University of Washington For Obama

Cubans on President Obama's Nobel Prize

Fire Is Born — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:13:01 EDT

No comment. fib

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Leading Cuban dissidents cheer Obama's Nobel prize (AP) – 8 hours ago HAVANA

— Many of the 75 activists jailed in a 2003 Cuban government crackdown on political dissent are congratulating Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter released Monday to international journalists, 29 of those imprisoned six years ago said Obama "has become a global symbol, especially for us who, under difficult conditions, are defending Cubans' right to democracy."

In another letter, 21 of their wives, mothers and other female relatives also cheered Obama. Fifty-four dissidents remain imprisoned on allegations they conspired with the U.S. to topple Cuba's government. Those freed were granted medical parole or forced into exile in Spain. One was released after completing a six-year sentence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOSU7Ew6j4vlEn0d_L0eXG0A1w1gD9B9M09G0

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Fidel Castro congratulates Obama on Nobel win

Zimbabwe News.Net

Sunday 11th October, 2009

Former Cuban president, Fidel Castro, has said he was obliged to acknowledge the Nobel Prize given to US President, Barack Obama, was a "positive measure," and especially important considering the "genocidal policies" of some former US presidents.

He also said the decision was good compensation for the fact that the US had been defeated in Copenhagen when Rio de Janeiro was picked as a site for 2016 Olympic Games.

In an article titled "Reflections," published on the Internet, 83-year-old Castro said while he did not always share the views of those who award the Nobel, Obama’s prize was "an appeal for peace and a search for solutions that lead to the survival of species."

In his comments, he said: "Many will say that Obama has not yet earned the right to receive such a distinction. We prefer to see the decision as not so much a prize for the president of the US, but as a criticism of the genocidal policies pursued by a few presidents of that country, who led the world to the crossroads it is at today."

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http://www.zimbabwenews.net/story/553184

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From Senator Clair McCaskill

Fire Is Born — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:06:18 EDT

I always liked Senator Clair McCaskill. fib

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The Twilight Zone

I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.

Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.

http://clairecmc.tumblr.com/post/208582433/the-twilight-zone

How to Watch the Speech

Fire Is Born — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:07:26 EDT

How to Watch the Speech

By David M. Herszenhorn

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

A meeting on health care reform in Reston, Va.

In his speech to Congress on Wednesday night, President Obama will press his case for major health care legislation, not just with lawmakers in the audience, but also with a deeply wary public watching at home.

And while Mr. Obama will probably talk in clear, plain-spoken terms, decoding his remarks and the reaction he gets will require both a careful ear and a keen eye. Here are some of the main things to listen and look for:

Will he reiterate his support for a government-run insurance plan — or finally state outright that he can accept a compromise that might disappoint liberals?

Will the president give a shout-out to influential Republicans like Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — or threaten to barrel over opponents?

Will centrist lawmakers sit on their hands — or give him a big ovation?

Will Mr. Obama reassure elderly voters worried about Medicare cuts? Can he do that even while explaining how the country can afford to subsidize health coverage for more than 40 million Americans who currently have none?

Beyond those big questions, here’s an armchair guide to watching the president’s big speech at home.(...)"

Kudos to Mrs. Bush

Greg Schaefer — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:12:27 EDT

I read a story on CNN which surprised me greatly, see http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/07/laura.bush/index.html.

The former first Lady says that Obama has been doing a good job, but has much on his plate. This is the most gracious thing any Republican has had to say in some time. I congratulate her for her openness, and perhaps even wisdom?

Cheers, Mrs. Bush! May you be as great a former first Lady as was your Mother-in-Law.

Gregor

NO PUBLIC OPTION = BILLION-DOLLAR TAXPAYER GIVEAWAY TO PRIVATE INSURERS

V, aka VCubed/Virginia V — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:51:39 EDT

If we do not get a public option, we will pay billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurers only. 80% of people with no health insurance work, and rightfully, they will get subsidies.

Wrongfully, all that subsidy money paid with your taxes will go to private insurers, and pay for not only health care, but also for:

- Salaries of $20-$25 million for private insurance CEOs

- Perks like private jets, bonuses, and stock shares often worth over $100 million for those CEOs

No government employee gets millions of dollars a year, and perks and stock shares worth over $100 million.

. Your firefighter, police, highway patrol do not make $25 million a year.

. Your congressmen don’t make $25 million a year.

. Your President of the United States does not make $25 million/year.

. Your Medicare, VA and Medicaid bureaucrats do not make $25 million/year.

“Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”

Fire Is Born — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:58:35 EDT

Dr. Welch's essay touches upon the uneasy grounds of our health business that I have known from my own experience. I am glad somebody elso wrote it first, and is a physician. FIB

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July 28, 2009

Essay

To Overhaul the System, ‘Health’ Needs Redefining

By H. GILBERT WELCH, M.D.

"The Canadians haven’t figured it out. Neither have the Japanese, the French or the British. No health care system has seriously grappled with the question most fundamental to its task: what constitutes health?

As the United States contemplates an overhaul of its system, maybe we should take a stab at it.

For years the question has been deferred to those with a financial interest in the answer — health professionals entwined with pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic technologies, free-standing diagnostic centers, surgical centers, hospitals and academic medical centers — a group aptly labeled some 30 years ago by the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine as the “medical-industrial complex.”

It’s an industry that has learned a lot over those years. I know, because I’ve been part of it. And increasingly it has settled on a most convenient answer: health is the absence of abnormality.

In the past, people sought health care because they were sick. Now the medical-industrial complex seeks patients. It encourages those with minor symptoms to be evaluated and urges those who feel well to get “checked” — just to make sure nothing is wrong.

So, if health is the absence of abnormality, the only way to know you are healthy is to become a customer.

But healthy people aren’t great customers; they’re like the people who pay off their entire credit card balance each month. The money is in those in whom an abnormality can be found.

The medical-industrial complex has made that relatively easy to do.

It develops diagnostic technologies able to find smaller and smaller abnormalities. So more and more of us are found to have damaged cartilage in our knees, bulging discs in our backs, and narrowed blood vessels throughout our bodies. And far too many are also found to have “spots” or “shadows” that are seldom significant but are said to be “worrisome.” So more and more of us have knee surgery, back surgery, angioplasty and more diagnostic investigation.

And the medical-industrial complex has another way to find more abnormalities: it simply narrows the definition of normal. Take blood pressure. In the past, relatively few were said to have abnormal blood pressure. Now a normal blood pressure is said to be below 120/80. This means that well over half the adult population of the United States is abnormal. The same is true for cholesterol. And although it involves a smaller portion of the population, narrower definitions of normal are expanding the number of people said to have diabetes and osteoporosis. So more and more of us are treated for these conditions.

Finding more abnormalities has been a great strategy for our industry. But it has been a disaster for health-care costs.

Some believe that finding more abnormalities is the right strategy to improve the nation’s health, but how much it reduces death and disability is open to debate. The new abnormalities being found are generally not severe, but mild: they are not life-threatening, and in many patients they won’t ever produce symptoms. When the benefit of treatment is known, it is known to be small — so small that many people, sometimes hundreds, must be treated for one person to benefit. But more often than not, the value of treating these mild abnormalities is simply not known.

What is known is that others are invariably harmed in the process. Admittedly, the harms are often mild — lightheadedness or fainting from too much blood pressure medication, for example. But occasionally they are more severe, even fatal; last year, for instance, a major study of intensive diabetes treatment was stopped because it caused more deaths.

But while these harms are rare, so are the benefits— if they exist at all. Nevertheless, the medical-industrial complex has systematically exaggerated the benefits and minimized or ignored the harms. The reality is more nuanced: whether a strategy does more good than harm is often a much closer call than is ever advertised.

And then there is a larger question. How does “absence of abnormality” affect our perception of health? This construct is both too narrow and too broad. It’s too narrow because there is more to being healthy than striving to avoid death and disease. Health is more than a physical state of being; it’s also a state of mind.

And it’s too broad because all of us harbor abnormalities. The construct drives the system to look for things to be wrong — a search that will be successful in most of us. We then feel more vulnerable. This induced vulnerability undermines the very sense of well-being and resilience that in many ways defines health itself. Viewing health as the absence of abnormality thus conflicts with the desire for a healthier society.

Furthermore, the strategy has created a host of other problems: doctors who are overwhelmed by the number of ailments their patients allegedly have (and who are often distracted from the most important ones); doctors in training who are increasingly confused about who is really sick and who is not; lawyers who increasingly have a field day with the charge of “failure to diagnose”; patients who get too much treatment or lose health insurance because they been given a new diagnosis; and a frazzled, fearful public adrift in a culture of disease. Oh, and did I mention that it has been a disaster for health-care costs?

If you are one of the millions of Americans adversely affected by the unrelenting growth of health costs — an employer that can’t afford insurance or a patient who can’t afford prescription drugs or can’t find insurance at all — you have to take back responsibility for deciding what health really means, not surrender that decision to “experts” with strong financial incentives.

And even if you are one of the few who doesn’t need to worry about money, you still need to take back this responsibility. Your health may depend on it."

H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Hanover, N.H., is the author of “Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”

From Quinnipac: There is still strong support for critical elements of the Obama/Democratic plan

Fire Is Born — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:40:57 EDT

"There is still strong support for critical elements of the Obama/Democratic plan:

* 62 - 32 percent in favor of giving people the option of a government insurance plan;

* 61 - 36 percent for higher taxes on high income earners to pay for health care reform;

* 60 - 32 percent in favor of insurance subsidies for individuals making up to $43,000 and families of four making up to $88,000;

* 54 - 38 percent for requiring businesses to provide insurance or pay the government.

Voters oppose 68 - 26 percent requiring people to have health insurance or pay a fine and oppose 68 - 27 percent taxing employees for health care benefits from employers. Independent voters, perhaps the key voting group, are more worried about the deficit rising than congressional inaction, 54 - 37 percent. These voters say 59 - 36 percent that overhaul should not occur if it would "significantly" increase the deficit. Independents oppose 63 - 33 percent passing a bill with only Democratic votes."

U.S. Can Do More For Honduras

Fire Is Born — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:09:14 EDT

As predicted, Barbara Lee D-CA had already signed the letter. I have this telepathic Rep.

How about yours? fib

ps. Honduras needs your opinion! Put your e-pen where your mind and heart is.

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U.S. Can Do More For Honduras

Rep. Grijalva is asking fellow members of Congress to sign a letter to President Obama urging him to increase the pressure on the coup regime in Honduras.

Ask your Representative to sign Rep. Grijalva's letter »

Action Spotlight

Urge Your Rep to Sign Grijalva Letter for More US Pressure on Coup Regime in Honduras

Talks between President Zelaya and the coup regime in Honduras broke down over the coup regime's refusal to accept the international demand for President Zelaya's return. The U.S. has so far failed to sufficiently pressure the coup regime.

Rep. Raul Grijalva is circulating a letter to President Obama, calling on him to denounce the repression in Honduras by the coup regime, and to freeze U.S. assets and suspend U.S. visas of coup leaders. Signers of the letter include Reps. McGovern, Conyers, and Serrano.

Urge your Representative to sign the Grijalva letter calling for more U.S. pressure on the coup regime.

War and peace through the bravest eyes

Fire Is Born — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:23:13 EDT

Natalia Estemirova on Chechnya

War and peace through the bravest eyes

Jul 23rd 2009

From The Economist print edition

The testimony of a murdered human-rights campaigner
EPA

IT WAS the kind of scene she had described many times. On July 15th at 8.30am, as she left her flat in Grozny, Natalia Estemirova was forced into a white Lada. She shouted that she was being kidnapped, but those who heard were too scared to report it. By the time her colleagues had found out, she was dead, murdered by three bullets in her chest and a control shot in the head.(...)

"Can communism reform itself?" - Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.

Fire Is Born — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:10:05 EDT

Hitchens writes from my native city in my native country and it is tough not to be proud again. fib

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A Sense of Historical Irony

Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 12:26 PM ET

WROCLAW, Poland—It was distinctly eerie to learn of the death of professor Leszek Kolakowski just 15 minutes before entering a room in which I was to give a short lecture on his influence. But it was also rather inspiring to be in a country that made the passing of a public intellectual into the front-page headline of every national daily paper the following day.

Meet Russell Means

Fire Is Born — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:19:16 EDT

http://www.russellmeans.com/

From "Intercontinental Cry": Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmy) Culture

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:43:20 EDT

Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmy) Culture

July 18, 2009 at 9:18am |

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“The Abatwa are an example of the phenomenon feared by Subcomandante Marcos and the indigenous communities of the Chiapas region of Mexico, that of being so marginalized as a people that you just don’t matter any more.”

The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture, produced for the 28-minute weekly cable public access program Indymedia Presents, takes a look at the largely-unnoticed struggle of the Abatwa People, more commonly known as the Pygmies.

Modern Abatwa life is a far cry from the past, when they were respected for being highly skilled traditional hunters. Today the Abatwa they have been so completely marginalized it’s like they do not exist.

This has been especially the case since 1973, when the Abatwa were thrown off their lands for an animal preserve. “The unintended consequence of the environmental victory was great destruction to Abatwa culture, and the loss of many lives.”

21 years later, the British Empire’s historical interference in Rwandan culture triggered a genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu. As we watched on in terror, as many as 1,000,000 people were killed.

Nobody ever seemed to notice that the Abatwa were among them. Even now, few have ever reported that they were also targeted by the Hutu. The few reports that do exist, estimate between 10,000 and 30,000 Abatwa died during the months-long genocide. These are the forgotten victims.

Not much has changed since then. With fears occasionally rising that the genocide could happen again, the Abatwa find themselves being dragged to extinction. They are losing one percent of their population each year, and miscarriages are frequent because the Abatwa’s health is so extremely low and they have little or no access to aid, medicine, or social supports.

Some groups doing their best to help, like Caurwa and the Health Development Initiative – but even so, the Abatwa’s struggle for life is a losing one.

The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture is the second in a series of films by Patricia Boiko from Pepperspray Productions. The first program examined the genocide in Rwanda, and how people can heal from such wanton horror.

Filed Under Abatwa • Africa • genocide • indigenous • Rwanda • video

Hey, O girls and O guys! Michelle Obama will now speak at Merced University commencement! Watch CNN now!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:02:40 EDT

IT REALLY MADE MY DAY!

i LOVE MICHELLE WITH ALL MY HEART, AND HER ENTIRE FAMILY.

DO NOT MISS IT.

MERCED IS A VERY NEW CAMPUS IN CALIFORNIA, AND ALREADY

SO MUCH AHEAD OF THE VENERABLE NOTRE DAME.

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Afghanistan civilan deaths - Washington "deeply, deeply" regrets the death of Afghan civilians killed by an air strike, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.

Fire Is Born — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:55:39 EDT

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Washington "deeply, deeply" regrets the death of Afghan civilians killed by an air strike, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.

Red Cross officials believe dozens of civilians including women and children died in the strike which targeted Taleban fighters in Farah Province.

The civilians are said to have been sheltering from fighting at the time.

Mrs Clinton was speaking alongside the Afghan and Pakistani presidents who are in Washington to meet Barack Obama.

Human Rights Watch: World Report 2009 Events of 2008

Fire Is Born — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:47:59 EDT

World Report 2009

Events of 2008

January 14, 2009

The 19th annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide. It reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2008 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in question.

Sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the governments demonstrating the clearest vision on international rights protections, sadly, are those seeking to undermine enforcement. In their foreign policies and in international fora, they invoke sovereignty, non-interference, and Southern solidarity to curb criticism of their human rights abuses and those of their allies and friends. Governments that champion human rights need urgently to wrest back the initiative from these human rights spoilers.

Legacy PDF: Read this Report Online Get the Report

Download the World Report (PDF, 4.47 MB)
Purchase this report online

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ANNUAL MEETING

Fire Is Born — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:25:19 EDT

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_____________________________________________________

For Immediate Release April 27, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ANNUAL MEETING

National Academy of Sciences

Washington, D.C.

9:12 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you so much for the wonderful welcome. To President Cicerone, thank you very much for your leadership and for hosting us today. To John Holdren, thanks, John, for the outstanding work that you are doing.

I was just informed backstage that Ralph and John both are 1965 graduates of MIT -- same class. And so I'm not sure this is the perfectly prescribed scientific method, but they're sort of a control group -- (laughter) -- who ages faster: The President's Science Advisor or the President of the Academy? (Laughter.) And we'll check in in a couple of years. But it is wonderful to see them.

To all of you, to my Cabinet Secretaries and team who are here, thank you. It is a great privilege to address the distinguished members of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine who've gathered here this morning.

And I'd like to begin today with a story of a previous visitor who also addressed this august body. In April of 1921, Albert Einstein visited the United States for the first time. And his international credibility was growing as scientists around the world began to understand and accept the vast implications of his theories of special and general relativity. And he attended this annual meeting, and after sitting through a series of long speeches by others, he reportedly said, "I have just got a new theory of eternity." (Laughter.) So I will do my best to heed this cautionary tale. (Laughter.)

The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity, the boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America.

A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won, before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences -- in the midst of civil war.

Lincoln refused to accept that our nation's sole purpose was mere survival. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add -- and I quote -- "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery... of new and useful things."

This is America's story. Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we've never given in to pessimism; we've never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we sought out new frontiers.

Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before: a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments -- attached to a health care system that holds the potential for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our economy, but simultaneously endangers our planet; threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity; and challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China -- a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis.

At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before. (Applause.)

And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today. We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it's not a cause for alarm. The Department of Health and Human Services has declared a public health emergency as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively. And I'm getting regular updates on the situation from the responsible agencies. And the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Centers for Disease Control will be offering regular updates to the American people. And Secretary Napolitano will be offering regular updates to the American people, as well, so that they know what steps are being taken and what steps they may need to take.

But one thing is clear -- our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community. And this is one more example of why we can't allow our nation to fall behind.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happened.

Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we've allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.

Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world. And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas.

We know that our country is better than this. A half century ago, this nation made a commitment to lead the world in scientific and technological innovation; to invest in education, in research, in engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and engaging every citizen in that historic mission. That was the high water mark of America's investment in research and development. And since then our investments have steadily declined as a share of our national income. As a result, other countries are now beginning to pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation's great discoveries.

I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow. It's our character to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. So I'm here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science. (Applause.)

This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history.

Just think what this will allow us to accomplish: solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again; an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us. We can do this.

The pursuit of discovery half a century ago fueled our prosperity and our success as a nation in the half century that followed. The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years. That's how we will ensure that our children and their children will look back on this generation's work as that which defined the progress and delivered the prosperity of the 21st century.

This work begins with a historic commitment to basic science and applied research, from the labs of renowned universities to the proving grounds of innovative companies.

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and with the support of Congress, my administration is already providing the largest single boost to investment in basic research in American history. That's already happened.

This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets. But this is also incredibly important for our future. As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said: "Basic scientific research is scientific capital."

The fact is an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not.

And that's why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research -- because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society.

No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals, or new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and to drought.

It was basic research in the photoelectric field -- in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today's GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.

In addition to the investments in the Recovery Act, the budget I've proposed -- and versions have now passed both the House and the Senate -- builds on the historic investments in research contained in the recovery plan.

So we double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from -- from testing "smart grid" designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes.

And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials -- because we know that a nation's potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools that it makes available to its researchers.

But the renewed commitment of our nation will not be driven by government investment alone. It's a commitment that extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. And that's why my budget makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent. This is a tax credit that returns two dollars to the economy for every dollar we spend, by helping companies afford the often high costs of developing new ideas, new technologies, and new products. Yet at times we've allowed it to lapse or only renewed it year to year. I've heard this time and again from entrepreneurs across this country: By making this credit permanent we make it possible for businesses to plan the kinds of projects that create jobs and economic growth.

Second, in no area will innovation be more important than in the development of new technologies to produce, use, and save energy -- which is why my administration has made an unprecedented commitment to developing a 21st century clean energy economy, and why we put a scientist in charge of the Department of Energy. (Applause.)

Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our future as a nation depends upon our willingness to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to lead the world in pursuit of new discovery.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a little more than a half century ago, Americans were stunned. The Russians had beaten us to space. And we had to make a choice: We could accept defeat or we could accept the challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the challenge.

President Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA and to invest in science and math education, from grade school to graduate school. And just a few years later, a month after his address to the 1961 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of Congress that the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth.

The scientific community rallied behind this goal and set about achieving it. And it would not only lead to those first steps on the moon; it would lead to giant leaps in our understanding here at home. That Apollo program produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gasses; energy-saving building materials; fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers. More broadly, the enormous investment in that era –- in science and technology, in education and research funding –- produced a great outpouring of curiosity and creativity, the benefits of which have been incalculable. There are those of you in this audience who became scientists because of that commitment. We have to replicate that.

There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation's challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve –- and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead.

But energy is our great project, this generation's great project. And that's why I've set a goal for our nation that we will reduce our carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. And that is why -- (applause) -- and that is why I'm pursuing, in concert with Congress, the policies that will help meet us -- help us meet this goal.

My recovery plan provides the incentives to double our nation's capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years -- extending the production tax credit, providing loan guarantees and offering grants to spur investment. Just take one example: Federally funded research and development has dropped the cost of solar panels by tenfold over the last three decades. Our renewed efforts will ensure that solar and other clean energy technologies will be competitive.

My budget includes $150 billion over 10 years to invest in sources of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It supports efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by the National Research Council, to develop new space-based capabilities to help us better understand our changing climate.

And today, I'm also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative -- recommended by this organization -- called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E. (Applause.)

This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik. It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research. And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA.

So ARPA-E seeks to do the same kind of high-risk, high-reward research. My administration will pursue, as well, comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. We will put in place the resources so that scientists can focus on this critical area. And I am confident that we will find a wellspring of creativity just waiting to be tapped by researchers in this room and entrepreneurs across our country. We can solve this problem. (Applause.)

Now, the nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy. I believe America can and must be that nation. But in order to lead in the global economy and to ensure that our businesses can grow and innovate, and our families can thrive, we're also going to have to address the shortcomings of our health care system.

The Recovery Act will support the long overdue step of computerizing America's medical records, to reduce the duplication, waste and errors that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

But it's important to note, these records also hold the potential of offering patients the chance to be more active participants in the prevention and treatment of their diseases. We must maintain patient control over these records and respect their privacy. At the same time, we have the opportunity to offer billions and billions of anonymous data points to medical researchers who may find in this information evidence that can help us better understand disease.

History also teaches us the greatest advances in medicine have come from scientific breakthroughs, whether the discovery of antibiotics, or improved public health practices, vaccines for smallpox and polio and many other infectious diseases, antiretroviral drugs that can return AIDS patients to productive lives, pills that can control certain types of blood cancers, so many others.

Because of recent progress –- not just in biology, genetics and medicine, but also in physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering –- we have the potential to make enormous progress against diseases in the coming decades. And that's why my administration is committed to increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health, including $6 billion to support cancer research -- part of a sustained, multi-year plan to double cancer research in our country. (Applause.)

Next, we are restoring science to its rightful place. On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. (Applause.) Our progress as a nation –- and our values as a nation –- are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life. (Applause.)

That's why I've charged John Holdren and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions -- and not the other way around. (Laughter.)

As part of this effort, we've already launched a web site that allows individuals to not only make recommendations to achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those recommendations. It's a small step, but one that's creating a more transparent, participatory and democratic government.

We also need to engage the scientific community directly in the work of public policy. And that's why, today, I am announcing the appointment -- we are filling out the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, known as PCAST, and I intend to work with them closely. Our co-chairs have already been introduced -- Dr. Varmus and Dr. Lander along with John. And this council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experiences and views. And I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.

In addition to John -- sorry, the -- I just noticed that I jumped the gun here -- go ahead and move it up. (Laughter.) I'd already -- I'd already introduced all you guys.

In biomedicine, just to give you an example of what PCAST can do, we can harness the historic convergence between life sciences and physical sciences that's underway today; undertaking public projects -- in the spirit of the Human Genome Project -- to create data and capabilities that fuel discoveries in tens of thousands of laboratories; and identifying and overcoming scientific and bureaucratic barriers to rapidly translating scientific breakthroughs into diagnostics and therapeutics that serve patients.

In environmental science, it will require strengthening our weather forecasting, our Earth observation from space, the management of our nation's land, water and forests, and the stewardship of our coastal zones and ocean fisheries.

We also need to work with our friends around the world. Science, technology and innovation proceed more rapidly and more cost-effectively when insights, costs and risks are shared; and so many of the challenges that science and technology will help us meet are global in character. This is true of our dependence on oil, the consequences of climate change, the threat of epidemic disease, and the spread of nuclear weapons.

And that's why my administration is ramping up participation in -- and our commitment to -- international science and technology cooperation across the many areas where it is clearly in our interest to do so. In fact, this week, my administration is gathering the leaders of the world's major economies to begin the work of addressing our common energy challenges together.

Fifth, since we know that the progress and prosperity of future generations will depend on what we do now to educate the next generation, today I'm announcing a renewed commitment to education in mathematics and science. (Applause.) This is something I care deeply about. Through this commitment, American students will move from the middle of the top -- from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade -- for we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow. And I don't intend to have us out-educated.

We can't start soon enough. We know that the quality of math and science teachers is the most influential single factor in determining whether a student will succeed or fail in these subjects. Yet in high school more than 20 percent of students in math and more than 60 percent of students in chemistry and physics are taught by teachers without expertise in these fields. And this problem is only going to get worse. There is a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015.

And that's why I'm announcing today that states making strong commitments and progress in math and science education will be eligible to compete later this fall for additional funds under the Secretary of Education's $5 billion Race to the Top program.

And I'm challenging states to dramatically improve achievement in math and science by raising standards, modernizing science labs, upgrading curriculum, and forging partnerships to improve the use of science and technology in our classrooms. (Applause.) I'm challenging states, as well, to enhance teacher preparation and training, and to attract new and qualified math and science teachers to better engage students and reinvigorate those subjects in our schools.

And in this endeavor, we will work to support inventive approaches. Let's create systems that retain and reward effective teachers, and let's create new pathways for experienced professionals to go into the classroom. There are, right now, chemists who could teach chemistry, physicists who could teach physics, statisticians who could teach mathematics. But we need to create a way to bring the expertise and the enthusiasm of these folks –- folks like you –- into the classroom.

There are states, for example, doing innovative work. I'm pleased to announce that Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania will lead an effort with the National Governors Association to increase the number of states that are making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education a top priority. Six states are currently participating in the initiative, including Pennsylvania, which has launched an effective program to ensure that the state has the skilled workforce in place to draw the jobs of the 21st century. And I want every state, all 50 states, to participate.

But as you know, our work does not end with a high school diploma. For decades, we led the world in educational attainment, and as a consequence we led the world in economic growth. The G.I. Bill, for example, helps send a generation to college. But in this new economy, we've come to trail other nations in graduation rates, in educational achievement, and in the production of scientists and engineers.

That's why my administration has set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the future –- and to foster the next generation of scientists and engineers. In the next decade –- by 2020 –- America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal that we are going to set. And we've provided tax credits and grants to make a college education more affordable.

My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships. (Applause.) This program was created as part of the space race five decades ago. In the decades since, it's remained largely the same size –- even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path.

So this is how we will lead the world in new discoveries in this new century. But I think all of you understand it will take far more than the work of government. It will take all of us. It will take all of you. And so today I want to challenge you to use your love and knowledge of science to spark the same sense of wonder and excitement in a new generation.

America's young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity –- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. We've got evidence. You know, the average age in NASA's mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are just as ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century.

So I want to persuade you to spend time in the classroom, talking and showing young people what it is that your work can mean, and what it means to you. I want to encourage you to participate in programs to allow students to get a degree in science fields and a teaching certificate at the same time. I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things.

I want you to know that I'm going to be working alongside you. I'm going to participate in a public awareness and outreach campaign to encourage students to consider careers in science and mathematics and engineering -- because our future depends on it.

And the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy.

It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge, and will create research opportunities for undergraduates and educational opportunities for women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but are no less capable of inventing the solutions that will help us grow our economy and save our planet. (Applause.)

And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge.

For we must always remember that somewhere in America there's an entrepreneur seeking a loan to start a business that could transform an industry -- but she hasn't secured it yet. There's a researcher with an idea for an experiment that might offer a new cancer treatment -– but he hasn't found the funding yet. There's a child with an inquisitive mind staring up at the night sky. And maybe she has the potential to change our world –- but she doesn't know it yet.

As you know, scientific discovery takes far more than the occasional flash of brilliance –- as important as that can be. Usually, it takes time and hard work and patience; it takes training; it requires the support of a nation. But it holds a promise like no other area of human endeavor.

In 1968, a year defined by loss and conflict and tumult, Apollo 8 carried into space the first human beings ever to slip beyond Earth's gravity, and the ship would circle the moon 10 times before returning home. But on its fourth orbit, the capsule rotated and for the first time Earth became visible through the windows.

Bill Anders, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, scrambled for a camera, and he took a photo that showed the Earth coming up over the moon's horizon. It was the first ever taken from so distant a vantage point, and it soon became known as "Earthrise."

Anders would say that the moment forever changed him, to see our world -- this pale blue sphere -- without borders, without divisions, at once so tranquil and beautiful and alone.

"We came all this way to explore the moon," he said, "and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth."

Yes, scientific innovation offers us a chance to achieve prosperity. It has offered us benefits that have improved our health and our lives -- improvements we take too easily for granted. But it gives us something more. At root, science forces us to reckon with the truth as best as we can ascertain it.

And some truths fill us with awe. Others force us to question long-held views. Science can't answer every question, and indeed, it seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries of the physical world, the more humble we must be. Science cannot supplant our ethics or our values, our principles or our faith. But science can inform those things and help put those values -- these moral sentiments, that faith -- can put those things to work -- to feed a child, or to heal the sick, to be good stewards of this Earth.

We are reminded that with each new discovery and the new power it brings comes new responsibility; that the fragility, the sheer specialness of life requires us to move past our differences and to address our common problems, to endure and continue humanity's strivings for a better world.

As President Kennedy said when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years ago: "The challenge, in short, may be our salvation."

Thank you all for all your past, present, and future discoveries. (Applause.) May God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

END
9:52 A.M. EDT

Hong Kong Scientists Developing Rapid Test for Swine Flu

Fire Is Born — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:42:21 EDT

Hong Kong Scientists Developing Rapid Test for Swine Flu Posted April 27, 2009

GILLIAN WONG
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING—Hong Kong said it has assigned a team of scientists to develop a test that will hopefully cut the time it takes to diagnose the new swine flu strain from a few days to a few hours.

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Researchers in Hong Kong played a big role in discovering and determining how to treat SARS — a separate deadly virus that spread rapidly in 2003, killing more than 900 people. The island was the second hardest hit after mainland China.

Thomas Tsang, controller for Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection, said Monday the government and the territory's universities are jointly developing the rapid swine flu test using genetic information on the virus from the World Health Organization. Such data is shared with designated flu laboratories worldwide.

"We will look at the information, including its genetic makeup, and we can produce a test correspondingly," Tsang said in Hong Kong.

Dr. Malik Peiris of Hong Kong University, one of the researchers and also the professor who discovered the SARS virus, said he expected the test to be ready within a week.

"It's fairly clear cut," Peiris said. "We have done this many times with many other viruses so I don't really see this being a major problem."

Tsang said the test will be based on a standard laboratory procedure called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, which is already used to diagnose dozens of other infections. The process can find bits of genetic material that are unique to the virus, then reproduce them in large quantities for easy identification.

Scientists developing a quick test for the swine flu virus have an advantage over researchers trying to do the same with SARS when it was still a completely unknown virus, said Andrew Easton, head of biological sciences at the University of Warwick in England.

"We already know now that it's an influenza virus, so we already have information that we can use in considering new tests," said Easton, who is not involved with the project. "Developments over recent years in DNA technology mean that it's now possible to develop tests that are extremely rapid for the detection of a tremendous range of possible pathogens."

Fears of a possible swine flu pandemic have grown, prompting some countries to say they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the illness. EU health officials have urged Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico.

Tags: swine flu

essays on the blue spam

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:20:09 EDT

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A History of World Agriculture
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Essays on Food, Hunger,
and Profit

The World Food Crisis: Sources and Solutions
Fred Magdoff

An acute food crisis has struck the world in 2008. This is on top of a longer-term crisis of agriculture and food that has already left billions hungry and malnourished. In order to understand the full, dire implications of what is happening today it is necessary to look at the interaction between these short-term and long-term crises. Both crises arise primarily from the for-profit production of food, fiber, and now biofuels, and the rift between food and people that this inevitably generates.

May 2008

Healing the Rift: Metabolic Restoration in Cuban Agriculture
Rebecca Clauson

As John Bellamy Foster explained in “The Ecology of Destruction” (Monthly Review, February 2007), Marx explored the ecological contradictions of capitalist society as they were revealed in the nineteenth century with the help of the two concepts of metabolic rift and metabolic restoration. The metabolic rift describes how the logic of accumulation severs basic processes of natural reproduction leading to the deterioration of ecological sustainability. Moreover, “by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism,” Marx went on to argue, “it [capitalist production] compels its systematic restoration as a regulating law of social reproduction”—a restoration, however, that can only be fully achieved outside of capitalist relations of production.1

May 2007

Who is Threatening Our Dinner Table? The Power of Transnational Agribusiness
Byeong-Seon Yoon

In December 2005, anti-liberalization and antiglobalization protest groups around the globe gathered in Hong Kong where the Sixth World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was being held. Farmers’ groups that were part of the Hong Kong gathering took the position that agricultural trade rules should be impartial to all World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries and not determined by a handful of agriculture-exporting countries. What suddenly prompted these farmers to come together in this way over the issues of food sovereignty and the expansion of farmers’ rights?

November 2006

The Bread of Conquest
A Book Review by Sasha Lilley

Richard A. Walker, The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California (New York: The New Press, 2004), 382 pages, hardcover $27.95.

The agony and the ecstasy are intertwined in California’s countryside. Artichokes, freestone peaches, and Gravenstein apples are but a few of the vast number of crops grown in the Golden State, which were it a country, would be the sixth leading agricultural exporter in the world. For the workers whose hands create wealth out of nature, the agony has been ever-present, from the bloody repression of the 1913 Wobbly-led Wheatland hop pickers strike to the recent attempt by Southern California grocery workers to hold onto their health care and pensions.

February 2006

A Precarious Existence: The Fate
of Billions?
Fred Magdoff

The number of people living a precarious existence has been increasing in many countries of the world, with hunger all too widespread. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, with about half living in cities and half in rural areas. Between the poor living in cities and those in rural areas, a vast number of the world’s people live under very harsh conditions. It is estimated that that about half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars per day, with most of those either chronically malnourished or continually concerned with where their next meal will come from. Many have no access to clean water (1 billion), electricity (2 billion), or sanitation (2.5 billion).

February 2004

Rice Imperialism: The Agribusiness Threat to Third World Rice Production
Matthew Clement

Food is an essential human need. All cultures involved in settled agriculture have produced food and food production is basic to all culture. The seed used in agricultural cultivation is the product of thousands of years of cultural development. Most of this development of food crops over the millennia has occurred in regions that are now in the periphery of the capitalist world economy. In recent years, however, agribusiness corporations located in the rich nations of the core have attempted to patent various forms of food crops, such as basic grains, and then to monopolize these patented grain varieties, creating dependence on seeds of the agribusiness corporations. When such practices involve, as in recent years, a crop such as rice on which much of the world’s population depends for subsistence, the implications are enormous and potentially disastrous for the world’s poor.

February 2004

World Poverty, Pauperization
& Capital Accumulation
Samir Amin

A discourse on poverty and the necessity of reducing its magnitude, if not eradicating it, has become fashionable today. It is a discourse of charity, in the nineteenth-century-style, which is does not seek to understand the economic and social mechanisms that generate poverty, although the scientific and technological means to eradicate it are now available.

October 2003

Bill Moyers Journal April 3, 2009 - on bailouts of banks

Fire Is Born — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:07:59 EDT

William K. Black: CSI Bailout

April 3, 2009

"William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything.

Now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it.

And while there is no law against liars' loans, Black points out that there are, "many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent. [...] They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud."

Only the scale of the scandal is new. A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis. The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, "We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80."

>>More about the Savings and Loan Crisis

Biography William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri — Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

Black developed the concept of "control fraud" — frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management."

Published April 3, 2009. Guest photos by Robin Holland

Napolitano's plan for border infrastructure

Fire Is Born — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:23:19 EDT

Napolitano outlines plan for border infrastructure By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press Writer 24 mins ago

SAN DIEGO – The Obama administration plans to spend more than $400 million to upgrade ports of entry and surveillance technologies to help thwart drugs and arms smuggling along the U.S-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that the projects will help keep violence from spilling across the border.

"Working together at all levels, we take them on and we take them out. That is our goal," Napolitano told reporters after an aerial tour of the border area near San Diego.

From the air, Napolitano could see smugglers' paths worn into the rugged terrain of the Otay Mountains that hug the border.

In her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office two months ago, Napolitano toured a customs and border protection facility at Otay Mesa, Calif.

The spending outlined by Napolitano is part of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package approved by Congress.

Included in the border spending is $269 million to upgrade ports of entry, including San Diego's Otay Mesa — a busy crossing for trucks — Antelope Wells, N.M., and Nogales, Ariz.

The plan calls for $42 million for high-tech inspection equipment and $50 million for a high-tech surveillance systems along Arizona's border with Mexico.

Napolitano said additional cameras would be mounted at the Otay Mesa facility to record vehicle traffic heading into Mexico, a tactic expected to help cut into the smuggling of guns from the United States into Mexico.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reports that up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico can be traced to U.S. commercial sources. These weapons are increasingly higher-powered, including .50 caliber rifles and armor-piercing ammunition.

To help curb southbound arms trafficking, the Mexican government plans to begin checking more vehicles crossing from the U.S. At present, Mexico checks about 10 percent of the 230,000 vehicles that cross the border each day, according to the federal Attorney General's Office.

By weighing vehicles for unusual heaviness and tracking license plate numbers, the two government hope to catch more hidden contraband.

The United States has long weighed and checked the license plates of northbound vehicles, but not if they are southbound. Napolitano said that practice is changing with the installation of surveillance cameras at Otay Mesa and other border crossings.

The Obama administration announced last week that nearly 500 more federal agents are being deployed to the border, along with X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, both to stop the spillover of Mexico's drug violence and curb gun smuggling.

Drugs and arms smuggling and drug cartel violence are the topics of a meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Thursday. Attending are Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora and Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez-Mont.

Meanwhile, in Washington the Senate approved legislation to authorize an additional $550 million over the next five years for federal agents, investigators, and other resources to help fight Mexican drug cartels blamed for a wave of violence along the border.

Lawmakers said the money would help stem the flow of drugs northward over the Mexican border and the flow of guns and money southward into Mexico."

Tell Secretary Salazar to rescind the Bush regulations

Fire Is Born — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:36:12 EDT

Tell Secretary Salazar to
Protect Endangered Wildlife

Tell Secretary Salazar: Restore the ESA to its full strength!

Take Action Today!

Dear Friend,

Mark this date on your action calendar:
May 10.

Between now and then, you have a chance to help end one of the worst environmental assaults by former President Bush—his attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act.

On his way out of office, Bush wrote a rule that allows agencies to skip review by federal wildlife scientists on projects like road building, oil and gas leasing and logging. This scientific review is critical in making sure that these projects don't harm endangered species and their habitats.

Fortunately, President Obama signed a law that gives Interior Secretary Ken Salazar 60 days to withdraw the damaging Bush regulations. Salazar's deadline is May 10. It's your deadline, too.

Take action now by telling Secretary Salazar to use science when choosing to protect our most vulnerable creatures. Ask him to restore this key safeguard of the ESA—the commonsense requirement for independent scientific review of federal projects that could threaten endangered wildlife.

As it stands now, federal agencies involved with projects like highway, bridge, dam, and airport construction may ignore wildlife experts and determine for themselves what impact their work will have on endangered wildlife.

We can't allow our federal agencies to see no evil.

If Secretary Salazar fails to rescind the Bush regulations within this time period, the regulations stay in effect and wildlife on the brink of extinction will lose legal protections they need to survive.

The clock is ticking—we only have a few more days to tell Secretary Salazar to rescind the Bush regulations and keep precious wildlife under the protection of a strong Endangered Species Act.

Please, act now.

— Earthjustice
Because the earth needs a good lawyer

P.S. Every voice counts! Please tell a friend to take action!

Change the leaders! Sign a petition to secretary Geitner.

Fire Is Born — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:42:49 EDT

Hi!

Did you see President Obama fired GM's CEO? It's great news, but he needs to do the same thing to Bank of America's CEO. Both companies are failing, and both CEOs need to be replaced.

Click here: http://action.seiu.org/page/s/firekenlewis

It's time for the Obama Administration to show the door to CEO Ken Lewis in order for real reform to take hold at Bank of America.

Leaders must have vision and integrity. That's the premise of true capitalism.

Thanks for joining me.

March 25th Winning Healthcare For All Greenwood Senior Center

Karahpino — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:50:36 EDT

Notes taken by: lori dye e-mail: lori@pairadyes.com

David Loud - Community Liaison for Healthcare, Office of 7th District Rep Jim McDermott

John Burbank - Executive Director, Economic Opportunity Institute

Lynne Nguyen - Community Organizer, The Washington Community Action Network

David McLanahan - Physicians for a National Health Program

Bev Spears Facilitating - Legislative Director, Washington Community Action Network

David Loud:

• HR2 is a real down payment on our effort towards universal access for all americans

• Now hearings are underway with key interest groups - for example the House Ways and Means Committee - J.McDermott’s Committee

• Groups coalescing outside of Washington - HC for America Now and the Leadership Conference for American Healthcare

• HR676 - medicare for all, J. Conyers, Physicians for National Health & Labor. J.McDermott co-sponsor

• HR1200 - american health security act, J. McDermott. Drives decision making on how each state will deliver the benefit

• B.Sanders will introduce the 1st ever single-payer bill to the Senate

• Opponents maintain that a public option will result in a single-payer system

• It appears the most intense fight over healthcare this year will be over whether there will be a public option at all.

• A public option could move us in the direction of a universal solution in stages

• Advises that single-payer advocates should 1) keep pushing the merits of this approach, 2) shed light on the benefits of this solution, 3) need to achieve unity with public option to pursue common ground.

Senate approves Locke as commerce secretary

Fire Is Born — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:13:24 EDT

Senate approves Locke as commerce secretary Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:30pm EDT

By Doug Palmer

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to approve the nomination of former Washington state Governor Gary Locke to be U.S. commerce secretary, putting a Chinese-American in the job for the first time.

Locke, President Barack Obama's third nominee for the post, has promised to focus on "creating the jobs of the future" and enforcing U.S. laws to counter unfair foreign trade practices.

He takes over a sprawling department responsible for conducting the 2010 census, overseeing the nation's fisheries and managing the U.S. transition to digital television.

Locke has a reputation in Washington state for working across party lines. "I know he will continue in the same bipartisan fashion as secretary of commerce," Washington Senator Maria Cantwell said on the Senate floor.

Obama tapped Locke to head the Commerce Department post four weeks ago. The son and grandson of Chinese immigrants sailed through the confirmation process without any of the tax problems that plagued several other Obama nominees.

He was confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote. His approval filled one of the last slots in Obama's cabinet, with only Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius still awaiting confirmation as secretary of health and human services.

Locke was governor of Washington, often described as the most export-dependent U.S. state, from 1997 through the end of 2004. That capped a career in Washington state politics for the former prosecutor and state legislator.

As governor, he worked to expand trade with China for the state's wheat and apple growers as well as two of its corporate giants, Microsoft and Boeing.

"One of the most critical jobs the commerce secretary performs is finding markets for American products and technologies. He understands how important this is and he knows how to do it successfully," Washington Senator Patty Murray said.

Business groups hope that background will make Locke a key ally in the Obama cabinet. But he'll also be under pressure from labor groups to prod China on a number of trade-related concerns, including Beijing's record on workers right.

Republicans urged Locke during his confirmation hearing to be a strong voice against protectionism and also sought assurances the Commerce Department would carry out the 2010 census without political influence from the White House.

Locke told senators it would take extraordinary efforts to finish the census by the April 1, 2010 deadline, but it could be done and he would insist on accuracy.

"The census only happens once every 10 years and we need to get it right -- no exceptions, no excuses. That is why it will be run out of the Department of Commerce and by a director who will work with Congress," Locke said.

He also promised to complete the U.S. transition to digital television by the new June 12 deadline set by Congress. But too many people using analog television still do not know they will soon need a digital converter box to watch TV, Locke said.

Locke was Obama's third choice for U.S. commerce chief after New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg both withdrew their nominations.

Richardson stepped down in the face of a legal probe and Gregg, a Republican, withdrew after realizing his policy differences with Obama were too big."

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; editing by Anthony Boadle and Philip Barbara)

Sign up for UNITY MARCH ON WASHINGTON, DC. in June!

Fire Is Born — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:12:14 EDT

The Details

UNITY MARCH ON WASHINGTON, DC. (Looking Beyond the Election) (Community Service) President Obama say's "Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down". The Million Supporters March on Washington is an event to dramatize the urgency in resolving the issues that affect us all and where change is so desperately needed. This march on Washington represents a show of solidarity of the people, an appeal to and the Furtherance of our support to our President concerning the issues surrounding stimulating the economy, Our deteriorating communities and infrastructure, the war in Iraq, mortgages, the increasing number of youth violence in our communities, the soaring food prices, jobs, health care, senior and vulnerable citizens protection and reform, education etc. Please join us from state to state in organizing buses and other means of transportation to this event. Recently, Rush Limbaugh was quoted as saying the he "hopes the President fails", not to mention the thousands, perhaps millions who hold the same views. We cannot afford to waste four to eight years of petty bickering in such urgent times as now. Therefore, We are so desperately calling upon the tireless efforts from every grassroots organization, supporter, every group to join this march and began now forming committees from State to State as an effort to help maintain and strengthen grassroots network support. I AM HAPPY TO SAY THAT So far thousands have EXPRESSED INTEREST, and have expressed the need to come together to make this,"Our march" on Washington, a success. We've brought the number of support for this event to 3000. we Ultimately, want to represent 1 million + strong from every socio-economic background in order to unite, rally and join forces in relation to the common-ground that we all share; namely, the issues that affects us all, the American People. Remember, change starts from the bottom up!

Time: Saturday, July 11 9:00 AM

Host: Rev.Clyde Dunning

Contact Phone: 9082305561

Location: The Washington Monument - To the Lincoln Memorial (Washington, DC) Washington, DC 20431

Directions: Will send continual updates once enrollment increases WE NEED EVERY OBAMA SUPPORTER TO ATTEND.

Pleas reply with your email address, county, state, town, and phone for logistical purposes.

Associated Groups: 1,000,000 Americans for Obama, America 4 Obama, Barack the Youth Vote, Citizen Strategy Think Tank, Clergy For Obama, Delaware for Obama, Diversity4Obama, Educators for Obama, Elizabeth for Obama, Generation Obama-Washington, DC, Jews for Obama, Latinos 4 Obama, NCCU for Obama, News Junkies for Obama, North Jersey Grassroots (Bergen), One Million MySpace Friends for Obama/Biden'08!, Organizers for Obama, Radio & TV for Obama, Union County for Obama, NJ for Obama, Washingtonians for Obama 2008!

Signup for 'UNITY MARCH ON WASHINGTON, DC. (Looking Beyond the Election)'

3063 people have signed up to attend this event.

I'm Mad As Hell About The Pro-Alcohol Media Bias And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!

guitar46phil — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:04:04 EDT

For the past two hours MSNBC has been running a sentence every minute or two along the bottom of their broadcast "study indicates moderate drinking with friends reduces risk of stroke and heart disease." Really? Is this news or just pro-alcohol lobbying? Is this such an important newsflash that it has to be run at the veiwing public, practically subliminally, every two minutes all morning long, or is this just an example of free advertising by a media giant for it's fellow rich corporate conglomerates? What kind of message does it send to kids watching a bit of the news before heading off to school? What message does it send to hard-core alcoholics, or moderate drinkers who are on their way to becoming alcoholics? It says "Drink Alcohol With Friends, It MIGHT be GOOD for YOU!" In a word, "bullcrap." But even if "drinking with friends" is good for some people, (so are DUI's) why is this news for MSNBC? My dad always said, "If you don't understand something, look where the money is." My guess, advertising revenue is down because all of the ripp-off mortgage brokers and financial swindlers have gone belly-up, and MSNBC is courting more money from beer, wine and hard alcohol producers, Maybe this free advertising is their form of a "bonus" for a lucrative advertising contract with an alcohol corporation. I like MSNBC, but it makes me mad as hell to see them giving free advertising to the Alcohol monopoly - while they treat marijuana as if it were evil and they ignore the harmful effects our nations prohibition of marijuana cause our nation and other nations. Marijuana is a much safer recreational drug choice than alcohol, it is less addictive, and yet, there is no advertising money in it. So much for the media as being an unbiased reporter of the "news."

Winning Healthcare for All - Informational Meeting Wed 3/25

Karahpino — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:25:40 EDT

"Healthcare reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year." - President Obama speaking to the congress, Feb. 24, 2009.

Curious about the different Healthcare options being discussed today?

Wondering what President Obama’s healthcare plan entails?

Interested in supporting legislation to move America toward health care for all?

The following presenters will discuss the different healthcare policy options and answer questions from the audience.

David Loud, Rep. Jim McDermott's Community Liaison for Health Care

John Burbank, Executive Director, Economic Opportunity Institute

Lynne Nguyen, Community Organizer, The WA Community Action Network

David McLanahan, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program

Facilitator: Bev Spears, Legislative Director, WA CAN

An open mic time will be available for statements and questions from the audience.

A Caesar Salad and Dinner Roll will be provided.

Greenwood Senior Center 7pm 525 N 85th

This meeting is sponsored by the 65th Street Change Gang - A Neighborhood Manifestation of Hope and Change. For more information please contact Richard Hodgin 206-729-8901.

RENEWABLE WIND ENERGY

WEBMASTER — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:50:40 EDT

Renewable Wind Energy Notes -

If you would like to promote renewable wind energy please refer to list for wind related terms -

Clean Energy
Energy Council
Energy Program
Green Energy
Hydropower
Renewable Energy
Wave Energy
Wind Energy
Wind Power
Wind Turbines

Also see Green Energy Terms [ http://www.gweconline.com ]

Renewable Wind Energy
source: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/president/gGx5tr

take action today about Afghanistan

Fire Is Born — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:05:46 EDT

Dear Obama Blogger,

A growing number of Members of Congress are questioning troop escalation in Afghanistan. It's important that we support them!
Please contact your Representative and ask him/her to sign on to the Congressional Letter to Obama, that asks Obama to reconsider the escalation of 17,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Here's how you do it:

Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask to speak with your Member of Congress. If you don't know who your member of Congress is you can find out at this link: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt
Identify yourself as a constituent and ask that your Representative sign on to the Congressional Letter to the President that asks Obama to reconsider the escalation of 17,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. (The text of the letter and current list of signatories is below. Please feel free forward this email to your Member of Congress if their office requests more information.)
Let them know that the deadline for signatures is Friday, March 13th! Any Member of Congress may sign on to the letter by contacting Rep. Walter Jones or his staffer, John Thomas, at (202) 225-3415.
Please let us know what responses you get! You can email info@codepinkalert.org to give us a report back!

The only recognizable feature of hope is action,
the CODEPINK team
and American Conservative Defense Alliance, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Foreign Policy In Focus, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), Tom Hayden, Institute for Policy Studies, Just Foreign Policy, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, Pax Christi USA: National Catholic Peace Movement, Peace Action, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, United for Peace and Justice, U.S. Labor Against the War, Voters for Peace, Win Without War, Women's Action for New Directions

***************
Text of letter:

Dear Mr. President:

We have noted with some concern your announcement that an additional 17,000 US troops would be sent to Afghanistan. As the goals of our seven year military involvement remain troublingly unclear, we urge you to reconsider such a military escalation.

If the intent is to leave behind a stable Afghanistan capable of governing itself, this military escalation may well be counterproductive. A recent study by the Carnegie Endowment has concluded that "the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element d riving the resurgence of the Taliban."

The 2001 authorization to use military force in Afghanistan allowed military action "to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." Continuing to fight a counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan does not appear to us to be in keeping with these directives and an escalation may actually harm US security.

In a tape released in 2004, Osama bin Laden stated that al Qaedas' goal was to "bleed.. .America to the point of bankruptcy" in Afghanistan. He continued, "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note. . . ." We would do well to pay attention to these threats and to avoid falling into any such trap through escalation of our military presence in
Afghanistan.

We are also concerned that any perceived military success in Afghanistan might create pressure to increase military activity in Pakistan. This could very well lead to dangerous destabilization in the region and would increase hostility toward the United States.

Mr. President, in reviewing the past history of Afghanistan and the nations that have failed to conquer it -- Russia spent nine years in Afghanistan and lost many billions of dollars and more than 15,000 Russian soldiers-- we urge you to reconsider the decision to send an additional 17,000 troops and to resist pressure to escalate even further.

Sincerely,
Representative Neil Abercrombie (D-HI 1st)
Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD-6th)
Representative Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC 3rd)
Representative Steve Kagen (D-WI-8th)
Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH 10th)
Representative Ron E. Paul (R-TX 14th)
Representative Ed Whitfield (R-KY-1st)
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA 6th)

Call Your Representative
(202) 225-3121 to encourage them to question the troop escalation in Afghanistan!

unsubscribe
from this list

"Standing United with the People of Gaza"

Fire Is Born — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:40:17 EST

Published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by Inter Press Service

Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum

by Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week's Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday.

www.apartheidweek.org

A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy.

Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda.

The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.

U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign "as a way of bringing non- violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law."

In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid system and Israeli racism.

They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces.

During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were extremely strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South Africa's security forces as well as supplying the regime in Pretoria with weapons.(...)"

Obama will move towards legalization of marijuana.

guitar46phil — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:37:57 EST

As I read today about how bold and complicated his budget proposals are, it struck me how little information we have heard from the media on the choice of the new Drug Czar and the "drug war" under Obama in general. While the President has made it clear that he does not favor legalizing drugs, it has remained a very low priority issue.

My guess is that the last thing he wants is to be ridiculed ealry on (which is the conservative right-wing tactic regarding any pot discussion) for bringing this logical policy change into play while there are so many serious issues involved, the economy, health care, education, the wars etc...

Like a Texas Hold-em poker player with two aces he is waiting for the other players to bet and raise the "pot" and pull him into the 'war on drugs' debate, but when it is time to lay the cards out, it will be obvious to all that the drug war has to go, for the sake of the budget and the economy. His advisors will point out what Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman and conservative icon Willliam F. Buckley said - The war on drugs cannot be won and it is hugely damaging to our ECONOMY as well as to the safety and security of the citicizens of our country and other nations!

Obama is a brilliant tactician/politician as well as a great communicator, because frankly, I thought he would stop the war in Iraq first, and then stop the drug war, but it looks to me like he will take on the easiest "dumb war" we are in first.

From the time of the Big Bang Freedom is the natural state of things and Freedom can only be restrained by man's greedy desires and his artificial outside intervention. While man's collective efforts to restrain individuals from hurting other individuals or groups is a hallmark of our collective soul and civilization, that is not restraint of Freedom, it is restraint of evil. Restraint of the Freedom of an individual who is not harming others to pursue life, libery and happiness is wasted energy because the impulse and instinct for Freedom will always eventually outlast any efforts at artificial restraint. The human spirit's constant movement towards freedom and away from tyranical government will continue, as will our efforts to restrain evil. The devil is in the details of what is evil and what is just inconvenient for some.

The alcohol companies may need a bailout if pot is legalized. It is a lot cheaper to throw some seeds in the ground and watch the "weed" grow than to pay huge companies for your recreational high.

Emergency Legislation Needed, Please Help

Bev Meyers — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:21:34 EST

Please contact President Obama and your representatives in Congress ASAP

We need emergency legislation to stop large financial institutions from victimizing American citizens while Congress and the President are busy dealing with critical issues.

AT&T, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase (and Washington Mutual) credit customers are being systematically downgraded in their credit ratings and having their interest rates at least doubled with never having had a late payment or over limit charge.

Chase has told some people that if they want to continue to have a credit card, they have to agree to pay 30 percent interest. Most of us feel the need to have some credit in case of emergencies.

AT&T cancelled my 12 year card with perfect credit because I wasn't using it.

Then, Bank of America sent me a letter that they were doubling my interest rate unless I said no. I said no. They decreased my credit limit and reclassified me as having maxed out my card. I had not maxed out my credit limit.

Now Chase is sending me strange letters and making comments about letting me keep my WAMU card if my credit is good. Again, I have never had a late payment or gone over my credit limit. I pay early and more than the minimum.

I am in a distressed financial position at this time. I am living on what is left of my 401K after Bank of America made a mess of it.

Everyone I mention this to has a family member or friend who is having the same thing done to them. It is systematic. It is calculated. It is wrong.

We need your help. We need your help now. Please contact President Obama and your representatives in Congress.

Peace, Bev

Welcome to .CAN and some rules of the road...

Wayne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:59:42 EST

Hello Everybody - Please share this emial with all new members, so we all know we each have agreed to hold ourselves to our highest standards. We lead by example. Welcome to Government 2.0. "This is my gift to my country. " I am a large scale systems architect, and I saw a need and did something about filling it. "The Community Action Network is yours to use to make all our dreams come true. " Our election of President Obama was only a beginning. Lets go to work. Government 2.0 is our participatory citizens "real time" responsibility. "The Internet makes this new phase of our American Expierment (Benjamin Franklin's words) at Self Government possible." Politics changed. �Welcome to the future. The Community Action Network is a Post Partisan Cooperative of Individuals and Groups Assembled as Protected by the Second Ammendment. "Our primary tool of community defense is our vote." We are not to arm into Militia, rather assemble, and vote as we see fit to protect the health and welfare of our Communities. Residency within a Legal County is required, as is voter registration. At this time the Membership, Events, Blog posts, and all List Servers are moderated until further notice. "We have construction to do before we open up for Community Action." This is a National Network of State Networks of County Networks of All MyBO Groups within every County of our United States. "Our .CAN organization is not any political party. " We are the change we have been waiting for. Stop waiting. "Fire it up." Let me address three points: I.) Rules of Participation; II.) Communications and Administrative Structure; and III.) Processes and proceedures. I.) Rules of Participation: Barack Obama asked his initial campaign staff to make three commitments, and then welcomed them all to try what appeared impossible at the time. I repeat these now as you must commit to these in your heart now, before you begin your work, individually and collectively. 1.) Honesty. 2.) No Drama. 3.) Have Fun. Marshall Ganz tought us the three rules of Community Organizing at Camp Obama. The Obama for America Presidential Campaign graduated over 20,000 of us at those events. f you have not run thru the training please take the time and set up your own County Events. �You can find the complete training here: http://campobama.blogspot.com/ We hope to repeatedly deliver a new Camp to your groups over the Internet. Our plan is to deliver this training to all twice a year forward. Grassroots Camp 2.0 will be tooled to Government 2.0, where as the original expierence was focused on Community Organizing around an Election. �Stay tuned as this is true grasstroots triaining for your local teams. There are many policy aspects of your Governments, which you may want to change, which are not election based activites. �Regardless, Marshall gave us the three Rules of Efective Community Organizing. 4.) Respect. 5.) Empower. 6.) Include. Barack Obama asked us to study, to work at, and become the Change we were waiting for. �Core to all Barack's teaching and leadership is a concept of Empathy. When you read and re-read his books, this theme is a thread that is woven throughout his writing. So we require your best attempt at: 7.) Empathy. Membership in the .CAN Network is a privilage and not a right. Name calling, foul language, and hurtful conduct, speech and written words are good cause for two warnings by any Administrator and then removal upon any third violation. This is not a joke. Appeal to your local .CAN group at any monthly group meeting as a "Housekeeping Item" is the only point of appeal to your group. And all groups are to allow group re-entry upon apology. Sometimes a few weeks or months off, is all anyone needs to repair their attitude. Some good video on Empathy is here: Barack Obama and a New Spirit of Empathy - Rough Cut 1(1 hr 15 min)�http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6504935098489252112 � II.) Communications and Administrative Structure: We have a Network, of Networks (50 States), of Networks, (3,071 Counties), of Networks (All MyBO Group Members of All MyBO Groups in that County. We also will open a Network of all Colleges and Univers ities as stand alone .CAN Groups, which are welcome to participate as stand alone groups and elect delegates to our State Assemblies and National .CAN Congress. The Students have asked us for this, so be it. We also will open a Spanish Language set of .CAN Groups, where that language will be used. As needed - all other Language .CAN Groups are welcome to set up their own Groups and join in the Quarterly Countywide MyBO Membership Assemblies. Each MyBO County.State.CAN Group will host an all inclusive Quarterly Assembly of all MyBO Members in there County. Our Charter to set up this network required we not compete with existing groups, and include all who wanted to join us. All MyBO Groups are welcome to elect two Delegates to our Bi-Annual State MyBO Group Assemblies, and those same delegates are welcome to our Annual National MyBO Citizens Congress. Our State Umbrella Grou ps will meet in our various State Capitols. Our National Congress will meet in Washington DC. Each set of Delegates will include one voting Delegate and one Alternate. Each Group is Autonomous and Self Supporting. We are Volunteers. �Any service compensation for expenses is up to each group. The State Groups are welcome to sponsor any Delegate who may not have the resources to participate. We are inclusive and not exclusive. To be a member, any person must agree to abide to the best of their ability and capacity, to our seven core principles stated above. Each Group will maintain two or more Group Administrators and one or more Communications Directors. The Group Administrators will oversee the interface to MyBO and the other .CAN Groups. �Group Administrators will admit and remove members and are empowered to make thier indepentant decisions. The local Group Membership can override and change any arbitrary decison made between meetings. The Communications Directors will moderate the List Servers as quickly as possible. Where Groups grow to large - they may further sub devide their counties as they see fit. All Groups will meet once a month as we suggest the use of our Standardized Meeting Format. This is not a legal organizational entity at this point. Agreements as to legal form are left to the membership for future decisions. All I have done is design the structure to give to you. What you do with it is up to you. III.) Processes and proceedures: In Each Group Blog, you will find three postings which we require you keep posted on your Community Blog for all to reference: 1.) The Suggested Meeting Format for Monthly Meetings. You can archive meeti ng notes and records on Google Docs as shared files for all to see. We recommend Setting up a Group Membership Spread sheet on Google Docs as well, as we share our Names, Addresses, Phone Numbers, Email Addresses, and other public data and notes with all members in each Group. The State Group Data and Membership Directory of Elected Delegates and Officers will be maintained on Google Docs as as shared file - open to Delegates only. The National Registry of all State Delegates will be also open to all Elected Delegates - as a shared file. �Transparency is critical and we lead by example. No Delegate shall share the group data. There shall be no solicitation of contributions or commerce on any Group List Server. 2.) The Two Year Schedule, created by the founding .CAN Group in San Francisco, California on December 13, 2008. We ar e all to synch to this schedule for all our use. You can set up your List of Officers - terms and when you have your group elections on a shared Google Doc as well for the reference of your group. 3.) The Link List of All MyBO Groups in your County.State.CAN Group shall be created, posted and maintained by your County Group Adminsitrators. �We promised Chicago MyBO HQ we would create and maintain an Umbrella Protection and inclusion of all MyBO Groups with clear inter-group level of respect, empowerment, and inclusion. The Link List of All MyBO County Groups in your State shall be created, posted and maintainted by your State.CAN State Group Administrators. The Groups are open to do as they see fit within this structure and may advocate as the see fit. This is post partisan politics. The Link List of All MyBO State.CAN, and Colleges.CAN and Language.City or State.CAN Groups will be created and main tained by the USA.CAN Group Administrators. Thank you for allowing me to be of service. Paul Talcott CurrierInternet Community Organizer.Official Amercian by Birth. ( I like my Middle Name as it is thank you )

Barack Obama"s first formal interview as president with an Arabic cable TV network

Fire Is Born — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:49:43 EST

Barack Obama will do his first formal interview as president with an Arabic cable TV network, ABC News reports. The interview is set to air at 11pm EST, it reports.

As special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell heads off to the region to begin work on negotiating a cease fire between Israel and the Palestinians, President Obama has sat for his first formal TV interview with the Arabic cable TV network Al-Arabiya, ABC News has learned.

Al Arabiya is a 24-hour Arabic news channel based in Dubai that broadcasts across five continents, according to its website.

With a global network of correspondents and bureaus in 40 major cities around the world, Al Arabiya has become a leading source of Arabic-language news throughout the world.
...

Al Arabiya is part of MBC Group, the largest news and entertainment broadcaster in the Middle East, reaching an estimated 130 million Arabic-speaking people around the world.

A 2003 BBC News profile of the network says it was one of the top-rated pan-Arab stations but "angered the US" for its coverage of the violence in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld called the network openly hostile to US interests, it reports.

In August [2003], US officials strongly criticised al-Arabiya for broadcasting pictures of masked men who threatened to kill members of the US-appointed governing council.

US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker judged al-Arabiya's decision "to air the remarks of these masked terrorists to be irresponsible in the extreme".

Washington.CAN - The Next Step - Join Today

Wayne — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:57:26 EST

Hello Wonderfully Active People:It's time to move forward as one. We made it through the election and inauguration - and now we must bring our Washington together and work towards organizing county .CAN groups to work at all levels of government to achieve the Change we voted for.

You're invited to join a group on My.BarackObama.com:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/WashingtonCAN

We are writing to invite everyone to please come out and join the President's Grassroots Team to support Barack as we roll out Government 2.0.
In his recent video (http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/thefuture) Barack Announces Organizing For America.  He mentioned that in a few days you would get instructions by email.  These are the instructions.

1.  We need you to find your State.CAN group in MyBO and join these two groups:

USA.CAN

Washington.CAN

2.  Each of you must update your Personal profile on MyBO with real contact information so we can interact accordingly.

3.  This is our team building nationwide project...to form ranks.  To give you a heads up, February 7th is when the call has been put out for all CAN groups to have their first meetings across the country.  We are asking all MyBO members who want to participate in Government 2.0 to reach out to all their MyBO groups and have them join their State.CAN group as well.  At your face to face meetings across your state and in each county you will elect officers, assign issue teams by individual interests, and make plans to work across CAN groups with all others who might share that issue focus in order to join forces and see solutions implemented.   This is the plan we make in support of President Barack Obama's upcoming legislation and programs.  All issues that we are focusing on to begin with are posted at www.whitehouse.gov.

4.  Overall mandate on what we are to do:

• Organize support for legislation at all levels of government.  This includes supporting President Obama's agenda as well as organizing around state and local laws/initiatives.
• Build grassroots electoral strength at all levels by training and developing grassroots leaders to organize and serve in their communities.
• Be an organ of two-way communication between the White House and the grassroots, so that each knows and responds to the priorities of the other.
• Launch a national, grassroots-driven renewal of civic engagement, again at both the local and national levels.

Lisa Lindo
National USA.CAN Group Administrator (Community Action Networks)
Associate Producer Vote For Change Campaign
Internet Community Organizer
Economic URL: IfTheBuckStopsHereShootIt.com
Vote For Change: http://obeygiant.com/voteforchange/

WE DID IT! - WROTE ROBERT REDFORT TO ME. REDROCK WILDERNESS IS SAFE FOR NOW,

Fire Is Born — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:30:51 EST

VICTORY!
Dear Member,

It's Inauguration Day and all of us are focused on the historic proceedings in Washington. But I wanted to share a fantastic piece of environmental news because I know it will lift your spirits even more.

On Saturday night, a federal judge ruled in our favor and blocked the Bush Administration from proceeding with the lease sale of 110,000 acres of Utah's Redrock wilderness to oil and gas companies.

This is a huge victory for our nation's legacy of public lands -- and a final rebuke to the Bush Administration as it slinks out of town.

As you know, Bush's Bureau of Land Management auctioned off our Redrock wildlands on December 19, and was determined to close those transactions before the Obama Administration could take office.

But thanks to your outpouring of financial support, NRDC and our environmental partners raced to federal court and asked for a temporary restraining order.

This weekend, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina granted that restraining order, saying that "the development of energy resources...is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment."

The case will be heard later in 2009. Until that time, the government is prohibited from cashing the checks that industry issued for the contested wilderness.

Of course, we're hoping that President Obama's Interior Department will act quickly to reverse Bush's attempted giveaway of our natural heritage.

Indeed, this terrific court victory, combined with President Obama's inauguration, should herald a new era in which America strives to secure a clean energy future without destroying our birthright of public lands.

On behalf of the entire Board and staff of NRDC, I want to thank you again for your online activism, for standing with us at the critical moment, and for making this historic victory possible.

Sincerely,

Robert Redford
Trustee
Natural Resources Defense Council

The last words on Bush's legacy - from "Media Matters"

Fire Is Born — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:20:12 EST

This article is long and pedantic. But when we are through we shall be even more entititled to forgetting him, and Cheney. (I did not say "forgiving"). fib

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On Bush legacy tour, media often just along for the ride

Summary: In recent weeks, the media have repeatedly indulged President Bush and Vice President Cheney through various interview stops on their Bush legacy tour, utterly failing to push back against statements that were demonstrably false or highly disputable. Media Matters has reviewed interviews given by Bush and Cheney since the November 4 election and has identified numerous instances in which interviewers have failed to challenge false or debatable statements; these failures span a variety of issues, including Hurricane Katrina, prewar Iraq intelligence, national security, and the economy.

"Stop peddling this malignant myth!" - The true cost of Obama Inauguration: "Media Matters" disputes the numbers you've heard on TV

Fire Is Born — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:47:41 EST

In essence, where does the $160 millions idea come from?:

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"(...)

Here's why using the $160 million number and comparing it with Bush's 2005 costs represented a classic apples-and-oranges assessment: For years, the press routinely referred to the cost of presidential inaugurations by calculating how much money was spent on the swearing-in and the social activities surrounding that. The cost of the inauguration's security was virtually never factored into the final tab, as reported by the press. For instance, here's The Washington Post from January 20, 2005, addressing the Bush bash:

The $40 million does not include the cost of a web of security, including everything from 7,000 troops to volunteer police officers from far away, to some of the most sophisticated detection and protection equipment.

For decades, that represented the norm in terms of calculating inauguration costs: Federal dollars spent on security were not part of the commonly referred-to cost. (The cost of Obama's inauguration, minus the security costs? Approximately $45 million.) What's happening this year: The cost of the Obama inauguration and the cost of the security are being combined by some in order to come up with the much larger tab. Then, that number is being compared with the cost of the Bush inauguration in 2005, minus the money spent on security.

In other words, it's the unsubstantiated Obama cost of $160 million (inauguration + security) compared with the Bush cost of 42 million (inauguration, excluding security). Those are two completely different calculations being compared side-by-side, by Fox & Friends, among others, to support the phony claim that Obama's inauguration is $100 million more expensive than Bush's.(...)"

.

Fire Is Born — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:12:37 EST

Safa Joudeh a journalist living with her family in Gaza City reports for Time.

Fire Is Born — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:25:09 EST

How strong is your support for Israel's actions today? Is the recent resolution by Congress representing your belief? Call your representatives to help the peace process, no matter which side you are on. Help senator Kucinich's resolution which calls for an immediate ceasefire and unobstructed Humanitarian Aid in Gaza: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/CenterDoug/gGxFQy (quick link in comments) And thanks, O-Doug! fib

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Monday, Jan. 12, 2009

Holding Out in Gaza: Waiting for the Israelis

By Safa Joudeh / Gaza City

As Israeli tanks push deeper and deeper into the Gaza Strip from the north, south and east each night, we feel certain that come morning, Phase Three of the Israeli offensive will be upon us. Yet the Israeli military seems insistent upon teasing the population, playing a ruthless game of terror against those living in neighborhoods that are at the forefront of the incursions, which are heavily bombarded each night. Each afternoon, four families of relatives who live only five minutes away from us gather their blankets, cloths and valuables, and arrive at our front door, fearing that this will be the night. Each morning they return to their homes, thankful that, so far, only minimal damage has been done to their houses during the night. Each morning the Israeli military retreats to their original posts, on the outskirts of the neighborhoods. So far.

But others living here are not so lucky. One friend whose family and extended family live in the southern area of Gaza City told me that 10 homes have been evacuated, and 120 people have fled to a small house, also in the same Zatoun district, but further into the city. They got out just in time. Last night the 10 homes were either bulldozed or set on fire. They've lost everything, but their only aim at this moment is to stay safe and stay alive. (See pictures of Israel's assault on Gaza.)

Even those of us who haven't been forced out of our homes are living in constant fear of having to do so, in daily terror of the Israeli military's next move. Israel has infiltrated the local news channels and radio broadcast. While watching the news, the screen goes black and a message comes up for a few moments. It says something along the lines of "You will witness our wrath." We turn off the television and turn on the radio, only to hear the transmission being interrupted and another message from the Israeli military comes forth: "Leave your homes for your own safety! Gather in the center of your town! This is the IDF" [Israel Defense Forces] And even if you decide to give up both TV and radio, these messages will get to you through the phone. Almost all of the residents of the Gaza Strip have been receiving recorded messages from the IDF over the phone telling us that we will pay a high price for the actions of Palestinian fighters. There's nothing we can do. Phones are indispensable. We need to keep in touch with family and friends.

As if to make sure that terror rains down on the Gaza population, Israel has been dropping thousands of leaflets from the sky, conveying various messages. Some of these messages advertise intensified attacks against the area, claiming that weapons and munitions stores would be targeted, while others warn of new methods of fighting to come. But perhaps the most perplexing and frightening of these notes are the ones calling on the residents of the area to leave their houses, urging them to cooperate with the IDF and contact it by e-mail or phone (both provided) to report "terrorist activity."

Such notes are baffling. They assume that the resistance is an organized army with bases, weapons storage facilities and organized affiliations. Most people are confused as to who these notes refer to. The Hamas we know is a political, religious and social organization. Most of the population at large is uninvolved in that entity's military activities. (See pictures of life in Gaza under Hamas before the Israeli assault.)

The word "catastrophe" is on everyone's lips. People cannot help but recall the similar scenes from 60 years ago. But in 1948 the Israeli goal was the expulsion of the Palestinian people. This time around, it seems as though their goal is elimination.

So, where are the residents of these areas supposed to go for safety? There has already been a massive influx of people from the northern half of Gaza Strip into Gaza City, while the thousands of families in the southern and eastern areas of Rafah have left their homes to be destroyed by Israeli forces there, moving farther inward. Some people stay with relatives or friends. Almost all of the 80 apartments in my building complex are already accommodating more than one refugee family, as are most homes in the city, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelters are overflowing with people.

Many families have nowhere to go and end up staying in their homes. These people would leave if they could, but the Gaza Strip is sealed off from all directions and surrounded by the Israeli military forces. So while Israel claims to "warn" them prior to destroying their homes over their heads, in reality they are not giving them any other option. Many people feel that it would be more merciful not to give "warnings." That way, these people would not have to anticipate their imminent deaths.

Amid all this, some still have the presence of mind to act on principle. Some family friends who live in the Jabalia area, where the refugee camp is, left their home the first two days, then decided to go back at whatever cost. Part of their home has been bombed since, but they remain there with no plans of leaving. They prefer death to indignity.

Safa Joudeh is a journalist living with her family in Gaza City.

A new U.S. drug aid package has been received with a bang in Honduras.

Fire Is Born — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:34:11 EST

Honduran guard fires gun at US drug aid ceremony

Fri Jan 9, 6:11 pm ET

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – A new U.S. drug aid package has been received with a bang in Honduras.

A police officer guarding the signing ceremony accidentally fired his gun before it began, frightening the growing crowd.

No one was injured. U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens was present when the gun went off, but President Manuel Zelaya had not yet arrived.

Friday's ceremony marked Honduras' formal acceptance of the Merida Initiative aid package, which sets aside more than $1 billion in training and equipment for Mexico, Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Smugglers move at least 100 tons of cocaine through Honduran territory each year. The drugs originate in Colombia but are headed for the U.S. market.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090109/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_us_drug_aid;_ylt=AgsjAKxuaRVH33kayFeFSq.3IxIF

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Bang or no bang, I think this money could have been better spend. Drug Prohibition is a costly road to more prisons for poor people. Notably, Mel Zelaya, who happens to be a very progressive president, argued last year at the UN for decriminalizing, at least, marijuana. fib

See also:

Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron estimates that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/fib/gGxv8b

From "Anna Baltzer: Witness in Palestine"

Fire Is Born — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:25:47 EST

Click thumbnails to see more.

Checkpoints

Segregated Roads & Roadblocks

Settlements & Outposts

The Wall

Nablus Siege

Demonstrations

Olive Harvest

Uprooted Trees

Environmental Issues

Villages

Cities

Refugee Camps

Maps & Media

Peace Camps

Israeli Activists

Faces

Click thumbnails to see more.

Sign Our Open Letter to President-Elect Obama

Fire Is Born — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:06:19 EST

MAKE SURE BARACK KNOWS WHAT you THINK ABOUT IT ALL!

Fire Is Born — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:38:26 EST

Sign Our Open Letter to President-Elect Obama

We Need a Change in Israel/Palestine Policy

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on your historic election as the next President of the United States.

Last year, you pledged to “take an active role, and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of [Israeli-Palestinian] peace from the start of my Administration.” We are eager to work with you to fulfill this goal.

To do so, your Administration should break with past policies of unconditional support for Israel's illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality.

We agree with Aaron David Miller, a 25-year State Department Middle East negotiator and adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs, who wrote that “For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

To become an honest and effective broker, your Administration should:

* Insist that Israel ends its siege of the Gaza Strip. Israel has deliberately impoverished the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip and caused a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions by prohibiting the delivery of food, medicine, fuel, and electricity. Your Administration should insist on the illegality of collective punishment and support the human rights of Palestinians such as freedom of movement as a first step towards ending Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip.

* Demand a freeze in the construction of settlements and Israel's Wall in the West Bank. Israel's West Bank settlements, including those in East Jerusalem, are all illegal under international law,and the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that Israel's Wall is illegal and must be torn down. Halting this construction should be a first step toward completely dismantling the infrastructure of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and others have labeled “apartheid.”

* Hold Israel accountable for its misuse of U.S. weapons. In 2007, the United States and Israel agreed to increase military aid to Israel by 25% over the next decade, totaling $30 billion. During the Bush Administration, Israel killed more than 2,000 innocent Palestinian civilians who took no part in hostilities, oftentimes with U.S. weapons in violation of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts. Your Administration should hold Israel accountable for these violations of U.S. law and cut off military aid as required by law, rather than increase it.

* End the U.S. veto protecting Israel at the United Nations. The United States has used its veto power at the UN more than 40 times since 1972 to shield Israel from the consequences of its violations of human rights, UN resolutions, and international law. Your Administration should work with, not in opposition to, the international community so that human rights, UN resolutions, and international law are applied and enforced uniformly.

* Base a just peace on human rights, international law, and equality. Such a policy is the only way to ensure the legitimate security needs of all peoples and can only be achieved by engaging in dialog with all interested parties. A just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace includes the complete end of Israel's military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip; a resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue consistent with international law and UN resolutions, including the right of return and/or compensation; and full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. A policy denying Palestinians these internationally-guaranteed rights will only lead to yet another failed “peace process”.

Signed by,

National Organizations
1. African American Islamic Institute
2. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
3. American Jews for a Just Peace
4. Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East
5. Black Voices for Peace
6. Code Pink: Women for Peace
7. Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
8. Council for the National Interest
9. Doctors for Global Health
10. Episcopal Peace Fellowship
11. Fellowship of Reconciliation
12. Friends of Sabeel North America
13. Global Exchange
14. Grassroots International
15. Interfaith Peace-Builders
16. Middle East Children’s Alliance
17. Middle East Peace Fellowship
18. Middle East Research and Information Project
19. Muslim Student Association West
20. National Hip Hop Political Convention
21. National Lawyers Guild
22. Nonviolence International
23. Peace Action
24. Presbyterian Peace Fellowship
25. Progressive Democrats of America
26. Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East
27. United for Peace and Justice
28. US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
29. Voters for Peace
30. War Resisters League
31. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—U.S. Section

Alabama
1. Birmingham Interfaith Human Rights Committee, Birmingham
2. North Alabama Peace Network, Huntsville

Alaska
1. Alaskans for Peace and Justice, Anchorage

Arizona
1. Islamic Reform, Tucson
2. Local to Global Justice, Phoenix
3. Peacemaking Committee, Faith Presbyterian Church, Sun City
4. Women in Black—Phoenix, Phoenix
5. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Tucson Branch, Tucson

Arkansas
1. The Pagan Temple, Violet Hill

California
1. 14 Friends of Palestine, San Rafael
2. Academic Mentorship Program at UCLA, Los Angeles
3. Addicted to War, Culver City
4. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, San Diego Chapter, Encinitas
5. Americans for Democratic Action—Southern California Chapter, Studio City
6. Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice, Oakland
7. Bay Area Women in Black, Oakland
8. Beacon Presbyterian Fellowship, Oakland
9. Berkeley Institute of Biblical Archaeology and Literature (BIBAL), Rodeo
10. Coachella Valley Movement for a Democratic Society, Desert Hot Springs
11. Conversation with Connection, Los Angeles
12. Couples Center, Sebastopol
13. Crabgrass, San Francisco
14. Deep Hum Productions, Berkeley
15. Ecumenical Peace Institute, Berkeley
16. El Cerrito Green Party, Kensington
17. Friends of Deir Ibzi’a, Berkeley
18. Global Information Services, Greenbrae
19. Greenwood Earth Alliance, San Francisco
20. Holy Cross Melkite-Greek Orthodox Church, Placentia
21. International & Multicultural Education, University of San Francisco, San Francisco
22. International Imaging, Pasadena
23. Jews against Zionism, Sacramento
24. MAIZ -- Movimiento de Acion, Inspirando Servicio, San Jose
25. Middle East Needs Peace, San Jose
26. Middle East Policy Advisory Council, Oakland
27. Muslim Student Union, University of California Irvine, Corona
28. Nick Dibs for Congress, Long Beach
29. Northeast Los Angeles Radical Neighbors for Peace through Justice, Los Angeles
30. Northern California International Solidarity Movement, El Cerrito
31. Office of the Americas, Los Angeles
32. Pacifica Peace People, Pacifica
33. Parrot Software Services, Menlo Park
34. Peace Action of San Mateo County, San Mateo
35. Peace Political/Human Rights for All, Concord
36. Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto
37. Resource Center for Nonviolence, Santa Cruz
38. Sacred Music Events, Auburn
39. San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper, San Francisco
40. San Jose Peace and Justice Center, San Jose
41. September 11 Action, Danville
42. Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Nonviolence, Berkeley
43. Some of All Parts, Oakland
44. Students for Justice in Palestine-University of California Santa Barbara, Goleta
45. Students for Justice in Palestine—University of Southern California, El Monte
46. The Added Edge, Inc., Vineburg
47. Timothy Crofton Real Estate, Fremont
48. Tri-City Peace and Justice, Fremont
49. Venturans for Justice in Palestine, Ventura
50. Vista Medical Group, Colton
51. Western Regional Advocacy Program, San Francisco
52. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Berkeley/East Bay Branch, Oakland
53. Zionism Explained, Oakland

Colorado
1. Christian Peacemakers Teams of Colorado, Longmont
2. Colorado Jews for a Just Peace, Boulder
3. Colorado Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Denver
4. Friends of Sabeel—Colorado, Boulder
5. Longmont Citizens for Justice and Democracy, Longmont
6. Musical Missions of Peace, Longmont
7. Obamans for Change in the Americas, Glenwood Springs
8. Pax Christi Metro Denver, Wheat Ridge
9. Pax Christi of the Pikes Peak Region, Colorado Springs
10. Peace and Justice Task Force, Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church, Denver
11. Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Boulder
12. Strength through Peace, Fort Collins
13. Willow Way Wellness, Longmont

Connecticut
1. Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, Bridgeport
2. Greater New Haven Peace Council, New Haven
3. People of Faith CT, West Hartford
4. We Refuse to Be Enemies, New Britain

District of Columbia
1. Episcopal Peace Fellowship DC, Washington
2. House of Creative Writing, Washington
3. Malcolm X Day Committee, Washington
4. Sharing Jerusalem, USA, Washington

Florida
1. AGSPEC Enterprises Inc., Delray Beach
2. Brevard Patriots for Peace, Melbourne
3. Florida Palestine Solidarity Network, Bradenton
4. Florida Peace Action Network, Hudson
5. Hindus for Peace and Justice, West Melbourne
6. Humanists for Peace, West Palm Beach
7. Jiffi Print, Coconut Creek
8. Patriot Rebel, Santa Rosa Beach
9. Pax Christi Northeast Florida, St. Augustine
10. Society for a Just Peace in Palestine, Rollins College, Lake Mary
11. Stafford Farms, Ocala
12. Tallahassee Network for Justice and Peace, Tallahassee
13. We Are Wide Awake, Clermont
14. We Can Take It, St. Petersburg

Georgia
1. Athens for Justice in Palestine, Duluth
2. Foundation for Global Community, Atlanta
3. Free All with Truth, Decatur
4. Southern Energy Network, Athens

Hawaii
1. Center for Nonviolent Education and Action, Kurtistown
2. World Peace Society, Holualoa

Idaho
1. Alliance for Community Transformation, College of Idaho, Caldwell
2. Boise Brown Berets, Boise
3. Women in Black Boise, Boise

Illinois

1. A&H Engineering Services, Romeoville 2. Angel Power, Inc., Clarendon Hills 3. Arab Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, Oak Park 4. Club of Beitunia, Palestine of Greater Chicago, Orland Park 5. Friends of Irish Freedom, Chicago 6. Jewish Voice for Peace—Chicago Chapter, Chicago 7. Jill Brazel Photography, Evanston 8. MoraCo Imports, Chicago 9. Muslim Voters of America, Evanston 10. One Penny Consulting, Oak Park 11. Palestine Solidarity Group—Chicago, Chicago 12. Philologie, Evanston 13. Strategic Development Consulting, Chicago Indiana 1. Christians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, Indianapolis 2. Lafayette Area Peace Coalition, West Lafayette 3. Law Offices of Bryan K. Bullock, LLC, Merrillville Iowa 1. Americans and Palestinians for Peace, Muscatine 2. Iowans for a Free Palestine, Cedar Falls 3. Methodist Federation for Social Action—Iowa Chapter, Des Moines 4. People for Justice in Palestine, Coralville 5. Sabeel Iowa, Muscatine Kansas 1. Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, Fairway 2. Citizens for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land, Fairway 3. Fairmont United Church of Christ, Wichita 4. Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, Lawrence 5. Kansans for a Just Peace in the Middle East, Lawrence Kentucky 1. American Palestine Public Affairs Forum, Louisville 2. Frankfort Code Pink: Women for Peace, Frankfort 3. Louisville Committee for Peace in the Middle East, Louisville
Louisiana 1. Coalition against War and Injustice, Baton Rouge 2. New Orleans Palestine Solidarity, New Orleans 3. Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, New Orleans 4. Pax Christi New Orleans, New Orleans Maine 1. Radio Free Maine, Augusta 2. Peninsula Peace and Justice (Blue Hill Peninsula), Sedgwick Maryland 1. Baltimore-Palestine Solidarity, Baltimore 2. Baltimore Tikkun, Baltimore 3. Carlisle Peace College, Sandy Spring 4. Free from Terror, Baltimore 5. Global Consciousness Press, Inc., College Park 6. Howard County Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Columbia 7. Lagrimas 4 Justice, Beltsville 8. Lanham United Methodist Church, Lanham 9. Peace Action Montgomery, Brookeville 10. Sojourner Truth Farm School, Poolesville 11. White House Protest Corps, Silver Spring Massachusetts 1. Arlington/Lexington United for Justice with Peace, Lexington 2. Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Cambridge 3. Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council, Tisbury 4. Massachusetts Peace Action, Cambridge 5. Middle East Peace Coalition of Western Massachusetts, Northampton 6. Pax Christi Metrowest, Natick 7. Students for Justice in Palestine, Hampshire College, Amherst 8. Tawassul for Palestinian Arts and Culture, Cambridge 9. The Enviro Show, Florence 10. The Peace Abbey, Sherborne 11. The Peasants, Brighton 12. United for Justice with Peace, Cambridge Michigan 1. American Jews for a Just Peace—Detroit Chapter, Detroit 2. Ann Arbor Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, Ann Arbor 3. Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Grace Episcopal Church, Traverse City 4. Jewish Voice for Peace—Detroit Chapter, Detroit 5. Justice and Peace Task Force, Edgewood United Church of Christ, East Lansing 6. Justice and Peace Task Force, Plymouth United Church of Christ, Grand Rapids 7. Kalamazoo Women in Black, Kalamazoo 8. Michigan Chapter, US Peace Council, Detroit 9. Michigan Peace Team, Lansing 10. Middle East Task Force, Ann Arbor 11. Mid East: Just Peace, Suttons Bay 12. Palestine Israel Action Group of Ann Arbor Friends Meeting, Ann Arbor 13. Pax Christi Michigan, Lansing 14. Responsible Community Network, Port Huron 15. We Want World Peace Organization, Alpena 16. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Branch, Ann Arbor
Minnesota 1. Burnsville Peace Vigil, Burnsville 2. Eagan Peace Vigil, Eagan 3. Import Peace, St. Paul 4. Northfielders for Justice in Israel/Palestine, Northfield 5. Oles for Justice in Palestine, St. Olaf College, Northfield 6. Women against Military Madness, Minneapolis Missouri 1. Boone Tikkun, Columbia 2. Citizens for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land, Raymore 3. Council on American-Islamic Relations—St. Louis Chapter, St. Louis 4. Peace Network of the Ozarks, Battlefield 5. The American Muslim, Bridgeton 6. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—St. Louis Branch, St. Louis Nebraska 1. Pinch, Ltd., Omaha 2. Tucker Hill Farm, Norfolk Nevada 1. Reno International Workers of the World Organizing Committee, Reno

New Hampshire

1. New Hampshire Veterans for Peace, Auburn 2. Policy Watch, Manchester Community Access Media, TV23, Manchester New Jersey 1. Paterson Community Clinic, Paterson 2. Prizm Project: Global Human Rights Education for Women, Ewing 3. South Jersey Coalition for Peace and Justice, Southampton New Mexico 1. Clay Kodesh Ceremonial Arts and Learning, Albuquerque 2. Code Pink Taos, Taos 3. Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance, Albuquerque 4. Women for a Better World, Santa Fe New York 1. Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, New York 2. Arab Muslim American Federation, Brooklyn 3. Book Source Magazine, Cazenovia 4. Brooklyn for Peace, Brooklyn 5. Center for Immigrant Families, New York 6. Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine, Wainscott 7. Hudson Valley Pax Christi, Highland 8. Lackowitz Engineering, Yorktown Heights 9. Middle East Committee, WESPAC Foundation, Pleasantville 10. Middle East Crisis Response, Woodstock 11. Palestine Action Union Square East (PAUSE), New York 12. Pax Christi Long Island, East Meadow 13. Pax Christi Metro New York, New York 14. Peace Boat, New York 15. Pro-Libertad Freedom Campaign, Bronx 16. Public Policy Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, Rochester 17. Resistance Cinema, Ozone Park 18. Sang-Froid, Ltd., New York 19. Western New York Peace Center, Buffalo 20. Women for Self-Learning, Ithaca 21. Women in Black—Union Square, New York 22. Women of a Certain Age, New York 23. Women’s Circles, Red Hook/Tivoli, Tivoli North Carolina
1. Action Center for Justice, Charlotte
2. Green Resistance, Raleigh
3. Islamic Political Party of America, Charlotte
4. Jews for a Just Peace North Carolina, Durham
5. Piedmont Green Party, Pinnacel
6. P!: Post-Politics in Depth, Raleigh

Ohio
1. Cincinnati Palestinian Rights Meetup, Cincinnati
2. Congregation of St. Joseph Justice Committee, Cleveland
3. Interfaith Council for Peace in the Middle East, Lakewood
4. Oberlin College Students for a Free Palestine, Oberlin
5. Ohio Conference on Fair Trade, Columbus
6. People for Peace and Justice of Sandusky County, Ohio, Fremont
7. Tiffin Area Pax Christi, Upper Sandusky
8. Veterans for Peace, Chapter 923, Circleville
9. West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Social Action Committee, Rocky River

Oregon
1. Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, Portland
2. Collateral Repair Project, Medford
3. Corvallis-Albany Friends of Middle East Peace, Corvallis
4. Episcopal Peace Fellowship—Oregon Chapter, Portland
5. Eros Aromatics, Portland
6. Linn-Benton Chapter, Pacific Green Party, Corvallis
7. Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land—A Witness of Central Lutheran Church, Portland
8. Pacific Green Party of Oregon, Eugene
9. Pacifica Forum, Eugene
10. Portland Peaceful Response Coalition, Portland
11. Primal Digital, LLC, Portland
12. Re:Mediation, Portland
13. Vantage Point, Portland
14. Wallowa County Peace and Justice Network, Joseph
15. Writer on Call, Reedsport

Pennsylvania
1. Birthright Unplugged, Glenside
2. Bubbes and Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East, Philadelphia
3. Ecumenical Working Group for Peace in the Middle East, Gladwyne
4. Fisher’s Tax Service, Philadelphia
5. Lorne Clarke Music, Meshoppen
6. Philadelphia Area Black Radical Congress, Philadelphia
7. Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace, Philadelphia
8. Philly Poetry, Philadelphia
9. Ramallah Online, Harrisburg
10. Students for Justice in Palestine-Penn State, University Park
11. Students for Justice in Palestine—University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh
12. Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh
13. Wharton Muslim Students Network, Philadelphia
14. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Delaware County Branch, Brookhaven
15. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Philadelphia Branch, Philadelphia
16. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—Pittsburgh Branch, Pittsburgh

Rhode Island
1. Justice First Foundation, West Kingston
2. Rhode Island South County Progressive Democrats of America, Charlestown

South Carolina
1. Afrikan American Institute of Policy Studies, Greenville
2. Carolina Peace Resource Center, Columbia
3. Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project, Columbia
4. Rock Hill for Action to Organize Resistance (RHFACTOR), Rock Hill

South Dakota
1. Pax Christi Southeastern South Dakota, Sioux Falls

Tennessee
1. Knoxville Area Women in Black, Knoxville

Texas
1. Analytical View, Houston
2. Both Sides Now, Tyler
3. Free Press Houston, Houston
4. Houston Peace News, Houston
5. Instruments for Peace, Austin
6. Interfaith Community for Palestinian Rights, Austin
7. Jelani Designs & Associates, Austin
8. Justice for Palestinians, Houston
9. Law Office of Richard D. Warfield, Dallas
10. Palestinian American Federation, Allen11. Peace Action Denton, Denton
12. Radio Raw Deen, Houston
13. University of Texas Palestine Solidarity Committee, Austin

Tell U.S. Government not to support Israel military actions with our taxpayers money

Fire Is Born — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:19:29 EST

View Current Signatures - Sign the Petition

To: American citizens
The U.S. Government is supplying the state of Israel with billions of U.S. dollars in currency and weapons. Israel is using the money and weapons to violently oppress the Palestinian people.
The Mid-East Crisis is not a war. It is an act of the wealthy state of Israel forcefully and illegally subjecting the Palestinian people to live in a continual condition of oppression and violence. This violence is due to a small number of Israeli people who have illegally settled in Palestine and refuse to go back to Israel. Because of Israeli greed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are suffering and living in a state of deprivation deemed unfit for humans by International Human Rights authorities.
Palestinian people are forced to close their businesses, their children's schools , and in some areas are living as prisoners in their own homes due to Israeli imposed curfews. In addition,hundreds of acres of orchards and crops are bulldozed by the Israeli military daily and water is stolen and given to illegal Jewish settlers to fill their swimming pools. At night homes, businesses, churches, mosque and schools are destroyed by missiles.
Do not think that the Mid-East Crisis does not involve the American people. We are supplying the money that our government is giving to Israel. We are allowing our government to supply Israel with weapons that are being used to destroy people's lives and kill innocent children.
The American people have the ability to stop the violence in the Mid-East. Open your eyes, your minds and your hearts and demand that your government stop supporting Israel in the Mid-East Crisis.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned

View Current Signatures

sign, sign, sign!

Fire Is Born — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:17:27 EST

Rice, Bush, and Gaza - a very long April 2008 overview by David Rosen

Fire Is Born — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:26:46 EST

The Middle East

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, whose secret Palestinian intervention backfired in a big way. Photo illustration by Chris Mueller; left, by Debbie Hill/Sipa Press; right, by Issam Rimawi/ApaImages/Polaris; background by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters/Corbis.

The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

by David Rose April 2008

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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804?printable=true&currentPage=all

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by David Rose April 2008

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

To hear an interview with David Rose and to see documents he uncovered, click here.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”

On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”

The video reveals a bare room with white walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, where abu Dan’s father is forced to sit and listen to his son’s shrieks of pain. Afterward, abu Dan says, he and two of the others were driven to a market square. “They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground.” He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.”

Abu Dan had no way of knowing it, but his tormentors had a secret ally: the administration of President George W. Bush.

A clue comes toward the end of the video, which was found in a Fatah security building by Hamas fighters last June. Still bound and blindfolded, the prisoners are made to echo a rhythmic chant yelled by one of their captors: “By blood, by soul, we sacrifice ourselves for Muhammad Dahlan! Long live Muhammad Dahlan!”

There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah’s resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas’s national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. Dahlan insists that abu Dan was tortured without his knowledge, but the video is proof that his followers’ methods can be brutal.

Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as “a good, solid leader.” In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as “our guy.”

The United States has been involved in the affairs of the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. With the 1993 Oslo accords, the territories acquired limited autonomy, under a president, who has executive powers, and an elected parliament. Israel retains a large military presence in the West Bank, but it withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”

The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in the way of this goal: Hamas’s complete control of Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, where it seized power in a bloody coup d’état in June 2007. Almost every day, militants fire rockets from Gaza into neighboring Israeli towns, and President Abbas is powerless to stop them. His authority is limited to the West Bank.

It’s “a tough situation,” Bush admitted. “I don’t know whether you can solve it in a year or not.” What Bush neglected to mention was his own role in creating this mess.

According to Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas—whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea—won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

Preventive Security

Bush was not the first American president to form a relationship with Muhammad Dahlan. “Yes, I was close to Bill Clinton,” Dahlan says. “I met Clinton many times with [the late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat.” In the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords, Clinton sponsored a series of diplomatic meetings aimed at reaching a permanent Middle East peace, and Dahlan became the Palestinians’ negotiator on security.

As I talk to Dahlan in a five-star Cairo hotel, it’s easy to see the qualities that might make him attractive to American presidents. His appearance is immaculate, his English is serviceable, and his manner is charming and forthright. Had he been born into privilege, these qualities might not mean much. But Dahlan was born—on September 29, 1961—in the teeming squalor of Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp, and his education came mostly from the street. In 1981 he helped found Fatah’s youth movement, and he later played a leading role in the first intifada—the five-year revolt that began in 1987 against the Israeli occupation. In all, Dahlan says, he spent five years in Israeli jails.

Muhammad Dahlan at his office in Ramallah, January 2008. Photograph by Karim Ben Khelifa.

From the time of its inception as the Palestinian branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood, in late 1987, Hamas had represented a threatening challenge to Arafat’s secular Fatah party. At Oslo, Fatah made a public commitment to the search for peace, but Hamas continued to practice armed resistance. At the same time, it built an impressive base of support through schooling and social programs.

The rising tensions between the two groups first turned violent in the early 1990s—with Muhammad Dahlan playing a central role. As director of the Palestinian Authority’s most feared paramilitary force, the Preventive Security Service, Dahlan arrested some 2,000 Hamas members in 1996 in the Gaza Strip after the group launched a wave of suicide bombings. “Arafat had decided to arrest Hamas military leaders, because they were working against his interests, against the peace process, against the Israeli withdrawal, against everything,” Dahlan says. “He asked the security services to do their job, and I have done that job.”

It was not, he admits, “popular work.” For many years Hamas has said that Dahlan’s forces routinely tortured detainees. One alleged method was to sodomize prisoners with soda bottles. Dahlan says these stories are exaggerated: “Definitely there were some mistakes here and there. But no one person died in Preventive Security. Prisoners got their rights. Bear in mind that I am an ex-detainee of the Israelis’. No one was personally humiliated, and I never killed anyone the way [Hamas is] killing people on a daily basis now.” Dahlan points out that Arafat maintained a labyrinth of security services—14 in all—and says the Preventive Security Service was blamed for abuses perpetrated by other units.

Dahlan worked closely with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and he developed a warm relationship with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who stayed on under Bush until July 2004. “He’s simply a great and fair man,” Dahlan says. “I’m still in touch with him from time to time.”

“Everyone Was Against the Elections”

In a speech in the White House Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, President Bush announced that American policy in the Middle East was turning in a fundamentally new direction.

Arafat was still in power at the time, and many in the U.S. and Israel blamed him for wrecking Clinton’s micro-managed peace efforts by launching the second intifada—a renewed revolt, begun in 2000, in which more than 1,000 Israelis and 4,500 Palestinians had died. Bush said he wanted to give Palestinians the chance to choose new leaders, ones who were not “compromised by terror.” In place of Arafat’s all-powerful presidency, Bush said, “the Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body.”

Arafat died in November 2004, and Abbas, his replacement as Fatah leader, was elected president in January 2005. Elections for the Palestinian parliament, known officially as the Legislative Council, were originally set for July 2005, but later postponed by Abbas until January 2006.

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

In public, Rice tried to look on the bright side of the Hamas victory. “Unpredictability,” she said, is “the nature of big historic change.” Even as she spoke, however, the Bush administration was rapidly revising its attitude toward Palestinian democracy.

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”

The first step, taken by the Middle East diplomatic “Quartet”—the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—was to demand that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. When Hamas refused, the Quartet shut off the faucet of aid to the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of the means to pay salaries and meet its annual budget of roughly $2 billion.

Israel clamped down on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, especially into and out of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. Israel also detained 64 Hamas officials, including Legislative Council members and ministers, and even launched a military campaign into Gaza after one of its soldiers was kidnapped. Through it all, Hamas and its new government, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, proved surprisingly resilient.

Washington reacted with dismay when Abbas began holding talks with Hamas in the hope of establishing a “unity government.” On October 4, 2006, Rice traveled to Ramallah to see Abbas. They met at the Muqata, the new presidential headquarters that rose from the ruins of Arafat’s compound, which Israel had destroyed in 2002.

America’s leverage in Palestinian affairs was much stronger than it had been in Arafat’s time. Abbas had never had a strong, independent base, and he desperately needed to restore the flow of foreign aid—and, with it, his power of patronage. He also knew that he could not stand up to Hamas without Washington’s help.

At their joint press conference, Rice smiled as she expressed her nation’s “great admiration” for Abbas’s leadership. Behind closed doors, however, Rice’s tone was sharper, say officials who witnessed their meeting. Isolating Hamas just wasn’t working, she reportedly told Abbas, and America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections.

Abbas, one official says, agreed to take action within two weeks. It happened to be Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast during daylight hours. With dusk approaching, Abbas asked Rice to join him for iftar—a snack to break the fast.

Afterward, according to the official, Rice underlined her position: “So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks?”

“Maybe not two weeks. Give me a month. Let’s wait until after the Eid,” he said, referring to the three-day celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. (Abbas’s spokesman said via e-mail: “According to our records, this is incorrect.”)

Rice got into her armored S.U.V., where, the official claims, she told an American colleague, “That damned iftar has cost us another two weeks of Hamas government.”

“We Will Be There to Support You”

Weeks passed with no sign that Abbas was ready to do America’s bidding. Finally, another official was sent to Ramallah. Jake Walles, the consul general in Jerusalem, is a career foreign-service officer with many years’ experience in the Middle East. His purpose was to deliver a barely varnished ultimatum to the Palestinian president.

We know what Walles said because a copy was left behind, apparently by accident, of the “talking points” memo prepared for him by the State Department. The document has been authenticated by U.S. and Palestinian officials.

“We need to understand your plans regarding a new [Palestinian Authority] government,” Walles’s script said. “You told Secretary Rice you would be prepared to move ahead within two to four weeks of your meeting. We believe that the time has come for you to move forward quickly and decisively.”

The “talking points” memo, left behind by a State Department envoy, urging Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to confront Hamas. Enlarge this. Page 2.

The memo left no doubt as to what kind of action the U.S. was seeking: “Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: … they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform.”

Walles and Abbas both knew what to expect from Hamas if these instructions were followed: rebellion and bloodshed. For that reason, the memo states, the U.S. was already working to strengthen Fatah’s security forces. “If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically,” the script said. “We will be there to support you.”

Abbas was also encouraged to “strengthen [his] team” to include “credible figures of strong standing in the international community.” Among those the U.S. wanted brought in, says an official who knew of the policy, was Muhammad Dahlan.

On paper, the forces at Fatah’s disposal looked stronger than those of Hamas. There were some 70,000 men in the tangle of 14 Palestinian security services that Arafat had built up, at least half of those in Gaza. After the legislative elections, Hamas had expected to assume command of these forces, but Fatah maneuvered to keep them under its control. Hamas, which already had 6,000 or so irregulars in its militant al-Qassam Brigade, responded by forming the 6,000-troop Executive Force in Gaza, but that still left it with far fewer fighters than Fatah.

In reality, however, Hamas had several advantages. To begin with, Fatah’s security forces had never really recovered from Operation Defensive Shield, Israel’s massive 2002 re-invasion of the West Bank in response to the second intifada. “Most of the security apparatus had been destroyed,” says Youssef Issa, who led the Preventive Security Service under Abbas.

The irony of the blockade on foreign aid after Hamas’s legislative victory, meanwhile, was that it prevented only Fatah from paying its soldiers. “We are the ones who were not getting paid,” Issa says, “whereas they were not affected by the siege.” Ayman Daraghmeh, a Hamas Legislative Council member in the West Bank, agrees. He puts the amount of Iranian aid to Hamas in 2007 alone at $120 million. “This is only a fraction of what it should give,” he insists. In Gaza, another Hamas member tells me the number was closer to $200 million.

The result was becoming apparent: Fatah could not control Gaza’s streets—or even protect its own personnel.

At about 1:30 p.m. on September 15, 2006, Samira Tayeh sent a text message to her husband, Jad Tayeh, the director of foreign relations for the Palestinian intelligence service and a member of Fatah. “He didn’t reply,” she says. “I tried to call his mobile [phone], but it was switched off. So I called his deputy, Mahmoun, and he didn’t know where he was. That’s when I decided to go to the hospital.”

Samira, a slim, elegant 40-year-old dressed from head to toe in black, tells me the story in a Ramallah café in December 2007. Arriving at the Al Shifa hospital, “I went through the morgue door. Not for any reason—I just didn’t know the place. I saw there were all these intelligence guards there. There was one I knew. He saw me and he said, ‘Put her in the car.’ That’s when I knew something had happened to Jad.”

Tayeh had left his office in a car with four aides. Moments later, they found themselves being pursued by an S.U.V. full of armed, masked men. About 200 yards from the home of Prime Minister Haniyeh, the S.U.V. cornered the car. The masked men opened fire, killing Tayeh and all four of his colleagues.

Hamas said it had nothing to do with the murders, but Samira had reason to believe otherwise. At three a.m. on June 16, 2007, during the Gaza takeover, six Hamas gunmen forced their way into her home and fired bullets into every photo of Jad they could find. The next day, they returned and demanded the keys to the car in which he had died, claiming that it belonged to the Palestinian Authority.

Fearing for her life, she fled across the border and then into the West Bank, with only the clothes she was wearing and her passport, driver’s license, and credit card.

“Very Clever Warfare”

Fatah’s vulnerability was a source of grave concern to Dahlan. “I made a lot of activities to give Hamas the impression that we were still strong and we had the capacity to face them,” he says. “But I knew in my heart it wasn’t true.” He had no official security position at the time, but he belonged to parliament and retained the loyalty of Fatah members in Gaza. “I used my image, my power.” Dahlan says he told Abbas that “Gaza needs only a decision for Hamas to take over.” To prevent that from happening, Dahlan waged “very clever warfare” for many months.

According to several alleged victims, one of the tactics this “warfare” entailed was to kidnap and torture members of Hamas’s Executive Force. (Dahlan denies Fatah used such tactics, but admits “mistakes” were made.) Abdul Karim al-Jasser, a strapping man of 25, says he was the first such victim. “It was on October 16, still Ramadan,” he says. “I was on my way to my sister’s house for iftar. Four guys stopped me, two of them with guns. They forced me to accompany them to the home of Aman abu Jidyan,” a Fatah leader close to Dahlan. (Abu Jidyan would be killed in the June uprising.)

The first phase of torture was straightforward enough, al-Jasser says: he was stripped naked, bound, blindfolded, and beaten with wooden poles and plastic pipes. “They put a piece of cloth in my mouth to stop me screaming.” His interrogators forced him to answer contradictory accusations: one minute they said that he had collaborated with Israel, the next that he had fired Qassam rockets against it.

But the worst was yet to come. “They brought an iron bar,” al-Jasser says, his voice suddenly hesitant. We are speaking inside his home in Gaza, which is experiencing one of its frequent power outages. He points to the propane-gas lamp that lights the room. “They put the bar in the flame of a lamp like this. When it was red, they took the covering off my eyes. Then they pressed it against my skin. That was the last thing I remember.”

When he came to, he was still in the room where he had been tortured. A few hours later, the Fatah men handed him over to Hamas, and he was taken to the hospital. “I could see the shock in the eyes of the doctors who entered the room,” he says. He shows me photos of purple third-degree burns wrapped like towels around his thighs and much of his lower torso. “The doctors told me that if I had been thin, not chubby, I would have died. But I wasn’t alone. That same night that I was released, abu Jidyan’s men fired five bullets into the legs of one of my relatives. We were in the same ward in the hospital.”

Dahlan says he did not order al-Jasser’s torture: “The only order I gave was to defend ourselves. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t torture, some things that went wrong, but I did not know about this.”

The dirty war between Fatah and Hamas continued to gather momentum throughout the autumn, with both sides committing atrocities. By the end of 2006, dozens were dying each month. Some of the victims were noncombatants. In December, gunmen opened fire on the car of a Fatah intelligence official, killing his three young children and their driver.

There was still no sign that Abbas was ready to bring matters to a head by dissolving the Hamas government. Against this darkening background, the U.S. began direct security talks with Dahlan.

“He’s Our Guy”

In 2001, President Bush famously said that he had looked Russian president Vladimir Putin in the eye, gotten “a sense of his soul,” and found him to be “trustworthy.” According to three U.S. officials, Bush made a similar judgment about Dahlan when they first met, in 2003. All three officials recall hearing Bush say, “He’s our guy.”

They say this assessment was echoed by other key figures in the administration, including Rice and Assistant Secretary David Welch, the man in charge of Middle East policy at the State Department. “David Welch didn’t fundamentally care about Fatah,” one of his colleagues says. “He cared about results, and [he supported] whatever son of a bitch you had to support. Dahlan was the son of a bitch we happened to know best. He was a can-do kind of person. Dahlan was our guy.”

Avi Dichter, Israel’s internal-security minister and the former head of its Shin Bet security service, was taken aback when he heard senior American officials refer to Dahlan as “our guy.” “I thought to myself, The president of the United States is making a strange judgment here,” says Dichter.

Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, who had been appointed the U.S. security coordinator for the Palestinians in November 2005, was in no position to question the president’s judgment of Dahlan. His only prior experience with the Middle East was as director of the Iraq Survey Group, the body that looked for Saddam Hussein’s elusive weapons of mass destruction.

In November 2006, Dayton met Dahlan for the first of a long series of talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Both men were accompanied by aides. From the outset, says an official who took notes at the meeting, Dayton was pushing two overlapping agendas.

“We need to reform the Palestinian security apparatus,” Dayton said, according to the notes. “But we also need to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.”

Dahlan replied that, in the long run, Hamas could be defeated only by political means. “But if I am going to confront them,” he added, “I need substantial resources. As things stand, we do not have the capability.”

The two men agreed that they would work toward a new Palestinian security plan. The idea was to simplify the confusing web of Palestinian security forces and have Dahlan assume responsibility for all of them in the newly created role of Palestinian national-security adviser. The Americans would help supply weapons and training.

As part of the reform program, according to the official who was present at the meetings, Dayton said he wanted to disband the Preventive Security Service, which was widely known to be engaged in kidnapping and torture. At a meeting in Dayton’s Jerusalem office in early December, Dahlan ridiculed the idea. “The only institution now protecting Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is the one you want removed,” he said.

Dayton softened a little. “We want to help you,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Iran-Contra 2.0”

Under Bill Clinton, Dahlan says, commitments of security assistance “were always delivered, absolutely.” Under Bush, he was about to discover, things were different. At the end of 2006, Dayton promised an immediate package worth $86.4 million—money that, according to a U.S. document published by Reuters on January 5, 2007, would be used to “dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza.” U.S. officials even told reporters the money would be transferred “in the coming days.”

The cash never arrived. “Nothing was disbursed,” Dahlan says. “It was approved and it was in the news. But we received not a single penny.”

Any notion that the money could be transferred quickly and easily had died on Capitol Hill, where the payment was blocked by the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Its members feared that military aid to the Palestinians might end up being turned against Israel.

Dahlan did not hesitate to voice his exasperation. “I spoke to Condoleezza Rice on several occasions,” he says. “I spoke to Dayton, to the consul general, to everyone in the administration I knew. They said, ‘You have a convincing argument.’ We were sitting in Abbas’s office in Ramallah, and I explained the whole thing to Condi. And she said, ‘Yes, we have to make an effort to do this. There’s no other way.’ ” At some of these meetings, Dahlan says, Assistant Secretary Welch and Deputy National-Security Adviser Abrams were also present.

The administration went back to Congress, and a reduced, $59 million package for nonlethal aid was approved in April 2007. But as Dahlan knew, the Bush team had already spent the past months exploring alternative, covert means of getting him the funds and weapons he wanted. The reluctance of Congress meant that “you had to look for different pots, different sources of money,” says a Pentagon official.

A State Department official adds, “Those in charge of implementing the policy were saying, ‘Do whatever it takes. We have to be in a position for Fatah to defeat Hamas militarily, and only Muhammad Dahlan has the guile and the muscle to do this.’ The expectation was that this was where it would end up—with a military showdown.” There were, this official says, two “parallel programs”—the overt one, which the administration took to Congress, “and a covert one, not only to buy arms but to pay the salaries of security personnel.”

Israel and the Palestinian territories. Map by Joyce Pendola.

In essence, the program was simple. According to State Department officials, beginning in the latter part of 2006, Rice initiated several rounds of phone calls and personal meetings with leaders of four Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She asked them to bolster Fatah by providing military training and by pledging funds to buy its forces lethal weapons. The money was to be paid directly into accounts controlled by President Abbas.

The scheme bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal, in which members of Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the U.S. The money was used to fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of a congressional ban. Some of the money for the contras, like that for Fatah, was furnished by Arab allies as a result of U.S. lobbying.

But there are also important differences—starting with the fact that Congress never passed a measure expressly prohibiting the supply of aid to Fatah and Dahlan. “It was close to the margins,” says a former intelligence official with experience in covert programs. “But it probably wasn’t illegal.”

Legal or not, arms shipments soon began to take place. In late December 2006, four Egyptian trucks passed through an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza, where their contents were handed over to Fatah. These included 2,000 Egyptian-made automatic rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and two million bullets. News of the shipment leaked, and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli Cabinet member, said on Israeli radio that the guns and ammunition would give Abbas “the ability to cope with those organizations which are trying to ruin everything”—namely, Hamas.

Avi Dichter points out that all weapons shipments had to be approved by Israel, which was understandably hesitant to allow state-of-the-art arms into Gaza. “One thing’s for sure, we weren’t talking about heavy weapons,” says a State Department official. “It was small arms, light machine guns, ammunition.”

Perhaps the Israelis held the Americans back. Perhaps Elliott Abrams himself held back, unwilling to run afoul of U.S. law for a second time. One of his associates says Abrams, who declined to comment for this article, felt conflicted over the policy—torn between the disdain he felt for Dahlan and his overriding loyalty to the administration. He wasn’t the only one: “There were severe fissures among neoconservatives over this,” says Cheney’s former adviser David Wurmser. “We were ripping each other to pieces.”

During a trip to the Middle East in January 2007, Rice found it difficult to get her partners to honor their pledges. “The Arabs felt the U.S. was not serious,” one official says. “They knew that if the Americans were serious they would put their own money where their mouth was. They didn’t have faith in America’s ability to raise a real force. There was no follow-through. Paying was different than pledging, and there was no plan.”

This official estimates that the program raised “a few payments of $30 million”—most of it, as other sources agree, from the United Arab Emirates. Dahlan himself says the total was only $20 million, and confirms that “the Arabs made many more pledges than they ever paid.” Whatever the exact amount, it was not enough.

Plan B

On February 1, 2007, Dahlan took his “very clever warfare” to a new level when Fatah forces under his control stormed the Islamic University of Gaza, a Hamas stronghold, and set several buildings on fire. Hamas retaliated the next day with a wave of attacks on police stations.

Unwilling to preside over a Palestinian civil war, Abbas blinked. For weeks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had been trying to persuade him to meet with Hamas in Mecca and formally establish a national unity government. On February 6, Abbas went, taking Dahlan with him. Two days later, with Hamas no closer to recognizing Israel, a deal was struck.

Under its terms, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would remain prime minister while allowing Fatah members to occupy several important posts. When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority’s salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Once again, the Bush administration had been taken by surprise. According to a State Department official, “Condi was apoplectic.” A remarkable documentary record, revealed here for the first time, shows that the U.S. responded by redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies.

The State Department quickly drew up an alternative to the new unity government. Known as “Plan B,” its objective, according to a State Department memo that has been authenticated by an official who knew of it at the time, was to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007 The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles.”

Like the Walles ultimatum of late 2006, Plan B called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas refused to alter its attitude toward Israel. From there, Abbas could call early elections or impose an emergency government. It is unclear whether, as president, Abbas had the constitutional authority to dissolve an elected government led by a rival party, but the Americans swept that concern aside.

Security considerations were paramount, and Plan B had explicit prescriptions for dealing with them. For as long as the unity government remained in office, it was essential for Abbas to maintain “independent control of key security forces.” He must “avoid Hamas integration with these services, while eliminating the Executive Force or mitigating the challenges posed by its continued existence.”

In a clear reference to the covert aid expected from the Arabs, the memo made this recommendation for the next six to nine months: “Dahlan oversees effort in coordination with General Dayton and Arab [nations] to train and equip 15,000-man force under President Abbas’s control to establish internal law and order, stop terrorism and deter extralegal forces.”

The Bush administration’s goals for Plan B were elaborated in a document titled “An Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency.” This action plan went through several drafts and was developed by the U.S., the Palestinians, and the government of Jordan. Sources agree, however, that it originated in the State Department.

The early drafts stressed the need for bolstering Fatah’s forces in order to “deter” Hamas. The “desired outcome” was to give Abbas “the capability to take the required strategic political decisions … such as dismissing the cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet.”

The drafts called for increasing the “level and capacity” of 15,000 of Fatah’s existing security personnel while adding 4,700 troops in seven new “highly trained battalions on strong policing.” The plan also promised to arrange “specialized training abroad,” in Jordan and Egypt, and pledged to “provide the security personnel with the necessary equipment and arms to carry out their missions.”

A detailed budget put the total cost for salaries, training, and “the needed security equipment, lethal and non-lethal,” at $1.27 billion over five years. The plan states: “The costs and overall budget were developed jointly with General Dayton’s team and the Palestinian technical team for reform”—a unit established by Dahlan and led by his friend and policy aide Bassil Jaber. Jaber confirms that the document is an accurate summary of the work he and his colleagues did with Dayton. “The plan was to create a security establishment that could protect and strengthen a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel,” he says.

The final draft of the Action Plan was drawn up in Ramallah by officials of the Palestinian Authority. This version was identical to the earlier drafts in all meaningful ways but one: it presented the plan as if it had been the Palestinians’ idea. It also said the security proposals had been “approved by President Mahmoud Abbas after being discussed and agreed [to] by General Dayton’s team.”

On April 30, 2007, a portion of one early draft was leaked to a Jordanian newspaper, Al-Majd. The secret was out. From Hamas’s perspective, the Action Plan could amount to only one thing: a blueprint for a U.S.-backed Fatah coup.

“We Are Late in the Ball Game Here”

The formation of the unity government had brought a measure of calm to the Palestinian territories, but violence erupted anew after Al-Majd published its story on the Action Plan. The timing was unkind to Fatah, which, to add to its usual disadvantages, was without its security chief. Ten days earlier, Dahlan had left Gaza for Berlin, where he’d had surgery on both knees. He was due to spend the next eight weeks convalescing.

In mid-May, with Dahlan still absent, a new element was added to Gaza’s toxic mix when 500 Fatah National Security Forces recruits arrived, fresh from training in Egypt and equipped with new weapons and vehicles. “They had been on a crash course for 45 days,” Dahlan says. “The idea was that we needed them to go in dressed well, equipped well, and that might create the impression of new authority.” Their presence was immediately noticed, not only by Hamas but by staff from Western aid agencies. “They had new rifles with telescopic sights, and they were wearing black flak jackets,” says a frequent visitor from Northern Europe. “They were quite a contrast to the usual scruffy lot.”

On May 23, none other than Lieutenant General Dayton discussed the new unit in testimony before the House Middle East subcommittee. Hamas had attacked the troops as they crossed into Gaza from Egypt, Dayton said, but “these 500 young people, fresh out of basic training, were organized. They knew how to work in a coordinated fashion. Training does pay off. And the Hamas attack in the area was, likewise, repulsed.”

The troops’ arrival, Dayton said, was one of several “hopeful signs” in Gaza. Another was Dahlan’s appointment as national-security adviser. Meanwhile, he said, Hamas’s Executive Force was becoming “extremely unpopular I would say that we are kind of late in the ball game here, and we are behind, there’s two out, but we have our best clutch hitter at the plate, and the pitcher is beginning to tire on the opposing team.”

The opposing team was stronger than Dayton realized. By the end of May 2007, Hamas was mounting regular attacks of unprecedented boldness and savagery.

At an apartment in Ramallah that Abbas has set aside for wounded refugees from Gaza, I meet a former Fatah communications officer named Tariq Rafiyeh. He lies paralyzed from a bullet he took to the spine during the June coup, but his suffering began two weeks earlier. On May 31, he was on his way home with a colleague when they were stopped at a roadblock, robbed of their money and cell phones, and taken to a mosque. There, despite the building’s holy status, Hamas Executive Force members were violently interrogating Fatah detainees. “Late that night one of them said we were going to be released,” Rafiyeh recalls. “He told the guards, ‘Be hospitable, keep them warm.’ I thought that meant kill us. Instead, before letting us go they beat us badly.”

On June 7, there was another damaging leak, when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to authorize the biggest Egyptian arms shipment yet—to include dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition. A few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, the coup began in earnest.

Fatah’s Last Stand

The Hamas leadership in Gaza is adamant that the coup would not have happened if Fatah had not provoked it. Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas’s chief spokesman, says the leak in Al-Majd convinced the party that “there was a plan, approved by America, to destroy the political choice.” The arrival of the first Egyptian-trained fighters, he adds, was the “reason for the timing.” About 250 Hamas members had been killed in the first six months of 2007, Barhoum tells me. “Finally we decided to put an end to it. If we had let them stay loose in Gaza, there would have been more violence.”

“Everyone here recognizes that Dahlan was trying with American help to undermine the results of the elections,” says Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister for the Haniyeh government, who now leads Hamas’s militant wing in Gaza. “He was the one planning a coup.”

Zahar and I speak inside his home in Gaza, which was rebuilt after a 2003 Israeli air strike destroyed it, killing one of his sons. He tells me that Hamas launched its operations in June with a limited objective: “The decision was only to get rid of the Preventive Security Service. They were the ones out on every crossroads, putting anyone suspected of Hamas involvement at risk of being tortured or killed.” But when Fatah fighters inside a surrounded Preventive Security office in Jabaliya began retreating from building to building, they set off a “domino effect” that emboldened Hamas to seek broader gains.

Many armed units that were nominally loyal to Fatah did not fight at all. Some stayed neutral because they feared that, with Dahlan absent, his forces were bound to lose. “I wanted to stop the cycle of killing,” says Ibrahim abu al-Nazar, a veteran party chief. “What did Dahlan expect? Did he think the U.S. Navy was going to come to Fatah’s rescue? They promised him everything, but what did they do? But he also deceived them. He told them he was the strongman of the region. Even the Americans may now feel sad and frustrated. Their friend lost the battle.”

Others who stayed out of the fight were extremists. “Fatah is a large movement, with many schools inside it,” says Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which continue to fire rockets into Israel from Gaza. “Dahlan’s school is funded by the Americans and believes in negotiations with Israel as a strategic choice. Dahlan tried to control everything in Fatah, but there are cadres who could do a much better job. Dahlan treated us dictatorially. There was no overall Fatah decision to confront Hamas, and that’s why our guns in al-Aqsa are the cleanest. They are not corrupted by the blood of our people.”

Jaberi pauses. He spent the night before our interview awake and in hiding, fearful of Israeli air strikes. “You know,” he says, “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise.”

The fighting was over in less than five days. It began with attacks on Fatah security buildings, in and around Gaza City and in the southern town of Rafah. Fatah attempted to shell Prime Minister Haniyeh’s house, but by dusk on June 13 its forces were being routed.

Years of oppression by Dahlan and his forces were avenged as Hamas chased down stray Fatah fighters and subjected them to summary execution. At least one victim was reportedly thrown from the roof of a high-rise building. By June 16, Hamas had captured every Fatah building, as well as Abbas’s official Gaza residence. Much of Dahlan’s house, which doubled as his office, was reduced to rubble.

Fatah’s last stand, predictably enough, was made by the Preventive Security Service. The unit sustained heavy casualties, but a rump of about 100 surviving fighters eventually made it to the beach and escaped in the night by fishing boat.

At the apartment in Ramallah, the wounded struggle on. Unlike Fatah, Hamas fired exploding bullets, which are banned under the Geneva Conventions. Some of the men in the apartment were shot with these rounds 20 or 30 times, producing unimaginable injuries that required amputation. Several have lost both legs.

The coup has had other costs. Amjad Shawer, a local economist, tells me that Gaza had 400 functioning factories and workshops at the start of 2007. By December, the intensified Israeli blockade had caused 90 percent of them to close. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population is now living on less than $2 a day.

Israel, meanwhile, is no safer. The emergency pro-peace government called for in the secret Action Plan is now in office—but only in the West Bank. In Gaza, the exact thing both Israel and the U.S. Congress warned against came to pass when Hamas captured most of Fatah’s arms and ammunition—including the new Egyptian guns supplied under the covert U.S.-Arab aid program.

Now that it controls Gaza, Hamas has given free rein to militants intent on firing rockets into neighboring Israeli towns. “We are still developing our rockets; soon we shall hit the heart of Ashkelon at will,” says Jaberi, the al-Aqsa commander, referring to the Israeli city of 110,000 people 12 miles from Gaza’s border. “I assure you, the time is near when we will mount a big operation inside Israel, in Haifa or Tel Aviv.”

On January 23, Hamas blew up parts of the wall dividing Gaza from Egypt, and tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed the border. Militants had already been smuggling weapons through a network of underground tunnels, but the breach of the wall made their job much easier—and may have brought Jaberi’s threat closer to reality.

George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice continue to push the peace process, but Avi Dichter says Israel will never conclude a deal on Palestinian statehood until the Palestinians reform their entire law-enforcement system—what he calls “the chain of security.” With Hamas in control of Gaza, there appears to be no chance of that happening. “Just look at the situation,” says Dahlan. “They say there will be a final-status agreement in eight months? No way.”

“An Institutional Failure”

How could the U.S. have played Gaza so wrong? Neocon critics of the administration—who until last year were inside it—blame an old State Department vice: the rush to anoint a strongman instead of solving problems directly. This ploy has failed in places as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines, Central America, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during its war against Iran. To rely on proxies such as Muhammad Dahlan, says former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, is “an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Its author, he says, was Rice, “who, like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton.”

With few good options left, the administration now appears to be rethinking its blanket refusal to engage with Hamas. Staffers at the National Security Council and the Pentagon recently put out discreet feelers to academic experts, asking them for papers describing Hamas and its principal protagonists. “They say they won’t talk to Hamas,” says one such expert, “but in the end they’re going to have to. It’s inevitable.”

It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better—for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America’s allies in Fatah—if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse.

David Rose is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

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The Proof Is in the Paper Trail While reporting “The Gaza Bombshell,” David Rose acquired an extraordinary trove of documents showing how the U.S. pressured its Palestinian allies to take on Hamas—a strategy that proved disastrous when Hamas staged what appears to have been a pre-emptive coup in Gaza last June. Here are some of the key records he discovered. WEB EXCLUSIVE March 5, 2008 Web special: Michael Hogan interviews David Rose. var FO_hiddenPlayer = { movie:"/images/flash/media/HiddenPlayer.swf", width:"1", height:"1", majorversion:"7", build:"0", flashvars:"lcId="+MediaPlayer.getUid() }; UFO.create(FO_hiddenPlayer, "hiddenPlayer");

PLAY | PAUSE | STOP

1 These “talking points” were left behind in Ramallah by a State Department envoy. Palestinian and American officials say they formed the basis for State Department official Jake Walles’s discussions with Palestinian president and Fatah party leader Mahmoud Abbas in late October or early November 2006. According to the memo, Walles urged Abbas to dissolve the Hamas-led government if Hamas refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, promising that the U.S. and its Arab allies would strengthen Fatah’s military forces to deal with the likely backlash from Hamas.

2 “Plan B” refers to a State Department strategy that was devised after Abbas made a deal in January 2007 to form a unity government with Fatah and Hamas—much to America’s dismay. This early, two-page draft, which has been authenticated by senior State Department officials who knew of its content at the time and by Palestinians who saw it in Abbas’s office, outlines possible scenarios for Abbas to expel Hamas from power and to boost his security forces to deal with the inevitable violent fallout.

3 Plan B evolved into this “action plan for the Palestinian Presidency”—a blueprint for a full-blown coup against Abbas’s own unity government. This was one of several drafts presented by a joint American-Jordanian team. Officials who were knowledgeable at the time say it originated with the State Department. Its security appendix reveals details of the secret talks between Palestinian strongman Muhammad Dahlan and Lieutenant General Keith Dayton.

4 The final draft of the action plan adopted large sections of the previous documents wholesale, but presented the plan as if it had been conceived from the beginning by Abbas and his staff. This draft has also been authenticated by officials knowledgeable at the time. Note especially the third section, on security.

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Read this open letter to President Elect Barack Obama and sign it. Check the organizations that sponsor the letter.

Fire Is Born — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:22:04 EST

Thank you!FireIs Born

“On to Afghanistan!” - gathering a newer intelligence on the old problem. Do these indigenous tribes have “rights”?

Fire Is Born — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:16:26 EST

My post has constructed itself in response to these introductory word of the latest post by Obama Doug:

“A very interesting article. At least we're all mostly on the same page that the Rocky War is over. PEO's Interview in Time this week pinned it down. Barack wants OUT of Iraq. On to Afghanistan. He admits that our effort in Afghanistan would get Afghans, Pakistanis, Indians, Kashmirites and Iranians at the table with the USA. What Inclusion!”

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/CenterDoug/gGxKD8

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Zbigniew Brzezinski has been accused for tricking the Russians into the war in Afghanistan. Possibly the world got the end of the Cold War thanks to that military distraction. (The post Cold War infrastructure still exists – today Russia has cut off the Ukraine from its natural gas supplies. Who's next on the Russian post-Block blackmail list?). Russians bitterly lost in Afghanistan and we are often reminded that no one has ever won there, including Alexander the Great. And that was awhile ago. Brzezinski of-today advises strongly against our military engagement there, and I trust his guts on that one!. He believes we should bribe the chieftains instead.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/fib/gGxvmk/commentary

Other political annalists do concur: Here is a link to an article by Andrew J. Bacevich in NEWSWEEK from "Five leading foreign-policy experts offer their recommendations on dealing with some of the world's most difficult and pressing challenges." In the comments to this post there are further links to the relevant cultural background issues of Afghanistan, especially one on the “poppy brides”. Says Bacevich:

“(...) U.S. officials tend to assume that power in Afghanistan ought to be exercised from Kabul. Yet the real influence in Afghanistan has traditionally rested with tribal leaders and warlords. Offered the right incentives, warlords can accomplish U.S. objectives more effectively and cheaply than Western combat battalions. The basis of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate with us in keeping errorists out of their territory.(...)”

This week I was also very much illuminated by a repeat of October 30 program from Frontline. Here is a link to an excellent anonymous blog commentary about that documentary:

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http://indistinctunion.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/pbs-frontline-the-war-briefing/

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Two excerpts from that commentary:

“I’m not as concerned as some of the interviewers (e.g. Colin Kahl) that Pakistan is teetering on the edge of total collapse. They are facing some serious threats–both financial and military. But I don’t get the sense that the Pakistani Taliban want to overrun the Pakistani state. They just want to be left to rule themselves I think. They have launched a series of attacks on the Pakistani state and civilian population in response to periodic incursions by the Pakistani military into the tribal areas.”

“The Afghan Taliban at the end of the day and even a Pakistani Taliban that is not seeking to overthrow the Pakistani government are not threats to US national security. The potential of failed/hollowed out states wherein trans-national terrorists can hang out, train, and launch attacks is. [Not an existential threat unless we overreact to another terrorist attack like we did the first one--but a legitimate threat nonetheless].

But I’m not sure how those two get separated. There are rumors like Mullah Omar will split with al-Qaeda (h/t Attackerman), but others could pick up the slack (Jalalludin Haqqani, Beitullah Mehsud in North and South Waziristan respectively).

What is clear is that as long as there are foreign troops in Afghanistan there will be a jihad. As long as the Pashtuns (and their new Pashtun-reps the Taliban) are not part of the government, then the jihad will also be against the Afghan Army. As well as on the other side, the Pakistani state/army/civilians.

The tribal lands are the hardest nut to crack.”

I am glad that I found this commentary, as it well expresses my somewhat more ignorant fears and wishes about the situation. I hope that Pakistan will not get too paranoid about our very pro-India administrating of Afghanistan. And as a libertarian at heart I cannot not sympathize with the stateless or decentralized status of Afghanistan as a country. While their social practice and custom may not be to my total liking, I cannot deeply in my rational heart not wish for the tribes to prevail again, and shake off any outside powers, be it the Taliban, the drug traffickers, the corrupt central government or our newest military ambitions in that region that just does not want to become a real country-state. Much easier to win or influence. fib

(The author was fortunate to travel to India and Kashmir, in the winter of 1980 when that northern region was still open to the tourists. That stay in the winterly and tourist-less Shrinagar in a houseboat gave me a very strong sense of what Afghanistan and some of its people may be like. fib)

We Need a Change in Israel/Palestine Policy Sign this important open letter to Barack Obama now

Fire Is Born — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:07:28 EST

Tags: obame israel palestine open letter

Sign Our Open Letter to President-Elect Obama

We Need a Change in Israel/Palestine Policy

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on your historic election as the next President of the United States.

Last year, you pledged to "take an active role, and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of [Israeli-Palestinian] peace from the start of my Administration." We are eager to work with you to fulfill this goal.

We agree with Aaron David Miller, a 25-year State Department Middle East negotiator and adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs, who wrote that "For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations."

To become an honest and effective broker, your Administration should:

Tell President Elect Barack Obama we need real change in our Middle Eastern politics

Fire Is Born — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:33:46 EST

Help change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law, and equality.

Fire Is Born — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:33:17 EST

Learn More About the Current Crisis in Gaza

Fire Is Born — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:08:12 EST

Learn More About the Current Crisis in Gaza

BLOGS & NEWS ARTICLES:

We Have No Words Left
by Ali Abunimah, COMMONDREAMS, December 29, 2008
The Assault on Gaza Will Not Stop Rockets, but Could Influence The Israeli Elections
by Justin Alexander, COMMONDREAMS, December 29, 2008
Trying to 'teach Hamas a lesson' is fundamentally wrong
by Tom Segev, December 29, 2008
Israel's Shock & Awe Planned 6 Months,
The Palestine Chronicle, December 28, 2008
Most Gaza casualties were non-combatants, civilians
Press release, Al Mezan, 28 December 2008
Bombing severely reduces Oxfam’s aid programme in Gaza as humanitarian crisis looms
OXFAM, 28 December 2008
Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning'
Guest article from Ewa Jasiewicz in Gaza, Sunday, December 28, 2008
www.a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com
A diary of a Palestinian mother

VIDEOS:

PALESTINIAN Family killed in GAZA

WEBSITES:

BANTUSTANIZATION OF GAZA with a link in the comments to a high resolution map

Fire Is Born — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:06:32 EST

Going back for the Inauguration!

Bev Meyers — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:21:12 EST

I'm going back for the Inauguration! Life is good! Many of the Obama and Coordinated Campaign volunteers are going for the Inauguration. :)

Who else is going?

Bev

PS I grew up in Maryland and will be seeing friends from high school for the first time in many years. :) I'm going Jan 16th to Jan 25th.

Nato has agreed to a "conditional and graduated re-engagement" with Russia, the alliance's secretary general says.

Fire Is Born — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:16:24 EST

Nato 'to resume ties with Russia'

Nato has agreed to a "conditional and graduated re-engagement" with Russia, the alliance's secretary general says.

"Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said talks with Moscow, which were frozen over its war with Georgia in August, would resume.

The Nato-Russia Council is not being restored, but the Nato chief said lower-level talks would take place.

Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels also reiterated their support for eventual Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine.

But Nato is deeply divided on the subject, and did not offer the countries their desired membership action plan (MAP).

Moscow strongly opposes their ambitions to join the alliance, and some countries, like Germany, France and Italy, fear offering them MAPs would provoke Russia, correspondents say.

Instead, ministers encouraged Tbilisi and Kiev to pursue reforms needed to join the alliance, without any timetable for entry.

Mr De Hoop Scheffer said that all previous decisions made by Nato heads of state regarding Georgia and Ukraine still stood.

"That includes very much that they will one day be members, if they so wish of course, and important to add, when they meet Nato standards," he said.

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Brussels says it is clear that neither country will become a member any time soon, and that assistance is all Nato can offer for now.

'Problematic'

Nato ministers have not revived the Nato-Russia Council, but Mr De Hoop Scheffer said they had agreed to a resumption of lower-level dialogue.

"The Nato-Russia Council will meet on an informal basis to re-engage and to have discussions on the issues on which we will agree and, I would also like to add, on the issues on which we disagree," he said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, attending her final Nato meeting, insisted "this is not business as usual" and that she still considered Russia's action in Georgia in August to be "unacceptable".

She added: "This is not about competition and conflict and domination, but rather about co-operation in a framework in which one treats one's neighbours, even if they were once a part of the Soviet Union, as equals in the international system."

Russia's permanent representative to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, welcomed the decision and said his country was ready for dialogue.

"It is now clear that Nato has accepted the reality that has been shaped by Russia," he said.

Thousands of Russian troops are still stationed in Georgia's rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

On Tuesday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili warned the West of "grave risks of returning to business as usual" with Russia without holding it to account for its actions in Georgia.

"If the international response is not firm, Moscow will make other moves to redraw the region's map by intimidation or force," Mr Saakashvili wrote in an article in the Wall Street Journal.

'No shortcuts'

Nato was deeply divided on how to proceed following the conflict in August and had to sidestep some bruising internal debates to reach the day's decisions, correspondents say.

While the US and newer Nato members, from the former Warsaw Pact, are keen to draw Georgia and Ukraine closer, others like Germany and France are wary of antagonising Russia, a key energy supplier.

Nato also does not want Russia to think it has a veto over who joins the alliance, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt says.

The war also raised doubts among many members over whether Georgia, with its disputed territories, was ready to join the bloc or remained too volatile.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has been beset by political turbulence, with the country split on Nato membership.

Correspondents says it will be a struggle for the alliance to prevent divisions on the issue hardening into permanent fault lines."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7759833.stm

Published: 2008/12/03 00:17:02 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Chambliss "happy to become the warm-up act at his own final rallies"

Fire Is Born — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:56:19 EST

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/01/palin.chambliss/

The Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee was back on the campaign trail Monday, teaming up with Sen. Saxby Chambliss at four campaign events in Georgia, the last full day of campaigning before Tuesday's Senate runoff election in the state.

Chambliss, a freshman Republican senator from Georgia, is facing Jim Martin, a former Georgia state lawmaker.

Chambliss won a plurality of the vote three weeks ago on Election Day, but Georgia state law requires a majority -- 50 percent plus one vote.

Because of the inclusion of a third-party candidate, Chambliss fell just shy of that threshold, forcing the runoff.(...)"

OBAMA FOR WASHINGTON

WEBMASTER — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:16:06 EST

Aberdeen * Alder * Allyn * Amanda Park * American River * Anacortes * Anatone * Arlington * Ashford * Auburn * Bangor * Baring * Battle Ground * Belfair * Bellevue * Bellingham * Benton City * Beverly * Bingen * Birch Bay * Blaine * Bonney Lake * Bothell * Bow * Bremerton * Bridgeport * Brinnon * Brownsville * Burley * Burlington * Camas * Carson * Cashmere * Castle Rock * Cathlamet * Central Park * Centralia * Chehalis * Chelan * Chewelah * Chico * Chinook * Clarkston * Cle Elum * Clinton * Coles Corner * Colfax * College Place * Colville * Concrete * Conconully * Cosmopolis * Cougar * Coulee City * Coulee Dam * Coupeville * Crystal Mountain * Darrington * Davenport * Dayton * Deer Park * Deming * Des Moines * Diablo * Discovery Bay * Dishman * Eatonville * Easton * Edmonds * Elbe * Eldon * Ellensburg * Elma * Enumclaw * Ephrata * Evans * Everett * Ferndale * Forks * Fortson * Fox Island * Freeland * Garfield * George * Gig Harbor * Glacier * Glenoma * Glenwood * Gold Bar * Goldendale * Gorst * Graham * Grand Coulee * Granger * Granite Falls * Grandview * Grapeview * Greenbank * Greenwater * Hansville * Hazel * Holly * Hoodsport * Hoquiam * Humptulips * Husum * Ilwaco * Index * Indianola * Ione * Issaquah * Kalaloch * Kalama * Kelso * Kennewick * Kent * Kettle Falls * Key Center * Keyport * Kingston * Kirkland * Kittitas * Klickitat * La Conner * La Push * Lake Stevens * Langley * Leavenworth * Liberty Lake * Lilliwaup * Little Boston * Long Beach * Longview * Lummi Island * Lynden * Lynnwood * Manchester * Manson * Marblemount * Marysville * Mattawa * McCleary * Mill Creek * Moxee City * Mazama * Metaline Falls * Methow * Mineral * Moclips * Monroe * Montesano * Morton * Moses Lake * Mossyrock * Mount Baker * Mount Vernon * Naches

Two Taj Mahals: one in Agra and one in Mumbai. Time to build and time to destroy

Fire Is Born — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:49:14 EST

My commentary to a very useful post by Aasi Tahir Siddique which provides a historical background to the attacks in Mumbai yesterday:

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http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/aasitahirsiddique/gGxtyz

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A quote from the post, titled “Terrorism “roots of Rage””:

"We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.(...)"

My commentary:

Actually, the subcontinent was raided and occupied by the first Great Mughal, a Muslim Babur. who came with his small army from a very distant North only in the beginning of the 16th century (the 1500s). I am a great admirer of Babur's incredible biography and of his four descendants and followers on the throne for their incomparable cultural endeavors while they were ruling India. Who would not be?

Ironically, it was the fifth Great Mughal, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Majal, a Muslim mausoleum for his favorite wife Mum Taj Mahal. The historic hotel “Taj Mahal” in Mumbai which was attacked yesterday by Muslim militants was named after this great Muslim monument (and one of the World's seven wonders). Both buildings carry great symbolic power to all Indians, so yesterday's destruction of the historic hotel overlooking the Bay of Mumbai, is a great and unbelievable loss.

Shah Jahan's father, and Babur's grandson, Akbar the Great, built the Agra Fort in some distance from Delhi, a philosophical and architectural masterpiece that did not survive long as a working palace due to droughts of that region. The Third Great Mughal tried to establish an ecumenical peace in his kingdom, and thus married women representing all major religious faiths, building a wing for each one of them in Agra. It was only the sixth and last Great Mogul, Aurangzeb, who imprisoned his father Shah Jahan in a fort with a view of Taj Majal, and imposed a very strict and harsh Muslim rule (no music, no wine) on the Indian society, which according to some historians begin the decline of the Muslim rule. The golden rule for his five predecessors on the Indian throne was “ do not touch the religion”. The 1700s, mentioned by Tarik Jan saw the decline of the Moghul rule. There were only six “Great” Mughals.

(The author of the commentary had stayed in the historical hotel Taj Mahal twice, in 1980 in the old part and 1981 in the new tower. In the same years she visited Taj Mahal in Agra, the second time by the moonlight.)

The truth about the first Thanksgiving - American settlement

Fire Is Born — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:31:53 EST

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE ON THE BLOG AND ALL AMERICANS OUT THERE IN REAL LIFE!

THE CHANGE IS COMING!

love is already here.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

CACTUS PEARS IN SICILY

Dictator in denial: AIDS policies that killed 365 thousand people in South Africa

Fire Is Born — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:51:22 EST

AIDS policies proved deadly in South Africa

Celia W. Dugger, New York Times

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

(11-25) 17:04 PST Johannesburg -- A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.

The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki's denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of anti-retroviral drugs in treating it.

Coming in the wake of Mbeki's ouster in September after a power struggle in his party, the African National Congress, the report has reignited questions about why Mbeki, a man of great acumen, was so influenced by AIDS denialists.

And it has again caused soul-searching about why his colleagues in the party did not act earlier to challenge his resistance to broadly accepted methods of treating and preventing AIDS.

Reckoning with a legacy of such policies, Mbeki's' successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, acted on the first day of his presidency two months ago to remove the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a polarizing figure who had proposed garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as AIDS remedies.

He replaced her with Barbara Hogan, who has decisively brought South Africa - the most powerful country in a region at the epicenter of the world's AIDS pandemic - back into the mainstream.(...)"

Thanksgiving is about harmony with all American Nature

Fire Is Born — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:29:04 EST

Leading Environmental Groups Work with Obama's Team to Tackle Top Issues

Groups Provide Recommendations to Transition Team Focusing on Energy, Climate and Economy

WASHINGTON (November 25, 2008) — Nearly 30 environmental, science and conservation groups presented their top policy recommendations to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team yesterday. Representing millions of Americans, the groups provided a document laying out recommendations on key federal agencies and issues, including land, air, water, oceans and public health.

The document reflects President-elect Obama’s early indications that he will take bold measures to harness American ingenuity to solve the economic, climate and energy crises. The document demonstrates agreement with Obama’s call to increase investment in clean, renewable energy as his top priorities. Such investments would re-power America and help stabilize the economy over the long-term.

“In November, Americans made their preference clear that the federal government has a critical role to play in unleashing homegrown, innovative energy solutions that would create new jobs, reduce global warming pollution and cut our nation's dependence on oil,” the groups said in a joint statement. “We welcome this opportunity to collaborate with the transition team, and to work with President-elect Obama to move America forward and re-engage with the international community to reverse eight years of environmental neglect.”

The organizations support the establishment of a federal carbon cap-and-trade system, which would limit carbon emissions and provide incentives for companies to reduce global warming pollution. Such a system is critical to address climate change and raise revenue needed to transition to a clean energy economy, according to the groups.

The document urges the new administration to act quickly to restore scientific integrity at federal agencies. Under the Bush administration, political appointees routinely distorted and suppressed the work of federal scientists to justify administration decisions. The groups recommend that President-elect Obama should ensure that federal science agencies’ decisions will be based on science, not politics. The groups also called on the incoming administration to reinvest in America's commitment to protecting human health and the environment. Investing in clean water, clean air and conservation not only makes sound fiscal sense, it also offers the opportunity to create new jobs, boost local economies and protect America's natural heritage. During his campaign and in several early policy announcements, President-elect Obama has signaled he will lead America in a new direction on the environment, energy and climate, which is strongly supported by the environmental community.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.

AMERICAN RIVERS - CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW - CLEAN WATER ACTION- DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE - EARTHJUSTICE - ENVIRONMENT AMERICA - ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND - FRIENDS OF THE EARTH - GREENPEACE - IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE - LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS - NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY - NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION - NATIONAL TRIBAL ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL - NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION - NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS FUND - NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL - OCEANA - OCEAN CONSERVANCY - PEW ENVIRONMENT GROUP - PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - POPULATION CONNECTION - POPULATION ACTION INTERNATIONAL- RAILS-TO-TRAILS CONSERVANCY - SIERRA CLUB - THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY - THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND - UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS – WORLD WILDLIFE FUND

Washinton Post reporting: The latest from "a friend" about Hillary's SOS

Fire Is Born — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:45:36 EST

"(...) One friend said Clinton is ready to accept the job although the Obama transition team and Clinton's Senate spokesman said nothing has been finalized. But for the first time, her office officially confirmed that she is discussing the job with Obama.

"We're still in discussions, which are very much on track. Any reports beyond that are premature," said Philippe Reines, Clinton's spokesman and senior advisor.(...)"

I HOPE THE PRESIDENT ELECT WILL HAVE A QUIET WEEKEND WITH FAMILY - DESPITE ALL THOSE PHONECALLS! THEY HAVE AN ANSWERING MACHINE, DON'T THEY?

Russians and Georgians are talking, but "as individuals without identifying the side they represent."

Fire Is Born — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:06:00 EST

Georgia, Russia Conclude Talks

By VOA News
19 November 2008

Russian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Grigori Karassine and members of delegation arrive for second round of talks at UN offices in Geneva, 19 Nov 2008Russia and Georgia have wrapped up a round of talks aimed at easing tensions after a five-day war in August over Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia.

The United Nations and European Union sponsored Wednesday's eight-party talks in Geneva. Officials from South Ossetia and from the breakaway region of Abkhazia attended the meeting, along with a representative from the United States.

Officials did not say much about today's discussion. But Russia's deputy foreign minister confirmed that the parties are set to hold another round in Geneva next month.

Georgia has said it wants an international peacekeeping presence in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are now patrolled by Russian forces.

Russian forces swept into Georgia August 7, following Georgia's military effort to regain control of South Ossetia. Moscow subsequently recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Wednesday's meetings were held in two working groups, rather than in a formal plenary session. Delegates are meeting as individuals without identifying the side they represent.

Abkhazia's Deputy Foreign Minister Maxim Gvinjia was pessimistic ahead of the meeting. He said he expects results "many, many years" from now.

Georgian and Russian delegates walked out of inaugural talks in Geneva last month. Georgia objected to Russian demands that officials from South Ossetia and the other separatist region, Abkhazia, be seated at the talks.

Meanwhile, exchanges of gunfire are reported outside a Georgian village near the boundary of South Ossetia.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

The Brazilian authorities are to use a plane equipped with body-heat sensors to monitor uncontacted Indian tribes in the Amazon from a distance.

Fire Is Born — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:03:49 EST

Plane to monitor Brazilian tribes By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

The Brazilian authorities are to use a plane equipped with body-heat sensors to monitor uncontacted Indian tribes in the Amazon from a distance.

Brazil has a policy of leaving such isolated indigenous groups in peace unless it is absolutely necessary to make contact.

Officials say the plane will help them to protect remote communities without interrupting their way of life.

Some 39 isolated groups are believed to be living in the Amazon region.

In May this year the authorities released a photograph of members of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a passing plane - an image reproduced in newspapers and on websites.

Health risk

It is thought there may be more than 100 such tribes still in existence worldwide - more than half living in Latin America.

Life for these isolated communities is often precarious.

In Paraguay the campaign group Survival International says land belonging to one such tribe is being destroyed by outside developers. Similar problems have been reported in Peru.

Now the authorities in Brazil are to adopt an innovative solution to monitor uncontacted tribes.

A plane fitted with body-heat sensors and flying at high altitudes will be used to locate them.

The Brazilian agency which oversees the welfare of indigenous people, known as Funai, says it will then be able to ensure that loggers and farmers are kept out of Indian territory.

As well as the threat to their land, diseases brought by outsiders pose a major risk to the health of these remote indigenous groups.

Without the plane, the work of locating the tribes has been enormously difficult and just confirming the existence of some of these communities will be a priority for the new service.

The majority of Brazil's indigenous population has greater contact with outside society, sometimes living in reservations where agencies provide health and other support, but their lives are often blighted by poverty and other social problems

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7736779.stm

Published: 2008/11/19 01:15:59 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Asian Pacific Americans jockeying for key positions in the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Fire Is Born — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:05:10 EST

Focus on APA Appointments in Obama Administration

Nichi Bei Times,

News Report, Kenji G. Taguma,

Posted: Nov 17, 2008

newstrust_icon = 'http://newstrust.net/images/ntbuttons/newstrust_review_link.gif';

"SAN FRANCISCO -- While the mad dash to the finish line ended with the election of the nation’s first African American president, a new race has begun, with perhaps equal if not more flurry: Asian Pacific Americans jockeying for key positions in the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

The Nichi Bei Times asked attorney Dale Minami, a member of Obama’s Asian American Pacific Islander Executive Committee, about his thoughts on potential Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) in an Obama administration.

Also providing insight was Congressman Mike Honda (D-San Jose), who as chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee is arguably the most influential Asian American politician in the country.

“I suspect there’s about close to a couple of thousand appointments that are available,” said Honda, who added that over the past couple of months, Asian Americans across the country have been asked to prepare their applications.

In regards to Cabinet-level appointments, Minami suggested a number of APAs who could lead certain departments: Honda (D-San Jose) at the Department of Education, former San Jose Congressman and Presidential Cabinet veteran Norman Mineta at a variety of posts, Illinois Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth at the head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, former Washington Governor Gary Locke as attorney general, U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki or Major General Antonio Taguba as head of the Department of Defense, and longtime U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye as ambassador to Japan.(...)"

Mark Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, has declared victory.

Fire Is Born — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:09:04 EST

November 19, 2008 Democrats Gain as Stevens Loses His Senate Race By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, convicted last month on federal ethics charges, lost his bid for a seventh term as final ballots were counted on Tuesday, giving Democrats at least 58 seats in the Senate for the first years of the Obama administration.

With an estimated 2,500 votes still outstanding and other election certification steps still to take place, Mark Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, had taken a lead of 3,724 votes out of more than 315,000 cast, and he declared victory.

“I am humbled and honored to serve Alaska in the United States Senate,” Mr. Begich said. “It’s been an incredible journey getting to this point, and I appreciate the support and commitment of the thousands of Alaskans who have brought us to this day. I can’t wait to get to work fighting for Alaskan families.”

Mr. Stevens did not immediately concede the race. He could request a recount, but he would have to pay for it if the current vote margins hold.

Mr. Begich’s victory will end the career of Mr. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator ever and a pivotal figure in the history of his state after it initially appeared that he would triumph despite his criminal conviction just days before the election.

The defeat came on Mr. Stevens’s 85th birthday, at the end of a day in which he avoided expulsion from the ranks of Senate Republicans as his colleagues awaited the final results.

“I wouldn’t wish what I am going through on anyone, my worst enemy,” Mr. Stevens said Tuesday morning in the Capitol. Mr. Stevens’s defeat will strengthen a majority that Democrats sought to bolster Tuesday by allowing Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, to retain his high-profile committee chairmanship.

Instead, Democrats dropped Mr. Lieberman from another panel, delivering a mild rebuke for his strong support of Senator John McCain and other Republicans in this month’s elections.

The decision was part of the postelection Congressional tableaux as senators of both parties re-elected their current leadership teams for the first two years of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration. House Democrats met to make Representative Nancy Pelosi of California their candidate for speaker and essentially kept their leadership intact as well, with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland remaining majority leader.

Aware of the legislative battles ahead, Senate Democrats said they wanted to adhere to Mr. Obama’s call for reconciliation and leniency for Mr. Lieberman.

But a pragmatic dynamic was at work as well. Having added seven new senators to their side, Democrats want to avoid driving Mr. Lieberman into the Republican fold. Even though they remain short of the 60 needed to cut off filibusters, the Democrats are aiming to keep their majority as large as possible next year when, for the first time since 1994, they have control of Congress and the White House. Two other Senate seats, in Minnesota and Georgia, have yet to be decided.

“We have got some big issues here, and we need all hands on deck,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who had pushed to keep the retribution against his home-state colleague to a minimum.

Democrats voted 42 to 13 to let Mr. Lieberman stay at the helm of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs while removing him from the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he led a subcommittee. The formal resolution before the Democrats, considered in what was described as an emotional meeting in the Old Senate Chamber of the Capitol, also declared that the Democratic caucus “rejects and disapproves of Senator Lieberman’s statements against Senator Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign.”

Lawmakers who attended the session said that Mr. Lieberman openly discussed the political and personal hurt he had experienced when many of his colleagues campaigned against him after he lost a Democratic Senate primary in 2006 before winning re-election as an independent. After the vote, he expressed some remorse for his campaign comments but noted that the resolution did not chastise him directly for backing Mr. McCain, who returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to resume life as a senator.

Mr. Lieberman, who only eight years ago was the party’s nominee for vice president, said he could have made some statements “more clearly.” He added: “And there are some that I made that I wish I had not made at all. And obviously in the heat of campaigns, that happens to all of us. But I regret that. And now it’s time to move on.”

Some Democrats remained angry that Mr. Lieberman had been so outspoken not only in his support of Mr. McCain, but also in his campaigning for Republicans like Senator Norm Coleman, who continued to hold a narrow lead in his re-election bid in Minnesota. They said that stripping the chairmanship was only fitting.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who aligns with Democrats, said allowing Mr. Lieberman to run the committee was a “slap in the face” to Americans who “worked day and night to get Barack Obama elected and to move our country in a very new direction.”

“Having said that, there is an enormous amount of work that is facing the Senate and we all have to move on and work together to address these issues,” Mr. Sanders said.

The reluctance to move forcefully against their colleagues illustrates again how cautious senators are when it comes to punishing their own. After being thwarted repeatedly by Republican resistance in the past two years, Senate Democrats were unwilling to lose the support of Mr. Lieberman on most domestic policy issues, particularly after Mr. Obama had urged that Mr. Lieberman be allowed to remain in the Democratic fold.

The resolution noted that Mr. Lieberman’s vote gave Democrats the majority in 2007 and that he voted almost 100 percent of the time with the party on important procedural issues.

“I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who will remain majority leader, about Mr. Lieberman’s criticism of Mr. Obama. “But I also believe that if you look at the problems we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying, ‘Boy, did we get even’? I am very satisfied with what we did today.”

The decision touched off attacks on the Democrats by liberal and progressive groups and on the Internet, where critics accused Democrats of weakness in their posture against Mr. Lieberman, whom they have branded a traitor to Democrats.

But senators pointed to statements by the Obama campaign in support of Mr. Lieberman as justification for their decision. “The Senate Democratic Caucus has decided that if President-elect Barack Obama can forgive, so can we,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.

Despite a second round of Republican losses, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was returned as Republican leader.

Senate Republicans also easily disposed of a call by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina to impose term limits on the Republican leader and members of the Appropriations Committee, overwhelmingly rejecting the proposals.

In the House, Democrats gathered for the leadership elections and bid farewell to Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is relinquishing his No. 4 post in the party hierarchy to become chief of staff to Mr. Obama.

Those in the closed meeting said Mr. Emanuel became emotional and told his colleagues it was “not an easy decision for me” to give up his House seat.

“I want you to know, I’ve got your back,” Mr. Emanuel said, according to one account. “I’ll feel better knowing that you’ve got my back.”

William Yardley contributed reporting from Seattle.

"How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales "

Fire Is Born — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:36:22 EST

How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales

Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia

By ROGER BURBACH

"Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg because “he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia.”
Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.(...)"

Call Georgia tomorrow - see link on your page

Fire Is Born — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:24:05 EST

(...) The race [in Alaska] is one of three in the Senate -- including Georgia and Minnesota -- still undecided two weeks after the election. If the Democrats win all three, they would secure the 60 votes required under Senate rules to overcome filibusters, a parliamentary procedure that can kill legislation.(...)

Moderators, it is time for CHANGE!

Fire Is Born — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:02:54 EST

Moderators!

Are you for CHANGE?

Please remove this blogger now!

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/robhill

He is impostering for an Obama suporter. - the real Obama Guy, our Friend.

enough is enough!

We the people are asking.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Strike Early; Think Big?" Do NOT sign this petition!

Fire Is Born — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:12:03 EST

Or, if you do, tell them in a letter what you think about Palin 2012! I am sure you got some notes still ready.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/palin-for-president-2012

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Quick link in the comments.

One Week Later, the MyBO Community Continues by Christopher HassThursday November 13 2008

Fire Is Born — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:28:47 EST

thank you Chris Hass!!! As for new our activism, check C.R.'s blog today who suggests how to support our soldiers in Iraq.

One Week Later, the MyBO Community Continues

by Christopher HassThursday November 13 2008 10:48:22 AM

On the night of November 4th a long, collective journey culminated with Barack Obama being declared the president-elect. It was an historic event, and one that would not have been possible without a grassroots network of supporters that spanned the country.

For many people, their first real connection to that network was here on this site, either through the blog or through the groups and events on My.BarackObama.com. Together, these supporters used the online tools to communicate, raise money, make phone calls, and organize. More than 1.5 million users formed over 30,000 groups and created over 200,000 offline events, culminating in a massive Election Day get out the vote effort unlike any that had ever been seen before.

One week later, even as offices across the country are being closed down and cleaned out, the MyBO group listservs are still active, the comments on the blog remain lively, and offline events continue to spring up on My.BarackObama. As Dan in Phoenix, Arizona explained:

[MyBO] is just too dynamic and has been truly home to so many people over the past 22 months that it just couldn't die. Kind of reminds me of the famous line from Frankenstein, "It's Alive!"

One week later, MyBO is in fact very much alive and well.

In addition to the countless inauguration parties and election victory celebrations being planned across the country, a number of people have been inspired by the call for community service and volunteerism that has been a part of Barack's message from the beginning.

In Seattle, a small group is meeting this Saturday for a community service project to clean up Rainier Valley.

In Los Angeles, Blue Star Family Members for Obama are planning to attend as a group a benefit concert for the USO.

In New Orleans, grassroots supporters are organizing a "Fathers Meeting" to discuss how men in their community can become more active in the lives of their families.

In Florida, a group is using MyBO to promote pet adoption, inviting people to the Alachua County Animal Service's "Adoptahon" and Open House, and a supporter in Highland Park, Illinois is using MyBO to organize a new book club.

As Chris Hughes explained last week:

What has made My.BarackObama unique hasn't been the technology itself, but the people who used the online tools to coordinate offline action. My.BarackObama has always been focused on using online tools to make real-world connections between people who are hungry to change our politics in this country.

You can still find events and groups near you, or reach out in your community and create you own. The tools here are your tools now -- they always have been.

212 Comment(s)Permalink Email to a friendShare: Digg Facebook Newsvine Stumble del.icio.us

In the news today: all there is from ABC's Note

Fire Is Born — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:47:59 EST

The Note: All In? Obama Puts Capital on the Line in 2nd Bailout Bill By RICK KLEIN with HOPE DITTO

Nov. 12, 2008—

"Whatever the outcome of the clash between the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress over a bailout package for Detroit, know that President-elect Barack Obama placed himself at this table -- and promptly tossed some valuable chips into the pot.(...)"

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3105288

If you write well, don't mind getting up early, and have some familiarity with web publishing, send a cover letter and resume to...

Fire Is Born — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:38:22 EST

"ABC News Political Unit Seeking Interns: The ABC News Political Unit is now seeking full-time spring interns in Washington, D.C. The paid internship begins Monday, Jan. 7, 2009 and runs through Friday, May 23, 2009.

Political Unit interns attend political events and collaborate on stories for the politics page of ABCNews.com, including The Note. They also help us by conducting research, maintaining contact lists, and building the next day's political schedule.

In order to apply, you MUST be either a graduate student or an undergraduate student who has completed his or her first year of college. The internship is NOT open to recent graduates.

You also must be able to work eight hours per day, starting early, Monday through Friday.

If you write well, don't mind getting up early, and have some familiarity with web publishing, send a cover letter and resume to teddy.davis@abc.com as soon as possible, with the subject line: "INTERN" in all caps.

Please indicate in your cover letter the dates of your availability."

HEY, O-FRIENDS, START GETTING UP EARLIER AND LET'S GET SOME INFLUENCE IN ABC PRESS. WOULD NOT HURT, WOULD IT? FIB

Russian military ships on the way to Venezuela for navy exercises - En Espan'ol

Fire Is Born — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:55:16 EST

Crucero nuclear "Pedro el Grande" cruza estrecho de Gibraltar rumbo a Venezuela

La flotilla rusa partió a finales de septiembre de su base de Severomorsk, en el mar de Barents
(Reuters)

02:47 PM Moscú.- El crucero ruso de propulsión nuclear "Pedro el Grande" cruzó hoy el estrecho de Gibraltar y se dirige a las costas de Venezuela, donde participará a finales de mes en las primeras maniobras navales ruso-venezolanas, informó el ministerio de Defensa ruso.

Rumbo al Caribe también se encuentra el destructor Almirante Chabanenko, según fuentes ministeriales citadas por la agencia Interfax, reseñó Efe.

En esas maniobras, que coincidirán con la primera visita a Venezuela del presidente ruso, Dmitri Medvédev, participarán también un buque cisterna y otro de apoyo.

La flotilla rusa partió a finales de septiembre de su base de Severomorsk, en el mar de Barents, y está previsto que llegue a Venezuela tras recorrer 15.000 millas y hacer escala en Libia.

El Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia informó de que esos buques de la Flota rusa del Norte no llevan armas nucleares a bordo.

En la última visita a Rusia del presidente Hugo Chávez el primer ministro ruso, Vladímir Putin, le prometió nuevas partidas de armamento, para lo que el Kremlin concederá a Caracas un crédito de 1.000 millones de dólares.

Venezuela es el principal cliente de la industria militar rusa en América Latina, con varios miles de millones de dólares en contratos.

http://www.eluniversal.com/2008/11/11/pol_ava_crucero-nuclear-ped_11A2122579.shtml

READ IN ENGLISH ABOUT COLOMBIAN REACTIONS TO THE MANOUVERS:

Colombia dismisses "tensions" with Venezuela for naval exercises in the Caribbean

Fire Is Born — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:24:57 EST

Colombia dismisses "tensions" with Venezuela for naval exercises in the Caribbean

According to Bermúdez, Russia and Venezuela clarified that their exercises will not be on the Colombian border (Photo: John Vizcaino/Reuters)

Western Hemisphere
Foreign Minister of Colombia Jaime Bermúdez denied that there will be diplomatic tensions with Venezuela due to the military maneuvers in the Caribbean between the South American country and Russia. Bermúdez said that, if necessary, the issue could be discussed by the South American Council of Defense, according to statements released on Monday.

"We have spoken with Russian and Venezuelan officials on the issue and both have made clear that such maneuvers will not take place in waters bordering Colombia. The situation is clear and definite. If it were any regional concerns on the issue, the matter would be brought to the South American Council of Defense," Bermúdez told Colombian newspaper "El Tiempo," DPA reported.

Previously, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had said that his country was "not indifferent" to the naval exercises.

A fleet of Russian vessels set sail in September from Severomorsk naval base for the Caribbean to take part in the exercises ending November.

The fleet is composed of the main warship, nuclear-powered missile cruiser "Peter the Great;" a submarine destroyer and two escort ships, as part of the first naval deployment of such an extent in Western waters ever seen since the Cold War.

No "noise" during the transition period between both US Presidents - says Hugo Chavez (bilingual English and Spanish)

Fire Is Born — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:08:32 EST

Good! there is enough going on already in the World without some fake buzz. FIB

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

"Chávez announces removal of Venezuelan consul in Houston

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said that the situation had been clarified and solved

"Our lead diplomat in Houston moved the consulate without approval from the US authorities or Venezuela's Embassy in Washington" (Photo: Handout)

Politics
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez denied on Monday night the expulsion of a group of officials from the Venezuelan Consulate in Houston, United States, and said that his former consul in that US city had been stripped out of his post for moving the consulate without permission from the authorities of both countries.

"Our lead diplomat in Houston moved the consulate without approval from the US authorities or Venezuela's Embassy in Washington," Chávez said explaining the removal of the Venezuelan official.

"We have to accept that there was a mistake. There was no coordination with the authorities of that country. Then, all this has been used by some Venezuelans here, particularly some media and, of course, by some sectors in the United States," Chávez said.

Chávez made the comments in a live TV broadcast from the Palace of Miraflores (the seat of the Venezuelan government), where he met with regional leaders and candidates of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said that the situation had been clarified and solved "from the administrative and diplomatic point of view." He said that the incident had been manipulated to generate some "noise" during the transition period between both US Presidents.

With regard to the statements of deputy spokesman of the US State Department Robert Wood, Maduro said: "We will evaluate them. We will talk on Tuesday with State Department officials who addressed the issue."

On Monday, Wood told reporters that "in August the Venezuelan Government had requested authorization to lease some office space for the consulate. And prior to getting that authorization from the (US State) Department, they went ahead and leased this property anyway, which was a violation of (...) the Foreign Relations Act. And so there have been a number of steps that have transpired since."

When asked whether the consulate had been closed, Wood replied, "I don't know that there was necessarily a formal closure yet.""

Translated by Gerardo Cárdenas

http://english.eluniversal.com/2008/11/11/en_pol_esp_chavez-announces-rem_11A2122299.shtml

LEA EN ESPAN'OL :

Violence in Nicaragua after municipal elections (in Spanish)

Fire Is Born — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:38:54 EST

Two persons are reported dead in Managua during protests lead by the candidate of the opposition party Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) Monteallegre who questions victory of Alexis Argüello, a sandinista candidate for mayor of Managua, and a former boxing champion.

http://www.analitica.com/va/sintesis/internacionales/8492329.asp

BBC on President Elect's team transition site change.gov and useful warnings about current "conniving cybercriminals"

Fire Is Born — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:21:22 EST

Web helps Obama with transition

Barack Obama is turning to the web as he prepares to become US president.

Via a website called Change.gov, the Obama campaign plans to provide a guide to the transition process.

The site also solicits suggestions from US citizens about their vision for America, and lets them apply for a post with the new administration.

On its transition website, the US governmental watchdog has listed the 13 most urgent issues that will soon confront President-elect Obama.

Job ads

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed oversight of US financial institutions and markets, and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the most pressing issues.

The creation of the Change.gov website is seen by many as making good on Mr Obama's stated aim to make the process of governing more transparent.

A blog on the site will document the transition process, and elsewhere it plans to provide biographies and background on the people Mr Obama is recruiting.

The site will also accept applications for "non-career" posts in the incoming administration. The site does not give details about posts for which it is seeking recruits, but it said some of the roles would require "Senate approval" suggesting they could be positions of some influence.

The site also wants US citizens to tell their stories about what Obama's campaign meant to them, and pass on their "vision" for what they would like to see happen in America.

Security threat

It is not just Barack Obama who is using the net to get his message across. Hi-tech criminals are also capitalising on his victory in an attempt to trick web users into handing over valuable information.

F-Secure found a booby-trapped page claiming to host a copy of Obama's acceptance speech that prompted visitors to update their Flash video player before viewing the video clip. Anyone downloading and installing the supposed update would fall victim to a virus that stole bank login details.

"E-mail users who are eager to get the latest scoop on Obama's monumental presidential win should be careful that they are not being tricked by conniving cybercriminals," said Graham Cluley from Sophos.

The security firm also came across junk mail messages claiming that either Barack Obama or John McCain had died. Those following the links in these junk messages would find themselves on the website of a Canadian pharmacist.

In the run up to the US election, security firm Symantec said it had found junk mail messages that posed as a survey of voter attitudes that tried to gather and steal personal data.

Another spam message offered a free "Barackumentary" on DVD, that users could get by providing credit card and other personal details.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7715264.stm

Published: 2008/11/07 13:48:18 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

THE NEXT STEP FOR CHANGE

Teresa from Allen, TX — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:06:12 EST

http://www.change.gov/

Express our strong support for a bigger, and bolder Peace Corps

wt — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:55:53 EST

I have seen many emails from MY Barrack Obama group members over the last 2 days not wishing to let the movement slip away now that the election has been won. The National Peace Corps Association through its MorePeaceCorps Campaign is sending a petition to President-elect Obmam. Take a look and add your name to the list…. http://www.petitiononline.com/morepc/petition.html

...just 76 days until his inauguration as the 44th president.

Fire Is Born — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:24:21 EST

Obama turns to building a presidency By TERENCE HUNT, Associated Press Writer Terence Hunt, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – His storied election behind him and weighty problems in his face, Barack Obama turned Wednesday to the task of building an administration in times of crisis as Americans and the world absorbed his history-shattering achievement as the first black leader ascending to the presidency.

Obama enjoyed an everyman day-after in his hometown of Chicago on Wednesday after an electric night of celebration, anchored by his victory rally of 125,000 in Chicago and joyful outpourings of his supporters across the country. The president-elect saw his two young daughters off to school, a simple pleasure he's missed during nearly two years of virtually nonstop travel, then had a gym workout.

Pressing business came at him fast, with just 76 days until his inauguration as the 44th president.

The nation's top intelligence officials planned to give him top-secret daily briefings starting Thursday, sharing with him the most critical overnight intelligence as well as other information he has not been allowed to see as a senator or candidate. And Obama planned to give the first of his daily briefings to the media on Thursday as he moves quickly to begin assembling a White House staff and selecting Cabinet nominees.

Obama was asking Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, former political and policy adviser to President Clinton, to be his White House chief of staff, Democratic officials said. John Podesta, who served as Clinton's chief of staff, was expected to join Obama Senate aide Pete Rouse and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett in leading the transition team.

President Bush pledged "complete cooperation" in the transition and called Obama's victory a "triumph of the American story."

Naming the staggering list of problems he inherits in his decisive defeat of Republican John McCain — two wars and "the worst financial crisis in a century," among them — Obama sought to restrain the soaring expectations of his supporters late Tuesday night even as he stoked them with impassioned calls for national unity and partisan healing.

"We may not get there in one year or even in one term," he said. "But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there."

Helping him to get there will be a strengthened Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. When Obama becomes the president on Jan. 20, with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice president, Democrats will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.

A tide of international goodwill came Obama's way on Wednesday morning, even as developments made clear how heavy a weight will soon be on his shoulders.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a congratulatory telegram saying there is "solid positive potential" for the election to improve strained relations between Washington and Moscow, if Obama engages in constructive dialogue.

Yet he appeared to be deliberately provocative hours after the election with sharp criticism of the U.S. and his announcement that Russia will deploy missiles near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans.

In Afghanistan, where villagers said the U.S. bombed a wedding party and killed 37 people, President Hamid Karzai said: "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States — to put an end to civilian casualties."

Young and charismatic but with little experience on the national level or as an executive, Obama easily defeated McCain, smashing records and remaking history along the way.

Ending an improbable journey that started for Obama a long 21 months ago, he drew a record-breaking $700 million to his campaign account alone. The first African-American destined to sit in the Oval Office, he also was the first Democrat to receive more than 50 percent of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976. He is the first senator elected to the White House since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

And Obama scored an Electoral College landslide that redrew America's political dynamics. He won states that reliably voted Republican in presidential elections, such as Indiana and Virginia, which hadn't supported a Democratic candidate in 44 years. Ohio and Florida, key to President Bush's twin victories, also went for Obama, as did Pennsylvania, which McCain had deemed crucial for his election hopes.

With most U.S. precincts tallied, the popular vote was 52.3 percent for Obama and 46.4 percent for McCain. But the count in the Electoral College was much more lopsided — 349 to 147 in Obama's favor as of early Wednesday, with three states still to be decided. Those were North Carolina, Georgia and Missouri.

The nation awakened to the new reality at daybreak, a short night after millions witnessed Obama's election — an event so rare it could not be called a once-in-a-century happening. Prominent black leaders wept unabashedly in public, rejoicing in the elevation of one of their own, at long last.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had made two White House bids himself, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the tears streaming down his face upon Obama's victory were about his father and grandmother and "those who paved the fights. And then that Barack's so majestic."

Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and leading player in the civil rights movement with Jackson, said on NBC's "Today" show: "He's going to call on us, I believe, to sacrifice. We all must give up something."

Speaking from Hong Kong, retired Gen. Colin Powell, the black Republican whose endorsement of Obama symbolized the candidate's bipartisan reach and bolstered him against charges of inexperience, called the senator's victory "a very very historic occasion." But he also predicted that Obama would be "a president for all America."

On Capitol Hill, Democrats ousted incumbent GOP Sens. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and John Sununu of New Hampshire and captured seats held by retiring Republican senators in Virginia, New Mexico and Colorado. Still, the GOP blocked a complete rout, holding the Kentucky seat of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a Mississippi seat once held by Trent Lott.

The Associated Press prematurely declared incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman the winner in a race against Democratic former comedian Al Franken that by state law is subject to a recount based on the 571-vote margin. The party also held onto a Mississippi seat once held by Trent Lott.

In the House, with fewer than a dozen races still undecided, Democrats captured Republican-held seats in the Northeast, South and West and were on a path to pick up as many as 20 seats.

"It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

After the longest and costliest campaign in U.S. history, Obama was propelled to victory by voters dismayed by eight years of Bush's presidency and deeply anxious about rising unemployment and home foreclosures and a battered stock market that has erased trillions of dollars of savings for Americans.

Six in 10 voters picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation in an Associated Press exit poll. None of the other top issues — energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care — was selected by more than one in 10. Obama has promised to cut taxes for most Americans, get the United States out of Iraq and expand health care, including mandatory coverage for children.

McCain conceded defeat shortly after 11 p.m. EST, telling supporters outside the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, "The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly."

"This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and the special pride that must be theirs tonight," McCain said. "These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face."

The son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, the 47-year-old Obama has had a startlingly rapid rise, from lawyer and community organizer to state legislator and U.S. senator, now not even four years into his first term.

Almost six in 10 women supported Obama nationwide, while men leaned his way by a narrow margin, according to interviews with voters. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him a slim advantage in a group that Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.

The results of the AP survey were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past week for early voters.

In terms of turnout, America voted in record numbers. It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate, the highest since 65.7 percent in 1908, he said.

(This version CORRECTS SUBS 5th graf to correct spelling of Emanuel. AP Video.)

"But it feels like a strange time not to have access to everyone else’s thoughts."

Fire Is Born — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:52:45 EST

JUST A QUOTE FROM LAST NIGHT'S FELLOW O-BLOGGER.

We are making history and the world is watching!

Fire Is Born — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:46:30 EST

My family in Poland is all excited and the world is watching. My nephew there, who rarely writes, reminded me in e-mail yesterday that every vote counts and urged me to vote! My mom has just said she will stay up and follow TV reports. I told he r about barck's mother and she said they know everything.

I have just voted in Berkeley, CA, and the feeling of enthusiasm on this lovely Fall day here is amazing. My bus #18 driver (a young AA lady) drives waving a yellow sign VOTE! and people wave to her and show signs on their breast I VOTED!

My voting place is in a small beautiful park north of the UCB, no lines there at 11am, children playing in sand boxes, people talking to each other. A guy standing on the corner reminding us to vote NO on proposition 8 whci wants to take the right to marry from gay couples. Our big issue here because the proposition has been propelled by conservative intersts from outside of California. Losers!

Only that I have just come back from a long night work, and am to tired to call voters now, I need a good nap to proceed further, but I want to so participate and not miss it.

motivation for tomorrow! vote obama!!!

Jeremy from Seattle — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:02:43 EST

Imagine - Obama for President

Natsuki the Neko: GO OBAMA-BIDEN GO! ^_^ — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:36:16 EST

This is simply wonderful. A must-read for what is to come. :)

IMAGINE

The year is 2016. You glance at the television one morning and see President Obama having another of his many press conferences. He has now been in office for almost 8 years. It has not been perfect, but things are much better than when he took office in January of 2009. You notice that his hair has whitened and he still has that winning smile and that take charge/positive energy that he had when he was campaigning back in 2008. You remember how concerned you were about whether or not he would win in 2008 and you feel deeply contented that he has been safely in office for such a long time. He, his advisors with Middle eastern leaders have worked together to bring peace to the region. Troops have been successfully and safely withdrawn from Iraq. They have stabilized the region and restored respectful, working relationships in the Middle East. He and his advisors have restored a thriving American economy that benefits all its citizens and contributes stability to the world. He and Congress have done much to address global warming, healthcare, development of alternative energy sources and a variety of other important matters to the country and the planet. Our citizens are cared for and needs are met. You feel deep gratitude for the past eight years and how things have unfolded. See it...Feel it...breathe it...Pass it on. Let us... remember... all of the wonderful reasons we appreciate this reality. THE CHALLENGE: Take 30 seconds right now. Close your eyes and imagine exactly what our country will feel like. Imagine how good it will feel. Imagine whatever it is about that future that you desire. Imagine your and your family contented, healthy, and prosperous with needs met so much so it's easy to share with others creating a ripple effect. Imagine successful diplomacy. Imagine peace and restored prosperity. Imagine the citizen groups, progressive populism, social justice, and the grassroots finding their voice. Imagine people of all ages, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, social and economic classes, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, educational backgrounds, and of all abilities fully included, participating in society, supported, accepted and valued. Imagine windmills and clean cars. Imagine schools thriving and neighborhoods rebuilding. Imagine healthy food nourishing our bodies. Imagine the earth being healed and revitalized. Imagine no fear. Imagine beauty. Imagine being very proud of your country and its leader. Imagine whatever it is that draws you to support change. Imagine what your life will look like. Just 30 seconds. Do it several times a day. We can shift and change the vibration of this country with positive visions just like this. Originally from: Sheila King Quantum Shift & Reiki House

Remembering Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother of Barack Obama

Natsuki the Neko: GO OBAMA-BIDEN GO! ^_^ — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:30:40 EST

My prayers go out to the Obama family following the announcement of the death of Mrs. Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother of Barack Obama, after a long battle with cancer. May her soul rest in perfect peace.

Go Obama-Biden Go!

Natsuki the Neko: GO OBAMA-BIDEN GO! ^_^ — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:26:44 EST

After watching the 30-minute Obama info-, or rather awesome-mercial, I was incredibly moved. I know that this man has what it takes to lead our country, and that he will bring about real change. He will put a stop to what has been getting us in economic troubles for the last 8 years. So, I pray, that tomorrow, November 4th, 2008, that not only do we get our first African-American president, but that change will happen. I will pray that Obama wins, for he will. VOTE OBAMA-BIDEN '08!

Our hearts are with you! Obama Family Album

Fire Is Born — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:14:30 EST

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://obamascrapbook.com/8.htm

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Hey Sarah!

Jeremy from Seattle — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:54:20 EST

Enjoy this now, 'cause we're kicking your silly winking folksy lipsticked ass back to Alaska. For good.

Mike Huckabee defended Reverend Wright in March. Many others followed, a quick list below

Fire Is Born — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:18:51 EST

Best source for objective information is PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/profile.html

WHO DEFENDS REVEREND WRIGHT?

Many people of good faith have spoken in defense of Jeremiah Wright. Some of them just regular Americans who expressed their views in deeply thoughtful and very necessary comments in blogs and newspapers. Some more famous or notable, whom we can quote when talking with a person who still has not resolved the controversy. Below I give a summary. Please add to the contents.

Already on March 19, Obama's former pastor was defended by Mike Huckabee, an arch-conservative Republican opponent who also said the controversy will not be a problem for Obama in November. Notably Mike Huckabee is on the short list for McCain's VP. Do see it on You Tube (huckabee wright). Transcript in my blog.
On the same day, the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, posted a Statement in defense of Rev. Wright on their web site (still there today). President Clinton and First Lady attended this Church during their years in the White House. See my blog, and the address below in 3.
Senior Pastor of the Foundry, Dean Snyder, gives a beautiful Easter sermon where he condemns the media for their vicious clippings of Rev. Wright's sermons and appeals for racial reconciliation. March 23, see www.foundryumc.org
Senator Clinton is still a member of the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and remains in touch with its former pastor Rev. Edward Matthews. In a recent 35 minutes phone interview with the New York Sun the pastor admits that he himself holds some very controversial political views, not unlike those of Rev. Wright, yet Senator Clinton remains a member.
See my blog. Also see www2.nysun.com/article/74027?page_no=1
"Diverse Group of Prominent Religious Leaders Condemn Personal Attacks" in a letter to Senator Clinton. These leaders represent many faiths. You may google it by the title.
Fred R. Krauss of Rockford, Illinois, writes a remarkable letter to his local newspaper in which he objects to another letter of March 28 titled “Beware of Obama”. He is a retired pastor in the United Church of Christ who has served churches in Chicago, southern Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. See www.rrstar.

Palin's medical record...what is she hiding??

Jeremy from Seattle — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:19:05 EST

We should demand her records ned to be released... pass on!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/02/time_running_out_on_palin_medi.html

Mccains SNL any thoughts?

Jeremy from Seattle — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:59:15 EST

What all did you think of Mccains appearance on SNL?? I wasnt able to see it but i wanted to know what all you guys thought... was he an epic failure?