Don’t lose your hopes for universal health care in the U.S. It’s true single payer coverage was traded away by our national leaders to keep the insurance lobby happy, but Vermont is leading the way and the rest of us just need to get on the band wagon of this kind of grassroots activism to take back our lives. Single payer insurance is the only way out of the health care dilemma. Free markets are a terrible way to take care of our people because it will always be more profitable to deny a policy than to honor it. Universal coverage is just a smoke screen so long as insurance companies are still free to deny the policies themselves. Vermont has reminded us we can improve our lives if we stop waiting for national leaders to do the right thing. To paraphrase Brecht, “Woe to the democracy that needs heroes.” It’s all about the grassroots. Follow Vermont.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/9-strategies-to-end-corporate-rule/how-to-cover-everyone-vermonts-single-payer-success
Yesterday was International Women’s Day, a day to remember uppity women through the ages who fought and suffered to bring about the rights women have today. Many of these women spent time incarcerated for their efforts to gain the rights we take for granted today. Yesterday was also a day to remember how far we have to go to make the world fair, or even safe for women. Women are currently under a full scale attack to deprive them of control over their lives and bodies. This article by a young feminist from the Independent UK says it’s time for women to stop being so polite, and to begin to teach the men in power that there are going to be unpleasant consequences for attacking our sisters and daughters.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-penny-thats-enough-politeness–women-need-to-rise-up-in-anger-7544480.html
I don’t know how many people have said they like my blog, but that the site is ugly.
I realize that. I just haven’t known how to change it. I have a meeting this Saturday with a friend who may be able to help me start getting pretty, at least in my cyber form.
I appreciate everyone’s patience as I learn the world of blogging one bloody step at at time.
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.
Well Mr. Friedman has done it again. In another paean to clueless American arrogance, this is a line from his N.Y.Times article today. “…the question of whether Israel has the need and the right to pre-emptively attack Iran as it develops a nuclear potential is one of the most hotly contested issues on the world stage today. It is also an issue fraught with danger for Israel and American Jews, neither of whom want to be accused of dragging America into a war, especially one that could weaken an already frail world economy.”
Okay, let me get this straight. The issue of bombing Iran is fraught with danger for Israel and American Jews? How about for the people actually getting bombed? Do they even count in the equation? And how do you think it sounds to the Muslim fifth of the world’s population when you assume it’s okay for Christian and Jewish nations to have nuclear weapons, but not Muslims?
If we want to end the spread of nuclear weapons it can only begin by getting rid of our own stockpile, and for us to stop invading nations like Iraq and Libya right after they have abandoned their own nuclear programs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/opinion/friedman-israels-best-friend.html?src=me&ref=general
I can’t imagine why the leaders of Afghanistan aren’t responding to Obama’s pleas to clean up their dirty banks and crony capitalism. Could it be because he hasn’t done jack in his own country? I also loved the General who said the Afghans hadn’t learned much from us because they are so “primitive”. You would think they would have learned how to be civilized from our bombing and killer drones. At this point our foreign policy is so hypocritical that any diplomat from the U.S. should where a red wig and clown nose as standard uniform.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/world/asia/corruption-remains-intractable-in-afghanistan-under-karzai-government.html?_r=1&hp
“There’s something wrong
Africa is one of the richest continents
Yet the people who live on this continent are the world’s poorest.
That’s a problem.
We are living in a house of gold,
We can’t get medical care,
We can’t send our kids to school
We can’t get enough to eat.
That’s the paradox,
It’s historical and no one can fix it but us.
It is our unity that will allow us to overcome it.” -Tiken Jah Fakoly
(Clip is about 25 minutes.)
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/africaonmove/
Don’t you love studies that prove what most people already knew? But this study is important since the Bush administration shut down government funding for some of these studies on racial injustice. If ever we get ready to talk about the fact that white supremacy still calls the shots in America, these kinds of studies will be the data trying to awaken sleeping whites on the horrors of the “school to prison pipeline” for Black and Latino kids.
From the Black Agenda Report:
“… a study of Texas Schools by the Council of State Governments concluded that Black and Latino students “were disciplined far more harshly than white students who had committed similar offenses” – just as in the adult criminal justice system, where Blacks face harsher penalties at every stage of the process, from arrest through final charges through length and conditions of incarceration…
New data indicate that Black stigmatization as criminals pervades the nation’s public schools, just as it saturates the larger society. “For teachers and school disciplinarians, just as with street cops and prosecutors, race is the most important factor in who is charged with an offense, and how severe the penalty is.”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/new-data-show-black-students-have-been-new-jim-crowed
If you think all Israeli Jews think alike on the Palestinian issue, or on anything for that matter, you should read the newspaper Haaritz from time to time. Better yet, go to Israel and you will hear some of the most bitter attacks on the treatment of Palestinians coming from loyal Jewish Israelis.
It was at the Holocaust Museum in Israel that I first heard that most of the people who died in the Holocaust weren’t Jewish. There were six million Jews, and seven million non-Jews all of whom were remembered and mourned.
The following article comes from Haaretz and is a scathing satire by an Israeli citizen offering to sell himself to AIPAC. The author is criticising right wing Jews and Christians alike, who call for a war against Iran while hiding safely in the U.S. It’s easy to talk tough from the other side of an ocean.
“More than anything, I am aware that these “lovers of Israel,” those who like to stand next to gigantic blue and white flags, have no interest in improving education in Israel, or bettering the country’s housing or health-care systems, or improving its culture and scientific research. They have no interest in honing the country’s legal system, particularly on matters of religion and state, nor do they care about narrowing gaps between rich and poor, men and women, or Jews and Arabs…
…This is the illusion that allows people to call for the bombing of Iran while they sit in a mansion in Dallas. Or for the eradication of Israel’s democracy while lounging in a winter retreat in Miami. Or the annexation of Judea and Samaria while having a drink at the blackjack table in Las Vegas.”
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/aipac-buy-me-1.416936
“Had his district remained intact, Kucinich would have won Tuesday’s primary. But the 2010 election put Republican Governor John Kasich and his conservative allies in charge of the Ohio redistricting process. With encouragement from House Speaker John Boehner, they targeted Kucinich from the start.” -John Nichols, The Nation “What America Lost When Dennis Kucinich Lost”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166641/what-america-lost-when-dennis-kucinich-lost
