It's three years since Obama promised to close Guantánamo.
Sign the petition at "We the People" urging him to honor his promise. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response, so please sign up, and spread the word.
It's three years since Obama promised to close Guantánamo.
Sign the petition at "We the People" urging him to honor his promise. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response, so please sign up, and spread the word.
http://www.facebook.com/events/305742392811934/
Saturday, February 4
Rally and March
Meet at NOON
Powell and Market Streets
San Francisco
In many ways, U.S. war on Iran has already begun.
The United States and Israel, both of which have nuclear weapons, say they will stop at nothing to keep Iran from having a nuclear program, even though the U.S. Secretary of Defense says Iran won't have nuclear capability anytime soon.
The U.S. has begun harsh economic sanctions that can destroy the Iranian economy, and the lives of millions of Iranians through depriving them of food, medicine and electricity. Either the U.S. or Israel is killing Iranian scientists in car bombings. U.S. surveillance drones are flying over Iran, in violation of its sovereignty. 3 U.S. carrier groups are right off Iran's shore. And secret U.S. commando operations are in the country.
Will we
allow another U.S. war based on lies?
Let the whole world see that we will not let the U.S. rain death, destruction and devastation onto yet another country and further inflame a dire situation in the Middle East. One thing we know is that when people stand up together to resist the crimes of their government like the courageous protesters of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, something beautiful can emerge.
Saturday, January 21 in San Francisco, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights and the California National Organization for Women presented a West Coast Rally for Reproductive Justice. VIDEO of speeches here and here.
On the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, women's fundamental right to abortion is hanging by a thread.
But that is not all. Now, even birth control is under siege. Pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions. "Personhood" amendments seek to criminalize miscarriages and ban all contraception. And President Obama openly upheld Kathleen Sebelius's unprecedented decision to overrule the FDA and block over-the-counter distribution of Plan B (emergency contraception).
If 2011 marked an unprecedented escalation in the assault on women's lives, 2012 must mark the launch of unprecedented resistance!
"Whether through legislation or through extra-legal terror, whether from the Republicans' assault or the Democrats' capitulation, forcing women to have children against their will is immoral and enslaving. We must rely on ourselves - not politicians - to defeat these attacks and win abortion on demand and without apology." - Sunsara Taylor, member of World Can't Wait's national advisory board
A woman who cannot decide for herself when and whether to have a child is not free. Forced motherhood is female enslavement. And when women - half of humanity - are not free, then no one is free.
]]>"some of us are capable of objecting to grave injustices even when they don't directly affect us -- Glenn Greenwald
As we head into Election Year, there is an increasingly common, bizarre and self-evidently repellent tactic being employed by some Democratic partisans against those of us who insist that issues like indefinite detention (along with ongoing killing of civilians in the Muslim world) merit high priority. The argument is that to place emphasis on such issues is to harm President Obama... while helping competing candidates who vehemently oppose such policies. Thus, so goes this reasoning, to demand that issues like indefinite detention and civilian deaths be prioritized in assessing the presidential race is to subordinate the importance of other issues...
"President Obama... will forever be known as the president who
signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law," said Anthony D.
Romero, ACLU executive director."The statute is particularly dangerous because
it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and
future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in
court, in Congress, or internationally."
"If you think Weimar Republic Germany is a long time ago and far away so it can't happen here, you are wrong. It can happen here, and unless something is done to stop it, it almost surely will happen here. It is happening already -- Thurman Hubbard
David Gespass, president of the National Lawyers Guild, calls this bill an "enormous attack on the U.S. and our heritage" and a "significant step" towards fascism.
Defence Act Affirms Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens
see also The Fast Hardening of Soft Fascism
"President Obama, who endorsed protection for courageous whistleblowers during his campaign, has been both unwilling to investigate crimes of the Bush administration and most willing to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917...
Former CIA analyst Mel Goodman speaks at Illinois State University. (Photo by Ryan Denham/WJBC)
]]>c/o Huffington Post:
The Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that authorizes indefinite detentions of American terrorism suspects, coincidentally acting on the controversial measure on the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed 86 to 13 and is expected to be signed quickly by President Obama, who withdrew a veto threat against the bill Wednesday. Six Democrats, six Republicans and one independent opposed the bill.
For Occupiers questioning which side the cops are on, the following should help resolve that debate:Getty Images
University of California, Berkeley students set up tents after a general assembly voted to again occupy campus as part of an "open university" strike in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement on Nov.15, 2011 in Berkeley, California. Teach-outs, workshops, public readings, and marches culminated in an attempt to re-establish an Occupy Cal encampment that was shut down by police last week. Police raided the new encampment this morning.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Police-Raid-Occupy-Cal-134027458.html
A protester is carried out of the bank after refusing to stand as she is arrested inside the Bank of America in the financial district, Wednesday November 16, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif. The arrests happened after hundreds of students marched through the streets of San Francisco.
