- Original Message -----
From: Williams Camacaro
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 7:23 PM

EMERGENCY RALLY TO RECEIVE HONDURAN PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA AT THE UN

Many grassroots movements and the solidarity organizations in NYC are
mobilizing to receive Manuel Zelaya, President of Honduras, who will be
attending to the General Assembly at the UN to denounce the coup d'etat
against his government and the people of Honduras

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2009, from 10 AM to 12:30 P.M.

WHERE: Ralph Bunch Park
(to the west of 1st Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd streets), Manhattan, NYC

END THE COUP NOW! RESTORE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED MANUEL ZELAYA TO POWER!

NO TO US INTERVENTION! YES TO SELF DETERMINATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS
AND ALL OF THE AMERICAS!

Manuel Zelaya is backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements
in Honduras. This coup was carried out in a way that mirrors the removal of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti and the attempted coup against
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was brought back to power by the
Venezuelan people. Clearly, this is an act of economic and political elites
in Honduras, the US, and elsewhere who are desperate to prevent Honduras
from continuing to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in
Latin America.

Following the kidnapping of Zelaya, Honduras' foreign minister and
ambassadors from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua were also kidnapped - in
clear violation of international laws. Now, the people of Honduras of taken
to the streets in protest and Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela, and others have made public statements condemning the coup
d'etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to
ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated.
Washington, on the other hand, remains silent as of now.

JOIN THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN CONDEMNING THE
COUP D'ETAT AND DEMANDING THAT MANUEL ZELAYA BE REINSTATED.

(Some of the information above is excerpted from an article by Eva Golinger
at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4554. Additional information is
available at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com)

This rally is sponsored called by the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY
and other progressive organizations and movements throughout NYC. For more
information, email cbalbertolovera@gmail.com.

***

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28rich.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans

By FRANK RICH
Published: June 27, 2009

LIKE all students caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the
1960s, I was riveted by the violent confrontations between the police and
protestors in Selma, 1965, and Chicago, 1968. But I never heard about the
several days of riots that rocked Greenwich Village after the police raided
a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 - 40
years ago today.

Then again, I didn't know a single person, student or teacher, male or
female, in my entire Ivy League university who was openly identified as gay.
And though my friends and I were obsessed with every iteration of the era's
political tumult, we somehow missed the Stonewall story. Not hard to do,
really. The Times - which would not even permit the use of the word gay
until 1987 - covered the riots in tiny, bowdlerized articles, one of them
but three paragraphs long, buried successively on pages 33, 22 and 19.

But if we had read them, would we have cared? It was typical of my
generation, like others before and after, that the issue of gay civil rights
wasn't on our radar screen. Not least because gay people, fearful of
harassment, violence and arrest, were often forced into the shadows. As
David Carter writes in his book "Stonewall," at the end of the 1960s
homosexual sex was still illegal in every state but Illinois. It was a crime
punishable by castration in seven states. No laws - federal, state or
local - protected gay people from being denied jobs or housing. If a
homosexual character appeared in a movie, his life ended with either murder
or suicide.

The younger gay men - and scattered women - who acted up at the Stonewall on
those early summer nights in 1969 had little in common with their
contemporaries in the front-page political movements of the time. They often
lived on the streets, having been thrown out of their blue-collar homes by
their families before they finished high school. They migrated to the
Village because they'd heard it was one American neighborhood where it was
safe to be who they were.

Stonewall "wasn't a 1960s student riot," wrote one of them, Thomas
Lanigan-Schmidt, in a poignant handwritten flier on display at the New York
Public Library in the exhibition "1969: The Year of Gay Liberation." They
had "no nice dorms for sleeping," "no school cafeteria for certain food" and
"no affluent parents" to send checks. They had no powerful allies of any
kind, no rights, no future. But they were brave. They risked their necks to
prove, as Lanigan-Schmidt put it, that "the mystery of history" could happen
"in the least likely of places."

After the gay liberation movement was born at Stonewall, this strand of
history advanced haltingly until the 1980s. It took AIDS and the new wave of
gay activism it engendered to fully awaken many, including me, to the gay
people all around them. But that tardy and still embryonic national
awareness did not save the lives of those whose abridged rights made them
even more vulnerable during a rampaging plague.

On Monday, President Obama will commemorate Stonewall with an East Room
reception for gay leaders. Some of the invitees have been fiercely critical
of what they see as his failure, thus far, to redeem his promise to be a
"fierce advocate" for their still unfulfilled cause. The rancor increased
this month, after the Department of Justice filed a brief defending the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the most ignominious civil rights betrayal
under the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

The Obama White House has said that the Justice Department action was merely
a bureaucratic speed bump on the way to repealing DOMA - which hardly
mitigates the brief's denigration of same-sex marriage, now legal in six
states after many hard-fought battles. The White House has also asserted
that its Stonewall ceremony was "long planned" - even though it sure looks
like damage control. News of the event trickled out publicly only last
Monday, after dozens of aggrieved, heavy-hitting gay donors dropped out of a
Democratic National Committee fund-raiser with a top ticket of $30,400.

In conversations with gay activists on both coasts last week, I heard
several theories as to why Obama has seemed alternately clumsy and
foot-dragging in honoring his campaign commitments to dismantle DOMA and
Don't
Ask Don't Tell. The most charitable take had it that he was following a
deliberate strategy, given his habit of pursuing his goals through long-term
game plans. After all, he's only five months into his term and must first
juggle two wars, the cratered economy, health care and Iran. Some speculated
that the president is fearful of crossing preachers, especially black
preachers, who are adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage. Still others said
that the president was tone-deaf on the issue because his inner White House
circle lacks any known gay people.

But the most prevalent theory is that Obama, surrounded by Clinton White
House alumni with painful memories, doesn't want to risk gay issues upending
his presidency, as they did his predecessor's in 1993. After having promised
to lift the ban on gays in the military, Clinton beat a hasty retreat into
Don't Ask once Congress and the Pentagon rebelled. This early pratfall
became a lasting symbol of his chaotic management style - and a precursor to
another fiasco, Hillarycare, that Obama is also working hard not to emulate.

But 2009 is not then, and if the current administration really is worried
that it could repeat Clinton's history on Don't Ask, that's ludicrous.
Clinton failed less because of the policy's substance than his fumbling of
the politics. Even in 1992 a majority of the country (57 percent) supported
an end to the military ban on gays. But Clinton blundered into the issue
with no strategy at all and little or no advance consultation with the Joint
Chiefs and Congress. That's never been Obama's way.

The cultural climate is far different today, besides. Now, roughly 75
percent of Americans support an end to Don't Ask, and gay issues are no
longer a third rail in American politics. Gay civil rights history is moving
faster in the country, including on the once-theoretical front of same-sex
marriage, than it is in Washington. If the country needs any Defense of
Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from
the right-wing "family values" trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter.

But full gay citizenship is far from complete. "There's a perception in
Washington that you can throw little bits of partial equality to gay people
and that gay people will be satisfied with that," said Dustin Lance Black,
the screenwriter who won an Oscar for "Milk," last year's movie about Harvey
Milk, the pioneering gay civil rights politician of the 1970s. Such
"crumbs," Black added, cannot substitute for "full and equal rights in all
matters of civil law in all 50 states."

As anger at White House missteps boiled over this month, the president
abruptly staged a ceremony to offer some crumbs. The pretext was the signing
of an executive memorandum bestowing benefits to the domestic partners of
federal employees. But some of those benefits were already in force, and the
most important of them all, health care, was not included because it is
forbidden by DOMA.

One gay leader invited to the Oval Office that day was Jennifer Chrisler of
the Family Equality Council, an advocacy organization for gay families based
in Massachusetts. She showed a photo of her 7-year-old twin sons, Tom and
Tim, to Obama. The president cooed. "I told him they're following in Sasha's
footsteps, entering the second grade," she recounted to me last week. "It
was a very human exchange between two parents."

Chrisler seized the moment to appeal to the president on behalf of her boys.
"The worst thing you can experience as parents is to feel your children are
discriminated against," she told him. "Imagine if you have to explain every
day who your parents are and that they're as real as every family is."
Chrisler said that she and her children "want a president who will make that
go away," adding, "I believe in his heart he wants that to happen, his
political mistakes notwithstanding."

No president possesses that magic wand, but Obama's inaction on gay civil
rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness. The
Justice Department brief defending DOMA has spoken louder for this president
than any of his own words on the subject. Chrisler noted that he has given
major speeches on race, on abortion and to the Muslim world. "People are
waiting for that passionate speech from him on equal rights," she said, "and
the time is now."

Action would be even better. It's a press cliché that "gay supporters" are
disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren't just
another political special interest group. They are Americans who are
actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to
properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what
happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even
a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen
in the least likely of places.

Updates on Honduras

Much of what 's here is not in the mainstream media, from the NY Times
on down. How can the American people make sense, let alone have
informed opinion of this and so many other critical events which
involve US 'interests' and often, subversion. That is, the subversion
extends to the media here and plays a strategic role in all this.
Ed

From: "henry duke" <henryduke2004@yahoo.com>
To: "'GCF'" <cal-forum@cagreens.org>; <jan27action@LinuxBeach.net>
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:36 PM

Subject: No US condemnation as Honduran Military Assassinates the only
Leftist candidate in the upcoming Presidential elections. Current President
overthrown attacked and escapes to Nicaragua.

"Cesar Ham, presidential candidate and the head of Honduras' only registered
leftist political party, the Democratic Unification of Honduras, is dead. He
was killed by a squad of soldiers who arrived at his home this morning to
arrest him.

The military has rounded up many of Zelaya's allies within the government.
Chancellor Patricia Rodas remains kidnapped.

Ham, at the time of his assassination, was a member of Congress. He
wholeheartedly supported President Zelaya's initiative to form a
constitutional convention to write a new Constitution, and he was one of the
main organizers of today's thwarted opinion poll that would have gauged
public opinion on forming a constitutional convention.
....
This past March the Democratic Unification party chose him as its
presidential candidate by a vote of 104-4. The coup plotters had previously
announced that the November 2009 elections would go on as planned. Ham's
assassination means that the only leftist candidate in the upcoming
elections is now dead."

Hank

***

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cort Greene" <cort.greene@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:20 AM
Subject: [LAAMN] Update on Honduras

I WILL BE LIVE BLOGGING THE ONGOING SITUATION IN HONDURAS FROM MY BLOG AT
WWW.CHAVEZCODE.COM

Eva Golinger

UPDATE: 12: 18pm - Dan Restrepo, Presidential Advisor to President Obama for
Latin American Affairs, is currently on CNN en Español. He has just stated
that Obama's government is communicating with the coup forces in Honduras,
trying to "feel out" the situation. He also responded to the reporter's
question regarding whether Washington would recognize a government in
Honduras other than President Zelaya's elected government, by saying that
the Obama Administration "is waiting to see how things play out" and so long
as democratic norms are respected, will work with all sectors. This is a
confirmation practically of support for the coup leaders. Restrepo also
inferred that other countries are interfering in Honduras' international
affairs, obviously referring to Venezuela and other ALBA nations who have
condemned the coup with firm statements earlier this morning.

UPDATE: 12pm noon – The Organization of American States is meeting in an
emergency session in Washington concerning the situation in Honduras and the
kidnapping of Honduras' president. Venezuelan Ambassador to the OAS, Roy
Chaderton, just announced that the ambassadors of Venezuela, Bolivia and
Nicaragua in Honduras have just been kidnapped along with Foreign Minister
Patricia Rodas, and are being beaten by Honduran military forces.

President Obama has made a statement regarding his "concern" for the
situation in Honduras and a call to all political leaders and parties to
"respect democratic norms". However, this statement is NOT a clear
condemnation of the coup d'etat that has taken place during the early
morning hours on Sunday. Nor did Obama indicate, as other countries have
done, that Washington would not recognize any other government in Honduras
other than the elected government of Manual Zelaya.

Opposition forces in Honduras, led by a US-funded NGO Grupo Paz y
Democracia, have stated via CNN that a coup has not ocurred, but rather a
"transition" to democracy. Martha Diaz, coordinator of the NGO, which
receives USAID funding, has just declared minutes ago on CNN that "civil
society" does not support President Zelaya nor his "illegal quest" to hold a
non-binding referendum on a potential future constitutional reform. She
justified his kidnapping, beating and removal from power as a "democratic
transition". Again, this is eerily reminiscent of the coup d'etat in
Venezuela in April 2002, when so-called "civil society" along with dissident
military forces kidnapped President Chávez and installed a "transition
government". The goups involved also received funding from the U.S.
government, primarily via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and
later from USAID as well.

CNN en Español, Telesur, and other international television stations
reporting on the situation in Honduras have been removed from the airways in
the Central American nation. The whereabouts of the Foreign Minister and the
ambassadors of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua are still unknown. OAS
General Secretary Jose Miguel Insulze has announced he will travel
immediately to Honduras to investigate the situation. President Chávez of
Venezuela has also announced an emergency meeting of ALBA nations in
Managua, Nicaragua, as soon as this evening.

More to come as the situation develops over the next few hours. Catch live
blogging at www.chavezcode.com.

[Note: As of 11:15am, Caracas time, President Zelaya is speaking live on
Telesur from San Jose, Costa Rica. He has verified the soldiers entered his
residence in the early morning hours, firing guns and threatening to kill
him and his family if he resisted the coup. He was forced to go with the
soldiers who took him to the air base and flew him to Costa Rica. He has
requested the U.S. Government make a public statement condemning the coup,
otherwise, it will indicate their compliance.]

Caracas, Venezuela - The text message that beeped on my cell phone this
morning read "Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d'etat underway in
Honduras, spread the word." It's a rude awakening for a Sunday morning,
especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise
their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative
referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to
reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversary is
today's scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an
opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to
eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.

Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation,
which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by
the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current
constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan
Administration's dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those
in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little
interference from the people. Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the
platform of Honduras' Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be
conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional
reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social
movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results,
a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in
November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless,
today's scheduled poll was not binding by law.

In fact, several days before the poll was to occur, Honduras' Supreme Court
ruled it illegal, upon request by the Congress, both of which are led by
anti-Zelaya majorities and members of the ultra-conservative party, National
Party of Honduras (PNH). This move led to massive protests in the streets in
favor of President Zelaya. On June 24, the president fired the head of the
high military command, General Romeo Vásquez, after he refused to allow the
military to distribute the electoral material for Sunday's elections.
General Romeo Vásquez held the material under tight military control,
refusing to release it even to the president's followers, stating that the
scheduled referendum had been determined illegal by the Supreme Court and
therefore he could not comply with the president's order. As in the Unted
States, the president of Honduras is Commander in Chief and has the final
say on the military's actions, and so he ordered the General's removal. The
Minister of Defense, Angel Edmundo Orellana, also resigned in response to
this increasingly tense situation.

But the following day, Honduras' Supreme Court reinstated General Romeo
Vásquez to the high military command, ruling his firing as
"unconstitutional'. Thousands poured into the streets of Honduras' capital,
Tegucigalpa, showing support for President Zelaya and evidencing their
determination to ensure Sunday's non-binding referendum would take place. On
Friday, the president and a group of hundreds of supporters, marched to the
nearby air base to collect the electoral material that had been previously
held by the military. That evening, Zelaya gave a national press conference
along with a group of politicians from different political parties and
social movements, calling for unity and peace in the country.

As of Saturday, the situation in Honduras was reported as calm. But early
Sunday morning, a group of approximately 60 armed soldiers entered the
presidential residence and took Zelaya hostage. After several hours of
confusion, reports surfaced claiming the president had been taken to a
nearby air force base and flown to neighboring Costa Rica. No images have
been seen of the president so far and it is unknown whether or not his life
is still endangered.

President Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, speaking live on Telesur
at approximately 10:00am Caracas time, denounced that in early hours of
Sunday morning, the soldiers stormed their residence, firing shots
throughout the house, beating and then taking the president. "It was an act
of cowardness", said the first lady, referring to the illegal kidnapping
occuring during a time when no one would know or react until it was all
over. Casto de Zelaya also called for the "preservation" of her husband's
life, indicating that she herself is unaware of his whereabouts. She claimed
their lives are all still in "serious danger" and made a call for the
international community to denounce this illegal coup d'etat and to act
rapidly to reinstate constitutional order in the country, which includes the
rescue and return of the democratically elected Zelaya.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela have both
made public statements on Sunday morning condeming the coup d'etat in
Honduras and calling on the international community to react to ensure
democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated. Last
Wednesday, June 24, an extraordinary meeting of the member nations of the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), of which Honduras is a
member, was convened in Venezuela to welcome Ecuador, Antigua & Barbados and
St. Vincent to its ranks. During the meeting, which was attended by
Honduras' Foreign Minister, Patricia Rodas, a statement was read supporting
President Zelaya and condenming any attempts to undermine his mandate and
Honduras' democratic processes.

Reports coming out of Honduras have informed that the public television
channel, Canal 8, has been shut down by the coup forces. Just minutes ago,
Telesur announced that the military in Honduras is shutting down all
electricity throughout the country. Those television and radio stations
still transmitting are not reporting the coup d'etat or the kidnapping of
President Zelaya, according to Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas. "Telephones
and electricity are being cut off", confirmed Rodas just minutes ago via
Telesur. "The media are showing cartoons and soap operas and are not
informing the people of Honduras about what is happening". The situation is
eerily reminiscent of the April 2002 coup d'etat against President Chávez in
Venezuela, when the media played a key role by first manipulating
information to support the coup and then later blacking out all information
when the people began protesting and eventually overcame and defeated the
coup forces, rescuing Chávez (who had also been kidnapped by the military)
and restoring constitutional order.

Honduras is a nation that has been the victim of dictatorships and massive
U.S. intervention during the past century, including several military
invasions. The last major U.S. government intervention in Honduras occured
during the 1980s, when the Reagain Administration funded death squads and
paramilitaries to eliminate any potential "communist threats" in Central
America. At the time, John Negroponte, was the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras
and was responsible for directly funding and training Honduran death squads
that were responsable for thousands of disappeared and assassinated
throughout the region.

On Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS), convened a special
meeting to discuss the crisis in Honduras, later issuing a statement
condeming the threats to democracy and authorizing a convoy of
representatives to travel to OAS to investigate further. Nevertheless, on
Friday, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, Phillip J.
Crowley, refused to clarify the U.S. government's position in reference to
the potential coup against President Zelaya, and instead issued a more
ambiguous statement that implied Washington's support for the opposition to
the Honduran president. While most other Latin American governments had
clearly indicated their adamant condemnation of the coup plans underway in
Honduras and their solid support for Honduras' constitutionally elected
president, Manual Zelaya, the U.S. spokesman stated the following, "We are
concerned about the breakdown in the political dialogue among Honduran
politicians over the proposed June 28 poll on constitutional reform. We urge
all sides to seek a consensual democratic resolution in the current
political impasse that adheres to the Honduran constitution and to Honduran
laws consistent with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic
Charter."

As of 10:30am, Sunday morning, no further statements have been issued by the
Washington concerning the military coup in Honduras. The Central American
nation is highly dependent on the U.S. economy, which ensures one of its top
sources of income, the monies sent from Hondurans working in the U.S. under
the "temporary protected status" program that was implemented during
Washington's dirty war in the 1980s as a result of massive immigration to
U.S. territory to escape the war zone. Another major source of funding in
Honduras is USAID, providing over US$ 50 millon annually for "democracy
promotion" programs, which generally supports NGOs and political parties
favorable to U.S. interests, as has been the case in Venezuela, Bolivia and
other nations in the region. The Pentagon also maintains a military base in
Honduras in Soto Cano, equipped with approximately 500 troops and numerous
air force combat planes and helicopters.

Foreign Minister Rodas has stated that she has repeatedly tried to make
contact with the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, who has not
responded to any of her calls thus far. The modus operandi of the coup makes
clear that Washington is involved. Neither the Honduran military, which is
majority trained by U.S. forces, nor the political and economic elite, would
act to oust a democratically elected president without the backing and
support of the U.S. government. President Zelaya has increasingly come under
attack by the conservative forces in Honduras for his growing relationship
with the ALBA countries, and particularly Venezuela and President Chávez.
Many believe the coup has been executed as a method of ensuring Honduras
does not continue to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in
Latin America.

The Ash Grove, Beyond November and Sunday, July 12th

Dear Friends, 

 

A year ago, the Ash Grove celebrated its 50th birthday with a 3-day festival at UCLA, hugely successful

in every respect.  The question was, what was next.  I spoke opening night and while saying this new, vibrant era, reminiscent of that of the 1960's era which spawned the club needed a contemporary 'Ash Grove' , I was acutely aware of the expenditure of time, energy and money in running a club, let alone establishing one.  Two or three unsolicited offers came about as a result of the festival, but considering the above, I discussed it with the Ash Grove Board, and fashioned a different path, more mobile, more targeted and directly responsive to the vast energy of the election campaign.

 

We planned and waited until after the campaign itself, appropriately opening this new phase five days after

President Obama's inauguration.  Since then, we've developed a troupe of great, local artists touring So. California with spectacular, free shows, combining great art with a message of social and political

activism.  Our slogan is "Party with a Purpose." We enthuse, entertain and inform, and will be putting on a large, outdoor festival in late summer, probably in Leimert Park. 

 

We will then continue the tour, primarily in working class areas in So. Cal.  We're also now working with local unions in presenting Anne Feeney's upcoming show supporting single-payer health care, our own signal issue at these events.  This is opening doors, in many ways.  We have gone Beyond November.

.

What we are doing, almost uniquely, is critical to the formation of a progressive movement. Who can deny that movement is needed now or the ability and dedication of the Ash Grove in doing this part of it, as we've done for 50 years. 

 

Though all the artists are committed, we  provide decent, equal honoraria and pay all expenses of these free shows.  We've done it with volunteers and money from the sale of the Ash Grove historic tapes to Wolfgang's Vault, will need a couple of paid staffers for the festival who could dramatically help development of the tour

following that.  At some point, we'll run out if we don't raise decent money around this fundraiser.

 

Here's a great show, with some of the best of the best - flier attached.  Hope to see a bunch of you.

 

Ed

 

 

Teresa Conboy P.R.

teresaconboypr@yahoo.com

 

 

Ash Grove Summer Intra-National Event, Sunday, July 12

Featuring Michelle Shocked, Bernie Pearl, Roy Zimmerman, Sheila Nicholls, S. Pearl Sharp,

Conjunto Los Pochos, Get Lit players, S.H.I.N.E. Mawusi drummers, Richard Montoya of

Culture Clash

 

The kickoff of Ash Grove Summer, an Intra-National series, is Sunday, July 12^th on the beautiful grounds of a private home at 939 San Vicente Boulevard (at Larkin Place) in Santa Monica, 1:30 – 5:30.   The event is an Ash Grove Foundation fundraiser for its Summer Festival in August (date/location TBD).  Performances start at 1:30 p.m. and include Michelle Shocked, blues guitarist Bernie Pearl, pianist/songwriter Sheila Nicholls, musical humorist Roy Zimmerman, poet/writer S. Pearl Sharp, S.H.I.N.E Mawusi women's drum alliance, Get Lit players – teenage wizards with poetry from the sonnets of Shakespeare to hip-hop, Conjunto Los Pochos and Richard Montoya of Culture Clash.   Tickets are $40 per person.   For information: (310) 391-5794 or AshGroveMusic.com.   You can also mail ticket requests and/or donations to Ash Grove, Box 661--037, Los Angeles CA 90066.
              The fundraiser is one of a series of community events that has been held at various cultural centers around Los Angeles since the November election and billed as "Beyond November – Party with a Purpose" - bringing together an assortment of artists, advocacy and social action organizations, to entertain, to inform and to enthuse by tapping into the vast energy for positive change sparked by the Obama campaign.   The culmination this year will be a large free Summer Festival 2009 that will feature musical guests, community artists and speakers, in addition to an area where health, housing and other service organizations will provide direct counseling, referrals and aid to people in need.   Visitors can learn about and join groups and/or actions around these critical issues.  Beyond November is sponsored

by radio station KPFK, 90.7 fm, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG.)

 

The Ash Grove (1958 – 1973) on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood was a pioneering musical and political venue.   The performance standards and creative interplay among musicians, young and old, produced many great artists, enriched the lives of audiences, and gave the club a leading role in the culture of a generation.   Archived Ash Grove concerts from that era are available for listening or download at WolfgangsVault.com:  http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/sv/ash-grove/AS7.html .

 

###

 

For additional information or images of the performers, please contact:

 

Teresa Conboy P.R.

teresaconboypr@yahoo.com

 

Herbert: Economic mumbo-jumbo, Zirin: The Rage of Steven Wells

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/opinion/27herbert.html?th&emc=th

No Recovery in Sight

By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed: June 26, 2009

How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are
out of work?

One of the great stories you'll be hearing over the next couple of years
will be about the large number of Americans who were forced out of work in
this recession and remained unable to find gainful employment after the
recession ended. We're basically in denial about this.

There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the
United States. The ranks of the poor are growing, welfare rolls are rising
and young American men on a broad front are falling into an abyss of
joblessness.

Some months ago, the Obama administration and various mainstream economists
forecast a peak unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent this year. It has
already reached 9.4 percent, and most analysts now expect it to hit 10
percent or higher. Economists are currently spreading the word that the
recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will
continue to climb. That's not a recovery. That's mumbo jumbo.

Why this rampant joblessness is not viewed as a crisis and approached with
the sense of urgency and commitment that a crisis warrants, is beyond me.
The Obama administration has committed a great deal of money to keep the
economy from collapsing entirely, but that is not enough to cope with the
scope of the jobless crisis.

There were roughly seven million people officially counted as unemployed in
November 2007, a month before the recession began. Now there are about 14
million. If you add to these unemployed individuals those who are working
part time but would like to work full time, and those who want jobs but have
become discouraged and stopped looking, you get an underutilization rate
that is truly alarming.

"By May 2009," according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at
Northeastern University in Boston, "the total number of underutilized
workers had increased dramatically from 15.63 million to 29.37 million - a
rise of 13.7 million, or 88 percent. Nearly 30 million working-age
individuals were underutilized in May 2009, the largest number in our
nation's history. The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had
risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years."

If it were true that the recession is approaching its end and that these
startlingly high numbers were about to begin a steady and substantial
decline, there would be much less reason for alarm. But while there is
evidence the recession is easing, hardly anyone believes a big-time
employment turnaround is in the offing.

Three-quarters of the workers let go over the past year were permanently
displaced, as opposed to temporarily laid off. They won't be going back to
their jobs when economic conditions improve. And many of those who were
permanently displaced were in fields like construction and manufacturing in
which the odds of finding work, even after a recovery takes hold, are not
good.

Another startling aspect of this economic downturn is the toll it has taken
on men, especially young men. Men accounted for nearly 80 percent of the
loss in employment in this recession. As the labor market center reported,
"The unemployment rate for males in April 2009 was 10 percent, versus only
7.2 percent for women, the largest absolute and relative gender gap in
unemployment rates in the post-World War II period."

Workers under 30 have sustained nearly half the net job losses since
November 2007.

This is not a recipe for a strong economic recovery once the recession
officially ends, or for a healthy society. Young males, especially, are
being clobbered at an age when, typically, they would be thinking about
getting married, setting up new households and starting families. Moreover,
work habits and experience developed in one's 20s often establish the
foundation for decades of employment and earnings.

We've seen what happens when you rely on debt and inflated assets to keep
the economy afloat. The economy can't be re-established on a sound basis
without aggressive efforts to put people back to work in jobs with decent
wages.

We also need to consider the suffering that is being endured by these high
levels of joblessness, including the profound negative effect on the
families of the unemployed. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic
Policy Institute, warned about the consequences for children. "What does it
mean," he asked, "when kids are under stress because there is no money in
the household, or people have to move more, or are combining households, or
lose their health insurance? I believe this is going to leave a permanent
scar on a generation of kids."

The first step in dealing with a crisis is to recognize that it exists. This
is not a problem that will evaporate when the gross domestic product finally
begins to creep into positive territory.

***

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Zirin
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:40 PM
Subject: [Edge of Sports] Read the Rage of Steven Wells

E o S Nation: In 6 years of writing this column, I've never sent out someone
else's work. But today I do because the great Steven Wells, the sports
columnist extraordinaire for the Guardian, has died at age 49 after a
valiant battle with cancer. "Swells" was also a legendary music writer,
championing then unknown punk bands like Black Flag, the Mekons and the
Redskins. He was part Hunter S Thompson, part Lester Bangs, and part Bob
Lipsyte. And he was my friend. I didn't agree with everything he wrote, but
I was always provoked. Rage in peace, Steven.

Dave Zirin

PS - I'll have my own piece out on Edge of Sports tomorrow. But today is for
Steven. Please read the below. He was that good.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/22/olympicgames20081

Let's shun the multinational monsters' festival of Olympic McSports

By Steven Wells

The People's Republic of China are torturing, culture-smothering and
democracy-crushing bastards. But then so was Germany in 1936. And Britain in
1908 and 1948. And the Soviet Union in 1980. And the USA in 1984 and 1996.

Then there was the massacre of hundreds of Mexican demonstrators to pave the
way for the games of 1968. In fact the history of the modern Olympic
movement is one long, sad litany of imperialism, racism, exploitation and
oppression. But that's not why I think we should boycott the Olympics.

And I do think we should boycott them. Not just the Beijing games. All of
them. Forever. Why? Because of the total disconnect between what the
Olympics are supposed to be about (grace, beauty, athleticism,
sportsmanship, solidarity, brotherhood and the human spirit) and the sordid
reality - as superbly illustrated by what the preparations for the 2012
London games are doing to the Manor Garden allotments.

Ask yourself this question: are the drug-riddled, debased and corrupt
Olympics worth the demolition of a single 80-year-old community institution
that genuinely and continually promotes health, mental wellbeing, exercise,
neighbourliness and fresh vegetables? And (while we're at it) was it worth
ripping up the much-loved and heavily used five-a-side football pitches in
East London's Spitalfields market just so the City of London could have yet
another identikit shopping/office development? (If you answered yes to
either question, stop reading and trot off and fellate a stockbroker, you
dominant ideology humping Tory bastard).

Don't get me wrong. I dislike cockney gardeners just as much as the next
professional Northern bigot. Indeed I have as little affection for the
shitty-fingered vowel manglers as I do for the feudalism-loving and
ear-flapped-twat-hat-wearing ning-nang-nongers who got their skinny Buddhist
asses kung-fu-ed by the track-suited thugs of the Sino-Stalinist sports
Gestapo when they tried to blow out the Olympic flame.

But when I see our socialist heritage of collective gardening trampled
underfoot by the size-900 Adidas bovver sneakers of soulless corporate
sport, I'm there on the front line, jabbing at the scaly, baby-eating,
corn-syrup spewing monstrosity with a dung-smeared pitchfork, glotally
whining in my best Thames Estuary accented sub-English: Bugger off back to
whichever focus-group driven hell spawned you, Nikezilla. Ils ne passeront
pas, me old cock sparrer, ils ne passeront bleedin' pas.

What are these Olympics anyway? Every square inch of its corporate
jism-soaked soul is fully owned by one crap-peddling multinational monster
or another. And all the major events are dominated by freakish, faceless,
unreal, disconnected, socially-crippled identikit meta-humans, most (if not
all) of them as keenly engaged in an ever-escalating techno-war with the
drug testers as they are in actually running, jumping or throwing
stuff.??Why should I cheer these freaks on? Because they supposedly
represent the patch of dirt I was born on? Is it not absurd that an event so
wedded to the increasingly redundant eighteenth-century notion of the nation
state should be owned lock, stock and logo-plastered barrel by nationless
corporations, all of whom automatically shift production to anywhere the
grateful peasants will work for a dollar a day (and all the rice and rat
meat they can eat) at the drop of a spread sheet?

Attending a Nike product launch in Berlin in 2006, I was somewhat stunned to
hear an executive boast that "Nike has nine teams in this World Cup". I
immediately imagined a "group of death" comprised of Nike, Adidas, McDonalds
and ING. So much more sensible than the current arrangement.
The fact is that we have irrevocably lost the Olympics to the dumb, piggish
maelstrom of corruption, blind self-interest, amorality, blandness,
hypocrisy and lowest-common-denominator aesthetics that is corporate
capitalism. And no amount of hand wringing or faux-nostalgic bleating about
Corinthian values is ever going to bring it back.

Instead we need - as journalists, readers, editors and bloggers - to
celebrate the sporting grass roots. Real sport. Y'know, jumpers for goal
posts. All that corny good stuff.

And when something wonderful like the "gay world cup" (more properly called
the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association World Championship)
takes place (as it will in the last week in August in London) we need to be
talking and writing and reading about it - and not just treating it as a
snigger-worthy freak show.

There's your real Olympic spirit.

And yes, when the corporations start to sniff around the edges of these
events (as they already do, the bastards) we should kvetch like billy-o. No,
not because it'll do any good, but because not to do so means to accept
cultural brain-death, to become sports Tories, to march in corporate
sponsored official replica shirt-wearing lockstep into a new serfdom where
our only functions are to slave and consume.

I give you the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League and every other professional
league on the planet, all of them to a greater or lesser degree on the
slippery slope to soulless shut-up-and-consume McSports status.

That's why we should boycott the Olympics. Don't give it a penny of your
money, a minute of your time or a second of your attention. Go support your
local athletics club instead. Get your fat arse down the park for a kick
about. Coach a local kids' team. Or come down to Regents Park from August
23-30 and watch homosexuals (and the homo-friendly) from all over the planet
put on a display of footballing passion that will take your breath away. Or
at least make you smile. Better still enter your own team.

(By the way, resistance to the 2016 Olympics coming to Chicago is already
under way).

Edge of Sports | Modify Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now

Gush Shalom: today, Michelle Shocked: tonight!

----- Original Message -----

From: Sid Shniad

Subject: Gush Shalom ad in today's Ha'aretz

Those who oppress

Millions of Palestinians

For 42 years –

Rave about the freedom fighters

-  in Iran.

 

Those who rejected the results

Of the Palestinian elections –

Are shocked by the thwarting

Of the people's will

- in Iran.

 

Those who shoot and kill

Palestinian demonstrators

In Wadi Ara, Bilin and Nialin –

Shudder at the sight of

The police shooting protesters

- in Iran.

 

 

 

972-3-5221732

Help to pay for our activities and ads

By sending checks to

Gush Shalom, P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033,

www.gush-shalom.org

info@gush-shalom.org

 

GUSH SHALOM

Ad published in Haaretz

June 26, 2009

 

***

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Michelle Shocked

To: epearlag@earthlink.net

Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 7:17 PM

Subject: Club Pillows tomorrow!

	Hi there - just a quick reminder... Club Pillows will be held at McCabes tonight (Friday, June 26th). Address: 3101 Pico Blvd. Time: 8pm Cost: $15 We hope to see you there! With love, Michelle

This message was sent from Michelle Shocked to epearlag@earthlink.net. It was sent from: Michelle Shocked, 5042 Wilshire Blvd #155, Los Angeles, CA 90036. You can modify/update your subscription via the link below. Email Marketing by

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Iran: Day of International Worker Solidarity Action Today

I hesitate sending yet another email on Iran, but this one is
important, not only because it adds tremendous support to
the struggle for democracy and civil rights in Iran, but likely
opens a new strategy within Iran itself for those rights. I am
dismayed by some on the left who support the regime as a
legitimate counter to 'imperialism.' It reminds me of 1979,
when a close friend in the SWP said the same, even after
Khomeini was executing Communist Party cadre.
Of course, soon after, it was the turn of the SWP.

None of this denies the history and current role of the U.S.
and UK in trying to overthrow the regime and control this mass
movement and Iran itself. Life will remain complicated,
there and here, but this freedon movement is obviously real,
under siege by a brutal, repressive regime and has to be
supported, as this international labor federation is doing.

Ed Pearl

----- Original Message -----
From: <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 9:54 AM
Subject: Iran: Day of International Worker Solidarity Action Set

International Trade Union Confederation

(The ITUC represents 170 million workers in 312 affiliated national
organisations from 157 countries. http://www.ituc-csi.org)

June 25, 2009

Iran Day of Worker Solidarity Action
Will Be Organized As Repression Continues

Brussels

The ITUC, EI, ITF and IUF today expressed their solidarity with the many
Iranian orkers who have joined the demonstrations in the streets to call for
respect for their fundamental democratic rights. Protests for democracy in
Iran, organized by trade unions, will be held in countries around the world
tomorrow, June 26th.

"The violence against those demonstrating for democracy has left many people
dead and several hundred injured. This heavy repression of peaceful
demonstrations and lack of respect for human rights is completely
unacceptable," said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder. Trade unions across
the world have been appalled at the Iranian authorities' targeting of
independent trade union action in recent years, with workers attacked and
arrested for demonstrating peacefully for workers' rights, most recently on
1 May as they attempted to hold a peaceful May Day rally at Laleh Park in
Tehran. Repression of fundamental rights has now intensified and widened,
with particularly violent reaction by security forces to the many
demonstrations in the wake of the election, and the arrest of hundreds of
people.

In a letter * sent to the Supreme Leader of Iran, the ITUC, together with
EI, ITF and UF, is calling for full democratic rights for all Iranians,
including freedom of association and freedom of assembly, a halt to all
violent repression, the release of all imprisoned trade unionists;
recognition of all independent workers' organizations in Iran; respect for
core labour standards and the ratification of all fundamental ILO
Conventions, in particular those relating to freedom of association and
collective bargaining; a halt to all anti-union repression and the
reinstatement of unfairly dismissed workers.

Demonstrations will be held, among others, at Iranian embassies/consulates
in Ankara, Bangkok, Brussels, Canberra, Geneva, Jakarta, London, Madrid, New
Delhi, Oslo, Ottawa, Paris, The Hague, Tokyo and Wellington. Alongside
those events trade unions in other countries are also carrying out various
solidarity actions.

See the ITUC, EI, ITF and IUF joint call for the day of action:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/Worldwide_protests_on_Iran_tomorrow_3_.pdf

For more information about the action day and the situation of Iranian
workers:
www.justiceforiranianworkers.org

The ITUC represents 170 million workers in 312 affiliated national
organisations from 157 countries. http://www.ituc-csi.org
http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI

* World Union Leaders Write to Iranian Leader

[The four global union organisations organising the worldwide action day for
Iran today wrote to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayed `Ali
Khamenei setting out the aims of the action day and deploring the brutal
repression that is being handed out to Iranians expressing their legitimate
right to campaign for freedom. Read the letter here.]

Ayatollah Sayed `Ali Khamenei Leader of the Islamic Republic

The Office of the Supreme Leader Islamic
Republic Street End of Shahid Keshvar Doust Street,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

http://www.justiceforiranianworkers.org/?p=778

24 June 2009

Global Solidarity Action Day with Iranian workers

Excellency,

We are writing to you on behalf of 170 million workers to express our
solidarity with the many Iranian workers, who have joined the demonstrations
in the streets to call for espect for their inalienable democratic rights.
All human rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and
freedom of association should be enjoyed by the Iranian people.

The heavy repression of peaceful demonstrations and lack of respect for
human life and dignity is appalling, and the disproportionate use of
violence has left tens of people dead and several hundred injured. Workers'
organisations across the world have become accustomed to witnessing how
scores of workers and citizens are attacked and arrested in workers'
demonstrations, lastly on 1 May as they attempted to hold a peaceful May Day
rally at Laleh Park in Tehran. The many demonstrations in the wake of the
election have been met with particularly violent repression, including
hundreds of arrests.

The callous reaction of the authorities to the legitimate expression of the
will of the people is illustrated by reports that authorities have ordered
Iranian mosques not to hold services for any victims of the demonstrations
over the past few days. This reflects a basic lack of human decency and
respect for your own people.

Weeks before the voting for the Presidential election, the ITUC
(International Trade Union Confederation), EI (Education International), ITF
(International Transport Workers' Federation), IUF (International Union of
Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers'
Associations) announced the formation of a coalition, "Justice for Iranian
workers" and called upon our affiliates worldwide to take part in the Global
Solidarity Action Day on 26 June 2009 due to the continued repression of
workers' rights in Iran. We did not imagine the brutal turn of events in the
wake
of the election.

The brutal repression discredits the current government and your own office
as Iranian citizens and workers are showing their discontent with the
government that you support, in part related to the irregularities in
connection with the election, but more importantly because of the strict
curbs on fundamental human rights like freedom of expression, freedom of
assembly and freedom of association. These restrictions deprive the Iranian
people of a voice.

In these times of deep economic crisis, the impact on Iranian workers and
all Iranians, already enduring economic hardship, has been extremely severe.
Workers have on several occasions attempted to voice their frustrations at
back wages, indecently low pay, temporary contracts, delayed or unpaid
unemployment and pension benefits, social security and poor working
conditions met each time with repression. Many trade unionists remain in
prison for their efforts, including Mansour Osanloo, Ebrahim Madadi, Farzad
Kamangar including participants in this year's May Day rally.

Those who are demonstrating in the streets of Tehran and other cities are
not accepting such oppression anymore. Working men and women from around the
world and their organisations in the Global Unions add their voices to their
Iranian brothers and sisters, in support of their struggle for fundamental
human and workers' rights. We urge you to take the necessary measures to put
an immediate end to the violent response against peaceful demonstrations and
to bring those responsible for killings and violence to justice.

The introduction of democracy and internationally-recognized human rights to
the Iranian society is urgently needed and is the prerequisite for an
administration to credibly lead any country and to find solutions to the
current political and economic crisis in Iran.

International trade union objectives are clear and remain the same. We are
calling for (a) full democratic rights for all Iranians, including freedom
of association and freedom of assembly (b) a halt to all violent repression
(c) the release of all imprisoned trade unionists (d) recognition of all
independent workers' organisations in Iran; (e) respect for core labour
standards and the ratification of all fundamental ILO Conventions in
particular those relating to freedom of association and collective
bargaining (f) a halt to all anti-union repression and (g) the reinstatement
of unfairly dismissed workers.

The situation of working people in Iran remains the focus of attention for
trade unions internationally, and our coalition "Justice for Iranian
workers" will continue to monitor closely the situation in Iran as it
unfolds.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Ryder ITUC General Secretary [International Trade
Union Confederation]

Fred Van Leeuwen EI General Secretary [International
Trade Union Confederation]

David Cockroft ITF General Secretary [International
Transport Workers' Federation]

Ron Oswald IUF General Secretary [International
Transport Workers' Federation

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left

that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.

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From Obama's Own Doctor, A Musical ChauTauqua on Health Care

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/opinion/25kristof.ready.html?th&emc=th

The Prescription From Obama's Own Doctor

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NY Times Op-Ed: June 24, 2009

As a society, we trust doctors to be more concerned with the pulse of their
patients than the pulse of commerce. Yet the American Medical Association is
using that trust to try to block a robust public insurance option as part of
health reform.

In fact the A.M.A. now represents only 19 percent of practicing physicians
(that's my calculation, which the A.M.A. neither confirms nor contests). Its
membership has declined in part because of its embarrassing historical
record: the A.M.A. supported segregation, opposed President Harry Truman's
plans for national health insurance, backed tobacco, denounced Medicare and
opposed President Bill Clinton's health reform plan.

So I hope President Obama tunes out the A.M.A. and reaches out instead to
somebody to whom he's turned often for medical advice. That's Dr. David
Scheiner, a Chicago internist who was Mr. Obama's doctor for more than two
decades, until he moved into the White House this year.

"They've always been on the wrong side of things," Dr. Scheiner told me,
speaking of the A.M.A. "They may be protecting their interests, but they're
not protecting the interests of the American public.

"In the past, physicians have risked their lives to take care of patients.
The patient's health was the bottom line, not the checkbook. Today, it's
just immoral what's going on. It's abominable, all these people without
health care."

Dr. Scheiner, 70, favors the public insurance option and would love to go
further and see Medicare for all. He greatly admires Mr. Obama but worries
that his health reforms won't go far enough.

Dr. J. James Rohack, the president of the A.M.A., insisted to me that his
group is committed to making health insurance accessible for all Americans,
and that its paramount concern is patient health.

"When you don't have health insurance, you live sicker and you die younger,"
he said. "And that's not something we're proud of as Americans."

He added that the A.M.A. is not necessarily opposed to a public option, and
I have the impression that it might accept a pallid one built on co-ops. Dr.
Rohack wouldn't repudiate his association's letter to the Senate Finance
Committee warning against a new public plan. That letter declared: "The
introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by
driving out private insurers."

I don't mind the A.M.A. lobbying on behalf of doctors in the many areas
where physicians and patients have common interests. The association is dead
right, for example, in calling for curbs on lawsuits, which raise medical
costs for everyone.

An excellent study published in 2006 in The New England Journal of Medicine
found that for every dollar paid in compensation as a result of lawsuits
against doctors, 54 cents goes to legal and administrative costs.

That's an absurd waste of money. Moreover, aggressive law leads to defensive
medicine, in the form of extra medical tests that waste everybody's money.
Tort reform should be a part of health reform.

Yet when the A.M.A. uses its lobbying muscle to oppose major health reform -
yet again! - that feels like a betrayal. Doctors work hard to keep us
healthy when we're in their offices, and that's why they win our trust and
admiration - yet the A.M.A.'s lobbying has sometimes undermined the health
of the very patients whom the doctors have sworn to uphold.

I might expect the American Association of Used Car Dealers to focus
exclusively on wallet-fattening, but we expect better of physicians.

In fairness, most physicians expect better as well, which is why the A.M.A.
is on the decline.

"It's what has led to the decline of the A.M.A. over the last half century,"
said Dr. David Himmelstein, a Massachusetts physician who also teaches at
Harvard Medical School. "At this point only one in five practicing doctors
are in the A.M.A., and even among its members about half disagree with its
policies." To back that last point, Dr. Himmelstein pointed to surveys
showing a surprising number of A.M.A. members who support a single-payer
system.

For his part, Dr. Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health
Program, which now has more than 16,000 members. The far larger American
College of Physicians, which is composed of internists and is the
second-largest organization of doctors, is also open to a single-payer
system and a public insurance option. It also quite rightly calls for
emphasizing primary care.

The American Medical Student Association has issued a sharp statement
disagreeing with the A.M.A.

The student association declared that it "not only supports but insists upon
a public health insurance option."

Look, a public option is no panacea, and it won't automatically set right
the many shortcomings in our health system. But if that option is killed in
gestation, then we're back to Square 1 and there's little hope of progress
in solving the vast challenges confronting us.

So, President Obama, don't listen to the A.M.A. on this issue. Instead, for
starters, call your doctor!

***

From: Cate Engel, MSW

For Release

What: Sing out for Single Payer: A musical ChauTauqua on Health Care
Who: ANNE FEENEY & Friends
When: Thursday, July 2nd @ 7:30 pm
Where: Professional Musicians Local 47
817 Vine St., Los Angeles 90038
(just north of Melrose - free on-site parking available)

Suggested Donation: $10
(no one turned away for lack of funds)
For more information: (213) 252-1351

The woman that Utah Phillips calls the "best labor singer in North America"

As the debate on how to resolve the nation's health care crisis continues,
one singular answer has been widely ignored in the public debate, despite
its popular appeal: a progressively financed, comprehensive, universal
health care system - otherwise known as single-payer. That didn't sit well
with Pittsburgh activist and labor singer Anne Feeney. She says she's been
'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable' with her music
since 1968.

Frustrated that patients, nurses and doctors have been largely excluded from
the debate, Feeney and almost four dozen professional musicians decided to
launch the Sing Out for Single Payer Road Show. Modeled after the traveling
chautauquas of the 1930s, these concerts will take place nightly and run
from San Diego, CA to Bellingham, WA. "This is a pivotal moment in our
nation's history. It's a great opportunity for Americans to improve the
health of the nation and bring quality health care to everyone in the United
States. We're on the road - entertaining, mobilizing, educating, inspiring
and energizing folks on this chance of our lifetime," says Feeney. Some
musicians will sing at one location - others, like David Rovics, Brian QTN,
Green Mountain Grass and Citizens' Band will do several shows. Jason
Luckett, a Los Angeles based singer-songwriter who has been described as
"Billy Bragg meets Stevie Wonder" will do the entire tour with Feeney.
Several of the shows are being presented by physicians.

The two-hour concerts feature lots of community singing, humor, harmonizing
and jamming. The shows are sponsored by the California Nurses'
Association-National Nurses' Organizing Committee, Universal Health Care for
Oregon, Jobs with Justice, The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Health Care,
the Solidarity Education Fund, Physicians for a National Health Plan and
Unions for Single Payer HR 676. The musicians are traveling with lots of
information to distribute on national health care. Their slogan is "Everyone
In! Nobody Out!"

Cate Engel, MSW
Administrator & Projects Coordinator
Labor Task Force for Universal Healthcare
213.252.1351, cengel@USC.edu
: