Hi. At the end of the article from
Would anyone fluent in Hebrew please send me translations? I’m pretty sure they’d be of interest. -Ed
Truthdigger of the Week: Anna Hazare
| | |
| Posted on Aug 19, 2011 |
| AP / Gurinder Osan |
| Indian rights activist Anna Hazare sits in a meditative posture at Rajghat, the Mahatma Gandhi memorial in New Delhi, on Monday. |
Every week, Truthdig recognizes an individual or group of people who spoke truth to power, blew the whistle or stood up in the face of injustice. You can see past winners here, and make your own nomination for our next awardee here.
This week, a 74-year-old man staging a peaceful hunger strike against government corruption in
While Hazare made his name as an anti-corruption activist decades ago, this particular battle began back in April, when he first staged a five-day hunger strike to urge the Indian Parliament to consider a bill that would put a lokpal, or ombudsman, in place to investigate and punish political corruption. This week, Hazare attempted to begin his hunger strike anew, and the events that ensued brought him and the bill he is supporting international attention.
On Tuesday, Hazare was jailed after refusing to give up plans he had made for a peaceful public protest. When he was granted freedom from the high-security prison just 12 hours later, he refused to leave—or eat—until police agreed to allow him to protest publicly. On Thursday, with thousands of his supporters protesting on the streets all across
And while relatively few across the world can be there in person, many thousands are with him in spirit. As Truthdig reader Mark Lindley said in his nomination of Hazare: “Lots of courageous people speak truth to power under various circumstances, and lots of those who do are thoroughly honest people. But very few honest people speaking truth to power manage to be so widely heard and supported as Anna Hazare.”
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Honorable Mention
Mega-billionaire and investor god Warren Buffett has been speaking out again this week in favor of taxing the super-rich, most notably in his New York Times Op-Ed piece, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.” While it’s certainly easier to speak truth to power when you already have so much power (read: money), Buffett’s openness and urgency in the article were refreshing:
“Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.”
In his nomination of Buffett, Truthdig reader CJ said: “Someone had better get to raising taxes, and any rich guy who says so is worthy of something. Especially under circumstances of such profound selfishness on the part of elites, and lots of non-elites too.”
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http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com/2011/08/changed-agenda.html
Crazy Country
Friday, August 19, 2011
*A changed agenda?
Escalation in the
Adam Keller*
Someone in the wild
It had been a difficult month for Prime Minister Netanyahu – truly, a very hard month. A Prime Minister under siege, caught in a bind. Tent encampments and more tent encampments sprouting up all over the country, demonstrations and protests and more demonstrations. The demands for affordable housing and for Social Justice and for a Welfare State occupy the center stage, and the Free Market economics which Netanyahu had worked so hard to foster since he was Finance Minister are suddenly cast into doubt. What did he not try? He used sticks and he used carrots, he tried to entice the protesters with committees and benefits and rabbits drawn from the hat and he tried to castigate them as Leftists and pampered sushi-eaters, and they went on to protest and demonstrate and extend ever further the tent encampments and get their rallies to the peak of three hundred thousands in Tel Aviv. Just yesterday morning, the protesters arrived at the home of Eyal Gabbai, Nethanyahu's Chef de Bureau, and he spoke forthrightly and made it clear to them that the Free Market system will not change, and there will be no taxation on the rich and there will be no Welfare State in
How, how to change the focus and move the public agenda in a different direction? Perhaps finally September will come and the Palestinians will go to the UN and demand to have their state and thus help to distract public opinion in
But not all is lost, and relief for the harassed Netanyahu came from the usual quarter, out of the deserts of Sinai came the dramatic initiative to change the Israeli public agenda. And it so happened that Israel's fine security services had long since prepared a plan to liquidate Gazan leaders which just needed to be put into operation, and now put into operation it was forthwith, and all at once Israel's Air Force took off for Rafah and made the hit, an instant and huge success, and immediately afterwards could the Prime Minister make a full-blooded patriotic Address to the Nation people over all channels and offer congratulations to the brave soldiers and the valiant pilots and the diligent security operatives and deliver a stern warning to the Palestinians and offer condolences to the bereaved and wish the injured a speedy recovery and how great it felt at last to make a long speech without a single word about social problems, just like in the good old days. And of course, as soon as Gaza was hit, Israelis all over the South knew that the time has come to seek shelter and expect the worst, and indeed the Qassam and Grad rockets were not slow in coming, naturally prompting the Air Force to counter-attack on more Gaza targets and bring on more missiles on Israel the escalation is mutually escalating - and who would now dare demand a cut the in the defense budget in order to promote social causes?
But what the social protest activists do now in their tent encampments?
Would they quietly yield to the changed agenda and meekly disappear from the scene? If that's what Netanyahu is counting on, he should think again.
I would like to give the floor to Social Protest activits, with a selection of messages posted in the past twenty-four hours on the Offiical Housing Protest Facebook Page.
http://www.facebook.com/j14rev
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