October 05, 2005
help with finding info???
i'm helping a friend do some research and knowing that the folks that visit this site are "in the know" i thought i could tap your brains for some valuable information. i need the info by october 15th, so anything that will help me speed up the process would be much appreciated.
this is what i'm hunting down:
- Articles, editorial, letters about the demolition of the old Everett
building pertaining to environmental impact (esp. the onsite crushing
of the concrete)
- Articles concerning the Sherman Hills Development
- Hard numbers on job loss in South Haven. But not just an overall
number but 100 here, 50 over there, etc...
thanks a ton! you can either respond here or email me at mistresselaura@care2.com
Posted by Sarah at 03:43 PM | Comments (2)
September 27, 2005
Etan Thomas' Speech from the September 24th Anti-War Rally in D.C.
“Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.
In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.
I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.
I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.
Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.
Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.
Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.
I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.'d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.
They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.
Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.”
Posted by Sarah at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2005
Brown Yanked
Carpenter Alan Perkins walks past a sign put up by a resident living in a tented city in Bay St. Louis, Miss., on Thursday. The storm victim put up the sign after she called four times for FEMA's assistance and was always prompted to leave a message.
Posted by Denise at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2005
Advising students on offers made by recruiters
Editor's Note: A teacher for 30 years, TO reader Kirk Stapp now faces a new problem: how to advise his students on the offers made to them by over-eager military recruiters. He sent sent us this account. -- sw
The Class of '05
By Kirk Stapp
t r u t h o u t | perspective
Friday 24 June 2005
After a marine or army recruiter visits Mammoth High School, students frequently ask me questions about my military experience in Vietnam. Eventually, these conversations lead to a single question: Should I enlist?
Advice can carry a heavy burden in shaping a seventeen-year-old's future: employment, culinary school, a community college, a UC, a tour in Iraq, an amputated leg, a lifetime full of nightmares, cancer from the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium used in US and British munitions, a flag-draped coffin.
Ryan (not the student's real name): "The recruiter said that my ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) scores were so high that I could become a helicopter mechanic or even go to officer's candidate school."
"You know, if you enlist, you're going to end up serving a tour or two in Iraq or Afghanistan." There is an awkward moment of silence. "If you're smart enough to have options in the military, why don't you go to college?"
Ryan hesitates: "My folks said they could help me pay for books, but that's about it. They can't afford to ..." There is a pause - then a glimmer of hope: "The recruiter said that if I enlisted I would receive ten thousand dollars, an enlistment bonus, and thousands more in college tuition assistance when I get out." If you get out. He's looking for an opening. It's not "Should I enlist?" He wants to know why he shouldn't enlist.
"What do you think?" Ryan asks, while looking at the floor.
I think recruiters target poor kids. The chance of Ryan's being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are minuscule. The chance of his losing a leg or arm or eye are probably less than two percent. Sadly, the chances of his suffering from exposure to radiation are probably astronomically high given the fact that hundreds of tons of depleted uranium munitions have been expended in Iraq during the first gulf war and Bush's crusade.
The idea of advising Ryan to not serve his country is repulsive to me. Americans have always served ideas bigger than themselves: "freedom," "opportunity," "liberty," "justice," "truth," "equality." Most of these ideas are enshrined in our Constitution: they are called the Bill of Rights.
Continue reading "Advising students on offers made by recruiters"
Posted by Chuck at 10:06 PM | Comments (3)
May 31, 2005
Newsweek
Mojo answers the question: Why do they hate us?
Click here to see an amusing animated cartoon by Mark Fiore >>
Posted by Denise at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2005
See your tax dollars at work
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm
Posted by Chuck at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
Let Them Eat Bombs
COUNTERPUNCH, April 13, 2005
Child Malnutrition in Iraq Doubles
Let Them Eat Bombs
By TERRY JONES
London, England
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the
Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By
Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.
A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."
But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling.
And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the
general public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military
techniques that we have so far failed to apply to the children of
Iraq, please let us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that,
under our present leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.
In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the
poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either
government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.
Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python. He is the author of Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror . Visit Jones' blog at:
www.terry-jones.net
Posted by Chuck at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2005
Pentagon's Secret Stash of Torture photos
from Truthoout.org
The Pentagon's Secret Stash
By Matt Welch
Reason Magazine
April 2005 Edition
Why we'll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos.
The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.
But they never were. After the first batch of Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly iconic-a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat-no substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10, and that was it.
"It refutes the glib claim that everything leaks sooner or later," says the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood, who makes his living finding and publishing little-known government information and fighting against state secrecy. "While there may be classified information in the papers almost every day, there's a lot more classified information that never makes it into the public domain."
Continue reading "Pentagon's Secret Stash of Torture photos"
Posted by Chuck at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2005
Bush quote on Social Security
In response to a request to explain his Social Security proposals:
"Because the all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how the benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.
"There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be or closer delivered to what has been promised."
As quoted by David Corn on tompaine.com:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/express_train_to_disaster.php
Posted by Chuck at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)
February 13, 2005
SUNFLOWER: Our Passive Solar House
The seeded flower turns; heliotropic
Sun-worshipping Fibonacci spiral.
We named our house "Sunflower,"
Powered by panels that turn with the sun
And by the turbine in the air,
Whirled by solar-heated wind.
The whole earth is a sunflower.
by: Maynard Kaufman
Our decision to build a new house on part of our land near Bangor, Michigan, was prompted by an earlier decision to retire from farming as I passed my threescore and ten years.
The decision to build a passive solar house which was to be off the grid was informed by my work as an Environmental Studies professor at Western Michigan University, and reinforced by our values as members and organizers of Green Politics groups since 1987. As Greens we believe in living in harmony with nature, and this involved a commitment to renewable sources of energy where possible...
Continue reading "SUNFLOWER: Our Passive Solar House"
Posted by Denise at 07:33 PM | Comments (1)