Fighting for the Future of the Internet

Tis the season for your Senators and Congress members to hand out presents to their constituents.
      No, not you, silly!

Their REAL constituents---the corporations who have paid them much more money than you are even allowed.

Despite GOP Claims, U.S. Health Care
Nowhere Near ‘Best’ in the World

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/despite-gop-claims-us-health-care-nowhere-near-best-world-1322497805

By Wendell Potter

A little more than a year ago, on the day after the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives, Speaker-to-be John Boehner said one of the first orders of business after he took charge would be the repeal of health care reform.

"I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country," Boehner said at a press conference. "That means we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms to bring down the cost of health care.”

Boehner is not the first nor the only Republican to try to make us believe that the U.S. has the world’s best health care system and that we’re bound to lose that distinction because of Obamacare. I’ve heard GOP candidates for president say the same thing in recent months, charging that we need to get rid of a President who clearly is trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing, something that isn’t broken in the first place.

Well, those guys need to get out more. Out of the country, in fact. They need to travel to at least one of the many countries that are doing a much better job of delivering high quality care at much lower costs than the good old USA.

Police Abuses Expose Our Current--Foretell Our Future--Military State

SCT NOTE: The United States is rapdily moving toward a total, tyrranical military state.  We have seen it clearly in the brutality of police, at the command of their corrupt political bosses who are owned by Fourth Reich corporate powers, in blowing away Occupy in New York, Oakland and elsewhere.  Keep your eye on the Department of Homeland Security.  It is evoling into the Department of Homeland Suppression.  Look for stock prices of private prison corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of America which is based in Nashville, to move up in anticipation of further government contracting for prisons to become domestic Guantanamos for Americans who dare believe the First Amendment counts. There are already more than 800 vacant prison camps operated by the military in the U.S. and ready to accept the protesters who are not backed down by pepper spray.  The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers has contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root to build more.

Following is a good article which lays it out.  Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil rights litigator and author of two New York Times best-selling books. 

URL: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/20/the_roots_of_the_uc_davis_pepper_spraying/


Sunday, Nov 20, 2011 6:09 AM 15:20:44 CST

The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying

The shocking abuse of police power at UC-Davis is important precisely because it is not aberrational

VIDEO

By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)
The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis (details here) shows a police state in its pure form. It’s easy to be outraged by this incident as though it’s some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta adeptly demonstrates with an assemblage of video how common such excessive police force has been in response to the Occupy protests. Along those lines, there are several points to note about this incident and what it reflects:

Our Rights Are Going Up in a Cloud of Pepper Spray

UC Davis Pepper-Spray Incident Reveals Weakness Up Top

Taibblog  www.RollingStone.com

by: Matt Taibbi

(StopCorporateTakeover Note: When we don't defend the rights of the guilty---or the presumed guilty---your and my rights will be the next to fall.  These students were guilty of nothing, but the UC Davis cops were guilty of assault and battery.  We are rushing headlong into being a country under military rule.  Our obsession with militarism, which is symbolized by making everything in camo decor, and executed by local, small-town police having AK-47s and worse, is but a step toward the inevitable national military police and system of domestic dissent prisons.  This will be under the Department of Homeland Security, and it will provide a profit center for prison builders, arms makers, and Far Right militarism.  We have lost democracy, and we have lost our decency.  Stand up and get out in the street now and yell your lungs out until they are forced to listen to  you....To do less is to sanction the pepper-spraying of us all.)

Was absolutely mesmerized last night watching the viral video of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying. It was totally amazing, simultaneously one of most depressing and inspiring things I’ve seen in many years.


To recap for those who haven’t seen it: police in paramilitary gear line up in front of a group of Occupy protesters peacefully assembled on a quad pathway. Completely unprovoked, police decide to douse the whole group of sitting protesters with pepper spray. There is crying and chaos and panic, but the wheezing protesters sit resolutely in place and refuse to move despite the assault.

Finally, in what to me is the most amazing part, the protesters gather together and move forward shouting “Shame On You! Shame On You!” over and over again. You can literally see the painful truth of those words cutting the resolve of the policemen and forcing them backwards.

Chris Hedges’ Speech in Front of Goldman Sachs Leads to Arrest of Hedges, 16 Others

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges made this statement in New York City’s Zuccotti Park on Thursday morning during the People’s Hearing on Goldman Sachs, which he chaired with Dr. Cornel West. The activist and Truthdig columnist then joined a march of several hundred protesters to the nearby corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs, where he was arrested with 16 others.

Goldman Sachs, which received more subsidies and bailout-related funds than any other investment bank because the Federal Reserve permitted it to become a bank holding company under its “emergency situation,” has used billions in taxpayer money to enrich itself and reward its top executives. It handed its senior employees a staggering $18 billion in 2009, $16 billion in 2010 and $10 billion in 2011 in mega-bonuses. This massive transfer of wealth upwards by the Bush and Obama administrations, now estimated at $13 trillion to $14 trillion, went into the pockets of those who carried out fraud and criminal activity rather than the victims who lost their jobs, their savings and often their homes.

Free Speech and Democracy Prevail---for Now---in Nashville

Judge rejects Gov. Haslam's Imperial Order to stifle those who would criticize his corporate owners.....restores democracy and free speech in Nashville, for now. Stay tuned for the next stupid Republican scheme.  All the states and municipalities that are brazenly attacking citizens are more stupid than I had believed as they are fueling the story and the outrage and injustice.  Link to Nashville Scene story:  http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2011/10/31/state-concedes-defeat-in-occupy-nashville-battle-judge-bans-more-arrests