Ben Cohen: Time to Count and Reinvest the Oreos

Budgets & Funding
Ben Cohen

Dear Friend,

As co-founder and CEO of Ben & Jerry¹s, I saw that big business has gobs of money, and yes, I believe they should pay their fair share. However, the bank accounts of Fortune 500 companies pale in comparison to the US Treasury. In order to defeat poverty and financial instability we need to examine the federal budget. There is enough money to solve our fiscal problems simply by shifting already existing funds.

You may think of me as an ice cream guy, but I also care about excessive military spending. To use one of my favorite analogies, let¹s say that one Oreo represents $10 billion and that the $700 billion Pentagon budget is a stack of 70 Oreos. In comparison, the federal government spends just
four-and-half Oreos on education, half an Oreo on alternative energy, and a fraction of an Oreo on Head Start. If you take just seven Oreos out of the Pentagon budget, you could provide health care for all kids who don¹t have
it, AND you could provide college scholarships for all qualified students who can¹t afford to go, AND in ten years you could eliminate our need for Mideast oil through energy efficiency, AND you could repair and rebuild all
of our public schools, AND you'd still have money left over. This is not rocket science. We have enough cookies.

Continue reading “Ben Cohen: Time to Count and Reinvest the Oreos”

Cynthia McKinney: Fourth of Four Installments on Libya

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, White Papers
Cynthia McKinney

Fourth of Four Installments on Libya

Once again, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya peels away the veneer of legitimacy and deception enveloping the U.S./NATO genocide currently taking place in Libya. In his first article, Nazemroaya makes it clear that there never was any evidence given to the United Nations or the International Criminal Court to warrant or justify United Nations Resolutions 1970 and 1973 or current U.S./NATO operations inside Libya.

In his second article detailing this very sad story, Nazemroaya exposes the relationships between the major Libyan protagonists/NATO collaborators and the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Incredibly, when leading Members of Congress publicly proclaimed repeatedly that they did not know who the Libyan “rebel” NATO collaborators were, select so-called rebel leaders were political intimates with stakeholders at the National Endowment for Democracy.  Nazemroaya also exposes that, despite its Global War on Terror, the U.S. government actually financed Libyan terrorists and criminals wanted by INTERPOL.

In his third installment, Nazemroaya removes the U.S./NATO fig leaf that attempts to cover the cynical machinations of the pro-Israel Lobby and its objective of balkanizing African and Asian states, especially those whose populations are largely Muslim.  Nazemroaya makes the essential point: “An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway.” The Voice of America has exposed the psychological aspects of its brutal intervention and hints at the mindset of the U.S./NATO Libyan pawns; several stories suggest that the “new” Libya will turn more toward its Arab identity than its African identity. While Muammar Qaddafi drove home to all Libyans that Libya, as its geography dictates, is an African country, Nazemroaya shows how this fact is not a policy objective shared by the US, NATO, Israel, or their Libyan allies.

Finally, in this last of the four-part series, Nazemroaya shows the ultimate perfidy of the U.S./NATO Libyan allies, especially Mahmoud Jibril, in the pre-emptive strike against the Jamahirya Wealth Redistribution Project.  The Libyan people are now fighting the world's most powerful militaries to save their Jamahirya.  No matter how many times NATO-inspired media lie to their publics, the lies will never become the truth.  Hauntingly, Nazemroaya ends by telling us that the Libyan National Transitional Council has already recognized the Syrian Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Syria.  Meanwhile, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now reputed to be the leader of Al Qaeda and reportedly rewarded with U.S. citizenship after fighting for the CIA in Bosnia, just called for the people of Algeria to oust their President.  President Obama's policy of flying drones and dropping bombs over Africa, and invading the Continent with US troops, means that any country that resists an AFRICOM base, as Colonel Qaddafi's wife tells us he did, or expects to exercise its right of self-determination, can expect the kind of treatment we are witnessing now in Libya.  We, in the US, must resist these policies for ourselves and and on behalf of  the Africans who deserve better than this from the United States of America.

Cynthia McKinney, 25 October 2011

4 of 4:  Who Was Muammar Qaddafi? Libya's Wealth Redistribution Project by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-10-27.  In 2008, Qaddafi announced his plans for a Wealth Redistribution Program. Washington was intent upon undermining this project through military intervention and regime change.

3 of 4:  Beating the Drums of a Broader US-NATO Middle East War – by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-10-24

2 of 4:  Israel and Libya: Preparing Africa for the “Clash of Civilizations” – by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-10-11. “An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway.”

1 of 4:  America's Conquest of Africa: The Roles of France and Israel – by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Julien Teil – 2011-10-06. Terrorists not only fight for Washington on the ground, they also act as frontmen for regime change through so-called human rights organizations that promote democracy. Introduction by Cynthia McKinney

Event: Oct 15-Jan 9, UN, Design with the Other 90% Cities

01 Poverty, Technologies

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Divided into six themes—Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper and Access—to help orient the visitor, the exhibition shines the spotlight on communities, designers, architects, and private, civic, and public organizations that are working together to formulate innovative approaches to urban planning, affordable housing, entrepreneurship, nonformal education, public health, and more.

Comment: Design for the other 90% is a great ‘movement' but the sponsorship of this event (Citi & Rockefeller Foundation) + UN makes for an unsettling partnership when considering the divide between “the 1%” & “the 99%” and the questions behind the intentions of having their names affiliated with “helping the poor.” I would hope that those within those organizations who can genuinely make a difference are not trumped by those looking to exploit those in poverty.

Also see:
Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

Eliot Spitzer: Conversation on Democracy & Occupy

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process
Eliot Spitzer

The Coffee Summit

Eliot Spitzer talks capitalism with one of the 99 percent

New York Magazine,21 October 2011

Last week, New York’s Mattathias Schwartz invited Occupy Wall Street protester Manissa Maharawal, a CUNY graduate student in anthropology, to discuss the movement and its impact over coffee with former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer. An extended transcript of their conversation is below.

FOUR EXTRACTS:

MM: Oh, okay. So we’re in the same system. As I was saying, one of the reasons this movement has been without demands is because without demands we can shift. The moment you have a list of demands, you have politicians take all of those demands and explain to you why they aren’t going to work.

ES: But in order to turn this into something other than a visceral cry of despair, you need to figure out how to confront the actual problems and issues. You need to think about all of this more rigorously. If you’re down in Zuccotti Park six months from now, having made it through a cold winter, I’m not sure whether you would deem that success. Trust me, the media won’t be paying as much attention six months from now if it’s just the same couple hundred people, right?

. . . . .

Continue reading “Eliot Spitzer: Conversation on Democracy & Occupy”

Worth a Look: Skype, YouTube & VodBurner

Tools, Worth A Look

As an aid to all the old people who are well-removed from the reality that the young communicate (and ingest information) in multi-media rather than two-dimensional static communications, here are two essentials for old people who want to get with the program:

Skype

Start with free one to one video teleconferencing, then upgrade to video group conference calls.

FREE Skype (audio only, XP only)

YouTube Broadcast Yourself

Create account, then go to YouTube Broadcast Yourself

VodBurner for Skype Call Recording & Posting

Free for 14 days excluding calls to PCs already having VodBurner, $99.50 to purchase with three month escape period.

John Steiner: 10 Years Late, NYT “Sees” Democracy Now!

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
John Steiner

A Grass-Roots Newscast Gives a Voice to Struggles

Brian Stelter

New York Times, 23 October 2011

EXTRACT

Some fans as well as critics describe “Democracy Now!” as progressive, but Ms. Goodman rejects that label and prefers to call it a global newscast that has “people speaking for themselves.” She criticized networks in the United States that have brought on professional pundits, rather than actual protesters, to discuss the Occupy protests.

Last week, no United States television network covered the filing of a lawsuit in Canada by four men who said they had been tortured during the Bush administration and who are seeking Mr. Bush’s arrest and prosecution. But one of the men, Murat Kurnaz, a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, was interviewed at length by Ms. Goodman and her co-host, Juan Gonzalez.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota:  Now that the rest of the world has seen that the US Courts are generally corrupt and will not entertain law suits against those that led the US to an elective war costing trillions and including crimes against humanity at multiple levels, we anticipate a flood of law suits against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others.  As committed as we are to Truth & Reconciliation (with presidential pardons when full truth has been offered to the public by the individual concerned) we fear that absent a restoration of integrity to the electoral process and to the US Government in the 2012 elections, we are in for a decade of revenge against specific individuals and specific banks now known to have betrayed the public trust.

noble gold