Our Mother is Hurting

I am a C-Span junkie...I admit it. But I believe it should be free, why should we have to pay to watch Congress bicker? Recently, I have been watching the Republicans push for drilling in our National Forests and on the continental shelf, as if our planet were as disposable as our culture. Even our celebrities are disposable, one day they have a hit TV show and the next they are an unknown.
The desire to drill for more oil seems futile. If we are at peek oil production, why drill for the remaining resources when we can use that money to place solar along our massive interstate highway system, invest in public mass transit making it cheaper to travel long distances. We need to move away from fossil fuels, we have seen what it does to our fragile planet. Nuclear power is not the answer either, as McInsane is touting. Nuclear waste is a major issue and should not just be swept under the rug or mountain as they want to do. Clean coal is a myth. What is clean about mountain top removal and poisoned streams? What happens once all our water sources are polluted?
Since I have been recycling for many years, the thought that others still do not recycle seemed foreign to me. I recently realized that most of my immediate family does NOT recycle. Even my sister who is Wiccan. How can she be a daughter of the earth and not even recycle! But that is the hypocrisy of organized religion. The "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.
This is all connected. This is the road to the destruction of our Mother Earth.

Kucinich the Just - A Tireless Warrior for Impeachment

We can dream, can't we? Or has that been outlawed?

Kucinich, Kucinich, Kucinich....I just love that man. Who else has the balls to take over four and a half hours to read 35 articles of impeachment on the floor of the House? Although I have yet to see the story on TV, including C-Span, where last night they aired Dennis reading all 35 articles of impeachment starting at 7:30pm yesterday ending around midnight. It is one of the most popular stories on Yahoo news today. Whoever wrote the article, called his efforts basically a waste of time:

Rep. Kucinich calls for Bush impeachment

By JoAnne AllenMon Jun 9, 10:13 PM ET

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich defied his party leadership on Monday by calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush for launching the Iraq war -- but his move was not expected to go anywhere.

The Ohio representative outlined his intention to propose more than two dozen charges against Bush on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, accused Bush executing a "calculated and wide-ranging strategy" to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she opposes trying to remove the Republican president who leaves office next January because such an attempt would be divisive and most likely unsuccessful.

Kucinich, an outspoken Iraq war critic who has consistently voted against funding the war and led anti-war efforts in Congress, offered a resolution to impeach Vice president Dick Cheney in April 2007. That also failed to move forward.

Many Democrats and civil liberties groups have accused the Bush administration of providing misleading information before the 2003 Iraq invasion as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens with its warrantless surveillance program. The White House denies the charges.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)

I'm not sure why such a short article would need editing including listing the name of the editor. This is not the norm. Additionally the article was written before he even finished reading the articles of impeachment.
As one person wrote on Op-Ed News, the story cannot be found on the mainstream media. They are more concerned with the election and whatever sensational murder has occurred. But there is an even more sensational murder taking place in Washington, the demise of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus. Why is this not news?
Next step, a trial for war crimes.
The 35 articles included masking global warming, lying about Iraq, 9/11 quasi-investigation, and 32 others. At least we have one Warrior for Justice in the house. I believe they ask every Representative to turn in their spine when they are elected.
Thanks Dennis, for keeping your spine.

Collateral Damage

Lisa Holland
Foreign affairs correspondent
Updated:07:32, Thursday May 29, 2008

Families in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are calling for an investigation into their claims of a rise in the number of birth defects.

Three-year-old Fatima Ahmed

They have raised concerns about the weapons used by American forces in 2004 - when Fallujah suffered one of the heaviest bombardments of the entire war in Iraq.

The evidence is anecdotal because there are no records from the era of Saddam Hussein to compare their stories against.

But Hikmat Tawfeeq, deputy chairman of the Fallujah-based human rights group Alakhiyar said: "We have around 200 cases of deformities recorded by our society. Most of these cases are birth deformities which have arisen after the bombing of Fallujah."

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1317448,00.html?f=rss

Campaigners say officials are reluctant to speak out publicly, but at Fallujah's children's hospital one doctor told Sky News in the past month she has seen one or two cases of birth deformities every day.

An opthalmologist said he deals with four or five cases of newborn babies every week suffering from some form of eye deformity - and that has risen in the last two years.

At one of the cemeteries in Fallujah, undertaker Mahmoud Hummadi said he usually buries four to five bodies of newborns every day and most of them are deformed.

Phosphorus over Fallujah in 2004

Fallujah today still bears the scars of a time when it represented the backbone of the Sunni insurgency - a power-base America decided it had to break.

April and November 2004 saw some of the heaviest bombardments of the war in Iraq, including the controversial use of white phosphorous.

It is a highly flammable material which ignites when it comes into contact with oxygen, causing severe burns.

In a statement to Sky News the US military said it had used white phosphorus in Fallujah but primarily as a smokescreen and not as an incendiary weapon.

US troops bombed the city

The families say doctors have raised concerns to them about what kinds of materials were used by the Americans in order to achieve their military goals.

Fatima Ahmed is three years old. Small and lifeless she barely moves, burdened by two heads on her tiny frame.

Her mother Shukriya says doctors have been unable to diagnose exactly what has caused Fatima's condition.

But her father Jassim, when asked who he held responsible for his daughter's condition, said: "It's because of the war - it's the flagrant aggression they launched against us. What they dropped in Fallujah God knows."

We showed our findings from Fallujah to Alastair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds University.

He is currently investigating injuries caused to children during the war in Iraq. He says without an independent medical study it is impossible to say for sure what has caused the deformities and how they may be linked.

But he says there has never been a study examining if there ARE links between white phosphorus and birth deformities.

Voices

Although I did not finish my term of duty in the Navy, I went through the training and by definition, I am a Veteran. I am thankful I did not see war first hand as many of my fellow Veterans who work to make Veterans' Voices possible. In the core group, we have a Korean War Vet, a Vietnam Vet and an Iraq Vet. Then there's me. But successful military men and women are rare in my family, although many of us tried. My father joined the national guard at the age of 16, lying to get in. I believe he was eventually found out. My uncle was in the Army and had a very successful career. My oldest brother, inspired by our uncle's service, enlisted before he was drafted in 1970. He broke his knee during boot camp and was discharged. My other brother joined or was drafted (I'll have to talk to him about it) and served for two years. The family story is that he got hooked on heroin and overdosed and had to have fluid drained off his brain. I'm not sure how much is true. He receives a disability check from Uncle Sam every month. I now have two nephews, one recently returned from Afghanistan and the other an officer in the Navy nuclear field.
I am thrilled to be a part of Veterans' Voices on WPVM. I am proud to be a part of the independent media movement. Recently, we have interviewed Ret. Col. Ann Wright and Howard Zinn. Mike Ferrell of M*A*S*H fame arrived too late into Asheville to make the interview. We will do a phone interview with him in the near future, although I am not as excited as I was before I heard him give a talk at Malaprops. Even though he has been involved with human rights issues for most of his life, he enjoys talking about M*A*S*H more. I didn't ask him a softball question. Check out what he wrote in his Huffington Post Blog:

One woman asked about my association with the Cult Awareness Network and what I thought about this terrible situation with the kids from the polygamous Mormon cult in Texas. A really tough one. I understand that there's been a ruling holding that the kids were not molested, something I personally find hard to believe. Another person mentions reading this blog, which knocks me out! The idea that someone actually reads it (besides Shelley and my daughter Erin--and now my sister Kathy--and the folks at Akashic Books) makes me laugh.

Both these women were me. I didn't like his answer to my question, but that is the mainstream view about non-mainstream religions. What if the state did not like my religion, would it be right for them to take my daughter, too?
I also got a chance to work the board for Wally Bowen's interview with Amy Goodman. Her speech was brilliant.







I am happy to be a part of independent media, to give a voice to the once voiceless. I hope I can make a difference.