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BreaKing News

House Clears Path for Final Health Care Vote
The New York Times - By DaviD Herszenhorn and Robert Pear - March 21, 2010
- LINK ^

WASHINGTON — The House on Sunday took the most critical step yet toward adoption of legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system and guarantee access to medical insurance for tens of millions of Americans, all but assuring a hard-fought but politically risky victory for President Obama and his party. By a vote of 224-206, the House approved the key procedural measure necessary to pass the legislation, showing that Democrats and Mr. Obama had succeeded in cobbling together the votes they need to achieve a goal sought by presidents and progressives for more than a half-century.

House Democrats clinched their victory on Sunday with an agreement on abortion. Democratic opponents of abortion rights, led by Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, announced that they would vote for the legislation after Mr. Obama promised to issue an executive order “to ensure that federal funds are not used for abortion services” if the bill passed.

US | House Passes Historic Health Care Overhaul
Congressional Quarterly - By Steven T. Dennis and Tory Newmyer - March 22, 2010
- LINK ^

House Democrats passed their landmark health care overhaul on a party-line 219-212 vote late Sunday night, an achievement that leaders said was akin to the enactment of Social Security and Medicare and one that is expected to be a key issue in determining whether many of the party’s vulnerable members win re-election in November.

The vote sends the Senate’s health care bill to President Barack Obama for his signature following a weekend of high drama. After days of an all-out whip effort led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, the outcome was still in doubt until the White House cut a deal Sunday afternoon with a bloc of anti-abortion-rights Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak (Mich.) by drafting an executive order reiterating that no federal funding would pay for elective abortions.

Democrats also passed a companion reconciliation package of “fixes” to the Senate measure that will head to the other chamber, where a majority of Senators have pledged in writing to vote for it.

US | States launch lawsuits against healthcare plan
Reuters - March 22, 2010
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CHICAGO - Less than 24 hours after the House of Representatives gave final approval to a sweeping overhaul of healthcare, attorneys general from several states on Monday said they will sue to block the plan on constitutional grounds.

Republican attorneys general in 11 states warned that lawsuits will be filed to stop the federal government overstepping its constitutional powers and usurping states' sovereignty. States are concerned the burden of providing healthcare will fall on them without enough federal support. Ten of the attorneys general plan to band together in a collective lawsuit on behalf of Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon demands Israeli settlements stop
Ban Ki-moon has said Israeli settlement building anywhere in occupied territory is illegal and must stop.
BBC News - March 21, 2010
- LINK ^

+ US | Tea Party protesters scream 'nigger] at black congressman
McClatchy Newspape - By William Douglas - March 20, 2010
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WASHINGTON — Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted "nigger" Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s. Protesters also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, spat on at least one black lawmaker and confronted an openly gay congressman with taunts. Capitol Police escorted the members of Congress into the Capitol after the confrontation. At least one demonstrator was reported arrested.
Editor - Extremism attracts extremists, - Recalling Nazi Germany.

US | Video - Entering the Dangerous Zone of National Crumble
Huffington Post / YouTube -March 21, 2010
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US | Brick thrown Through Window in Representative's Office
Buffalo News (NY) - March 19, 2010
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NIAGARA FALLS — The "Slaughter Solution" on health care isn't the only thing that has come under attack in U.S. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter's world this week. Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office. The damage was discovered about 12:30 a.m., city police said.The brick put a hole in the outer-most window at the office at 1910 Pine Ave., but did not damage a second interior window, police reported. A piece of broken brick believed to have caused the damage was found at the scene. Damage was estimated at $350.
Slaughter, D-Fairport, is head of the House Rules Committee, which will structure the debate on health care reform votes set for this weekend.

US | Kristalnacht
Wikipedia - Current
- LINK ^

Kristallnacht; literally "Crystal Night") or the Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria on 9 to 10 November 1938. It is also known as Novemberpogrome, Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht or Pogromnacht in German.

Kristallnacht was triggered by the assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew. In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 91 Jews were murdered and 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. 267 synagogues were destroyed, and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. This was done by the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo and the SS. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews.
Editor - Note: Kristallnacht tactics can be employed by any extremist (read 'terrorist' here. as well) against any position - left, right, upside down.

Beijing's Tiananmen Square was shrouded in orange dust
Beijing has been shrouded in orange dust as a strong sandstorm blew hundreds of miles from drought-struck northern China to the nation's capital.
- LINK ^

Pope blasts Irish bishops, orders Vatican probe
Salon / AP - By Nicole Winfield and Victor Simpson - March 20, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI has rebuked Irish bishops for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse and ordered a Vatican investigation into the Irish church to wipe out the scourge.
- LINK ^

+ Thousands rally in Russia against economic policy
Thousands of protesters rallied Saturday in several cities across Russia to protest the government's economic policy and demand more political freedoms.
Salon / AP - By Irina Titova - March 20. 2010
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China sandstorm leaves Beijing shrouded in orange dust
BBC News - March 20, 2010
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Beijing has been shrouded in orange dust as a strong sandstorm blew hundreds of miles from drought-struck northern China to the nation's capital. The authorities have issued a level-five pollution warning and urged people to stay indoors.

Opinion | Commentary | Editorials | Op-Eds

+ Commentary | US - Most Expensive Census in History
McClatchy Newspapers - By William Shughart II - March 17, 2010
- LINK ^

Opinion | US - How Big Business Dupes the Masses
Consortium News - By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship - March 12, 2010

Consortium News Editor
In the Great Snookering of America, millions of working- and middle-class Americans are being influenced by ads and activist groups that purport to stand with them against the tyranny of Big Government – when the money really represents Big Corporations that want carte blanche to treat these Americans like a la carte items on a menu. In this guest essay, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship describe how the not-your-grandfather’s Chamber of Commerce is helping the super-rich get even more super-rich, at the expense of the Tea Partiers and other “little” Americans.

Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need?

International - Roman Catholicism

Commentary | Catholic Europe - How Damaged Is the Papacy?
Time Magazine - By Bobby Ghoush - March 21, 2010
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On Good Friday 2005, as a dying Pope John Paul II watched via video hookup, worshippers outside the candlelit Way of the Cross ceremony in Rome's Colosseum recited meditations written by the man who would be his successor. Breaking with tradition, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's musings veered away from Christ's Passion and into the Catholic Church's current problems. "How much filth there is in the Church," he wrote, clearly referring to the charges of sex abuse by priests that had rocked the church in the U.S. "And even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!"

But if Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, felt an unalloyed loathing for the abusers, his view on how they should be treated was more complicated. Some years before, as head of the Vatican body investigating abuse by priests, he argued that accused clergymen should not be handed over to secular authorities. Rather, he wrote confidentially to bishops around the world in 2001, they should first be investigated under utmost secrecy within the church — thereby avoiding public hysteria and second-guessing by the media.

Secrecy is a luxury no longer available to Benedict. The recent revelations of sex-abuse scandals in Europe have smashed the perception that predatory priests are an American anomaly. Hundreds of accusations, from Ireland and now mainland Europe, have thrust the Vatican into the grip of its greatest crisis since the 2002 revelations of abuse in the U.S. The church's standing is falling to new lows among believers in its European heartland. Sensing the growing public alarm, some within the clergy are pushing for profound institutional and ecclesiastical changes, including an end to the priesthood's fundamental tenet of celibacy.

For the Pope, all this has become deeply personal: many of the latest scandals are rooted in his native Germany, and they have dragged in his own brother, who headed a famous Bavarian choir at a school where young boys were allegedly abused. Benedict himself stands accused of poorly handling the case of a pedophile priest when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the early 1980s. While there's virtually no chance of the Pope himself being brought down — the last time a Pontiff bowed out in disgrace was in 1046 (Gregory VI, for financial impropriety) — it is entirely possible the scandals will permanently sully his papacy. "This is going to be a major part of his legacy," says an American priest in Rome who asked not to be named.

The Pope's defenders say he has tried hard to force the church to confront its demons openly. "As Pope, he has been unusually and laudably aggressive in dealing with abusers," says David Gibson, author of a Benedict biography. Benedict has on several occasions called for "absolute transparency" on sexual abuse. During a visit to Washington, D.C., in 2008, he met in private with some victims of abuse by American priests. But he has been remarkably unforthcoming about the latest scandals. If the Pope does reveal his feelings about the current upheaval, it may be in writing: he said he would shortly publish a pastoral letter — a papal guide on how the church in Ireland should respond to charges of pedophilia among priests there. But it's unclear if it will address the church's broader crisis or the charges in Germany that allegedly involve him personally.

Father H's Story - Germany's Pedophile Priest's Scandal
Time Magazine - By Tristana Moore in Berlin - March 20, 2010
- LINK ^

On Tuesday, after he had been fired from his job as a counselor at a Bavarian spa town, the priest at the center of the German Catholic Church scandal paid a visit to the man who had been his therapist in Munich when the troubles began back in the 1980s. Dr. Werner Huth describes his former patient as now being a "broken old man and very depressed." But, he says, "the priest still sees himself as a victim."

Nstional News

30 Years of US Mistakes in Afghanistan
Consortium News - By james A. Lucas - March 13, 2010
- LINK ^

More than three decades ago, there were social movements in Afghanistan to improve the standard of living of its people and to provide greater equality for women. There was even a functioning, if imperfect, democracy. But the U.S. government – using subversion, weapons and money – contributed to the halt in progress in these areas of human welfare. Indeed, many gains that had been made were reversed.

By 2010, the economic and social status of Afghans had been set back generations; women’s status had deterioriated to such an extent that the prevalence of self-immolation has increased among discouraged women; and there is no real democracy now, with the U.S. making the major decisions as an occupying power.

Afghanistan | Taliban controlling Marjah by night less than a month after wetern forces announced its capture
Morning Star (UK)- By Tom Mellen - March 18, 2010
- LINK ^

Militants are regaining control of Marjah, residents have reported, less than a month after Western military officials claimed to have seized the Afghan town from the Taliban. Marjah is now home to an occupation force numbering more than one Nato soldier or Afghan police officer for every eight residents. But militants are stepping up an underground campaign against officials loyal to the Western-backed Karzai regime.

Walid Jan Sabir, who represents Marjah and the surrounding Nad Ali District in the Afghan parliament, said that he had heard reports from Marjah elders visiting his office in Kabul this week of two beheadings of pro-government elders, both members of the government's Community Development Council. And a tribal elder living in Marjah said that, after dark, "it is like the kingdom of the Taliban - the government and foreign forces cannot defend anyone even one kilometre from their bases."

Afghanistan | US Special Forces now report to McCMilitary.com -hristal
Military.com / UPI - March 16, 2010
- LINK ^

Most of the U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan now are under direct control of Gen. Stanley McCrystal, the top U.S. commander in that country said. McChrystal said the decision to bring most of the special operations troops under his control was made in response to high civilian casualties and reports the Special Forces troops were operating as cowboys, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Editor - Obama, are you ready for eight more years of wasted everything?

Israel's Tilt Toward Apartheid
Consortium News - By Roobert Parry - March 19, 2010
- LINK ^

The United Nations General Assembly may well have been wrong in 1975 to equate Zionism with racism, since many early Israelis rejected extremist notions regarding separation of Jews from Arabs. But today a virulent form of Zionism is turning Israel in the direction of an intolerant apartheid state.

France | Sarkozy's party loses regional election - exit polls
BBC News - March 21. 2010
- LINK ^

President Sarkozy's centre-right party has suffered a heavy defeat in the French regional elections, early projections of the voting suggest. Exit polls suggest the Socialist-led opposition alliance took 54% of the vote with Mr Sarkozy's UMP on 36%. If confirmed the results leave the UMP in control of only one of France's 22 regions, the Alsace region in the east. These elections are the last major electoral test in France before the presidential election in 2012

United States Government

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Mark Twain

The people's history reading list for Activists
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Topical News

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Activism at the Ground Level

A Must Book Review | "Soul of a Citizen" Excerpt: Taking Money Out of Politics: A Grassroots Effort for Clean Elections
Truthout - Book By Paul Rogat Loeb _ March 21, 2010
- LINK ^

Nothing makes us feel more powerless than the corruption of our democracy by money. It undermines progress on every issue we face. If America is ever to deal with our critical problems, we're going to need to sever the links between wealth and politics, a task made more challenging by the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned a hundred years of precedent to increase still further the influence of companies like Exxon, United Health and Goldman Sachs. The Maine Clean Elections model offers a powerful alternative model, one achievable even within the parameters of the ghastly Supreme Court decision. The story of how activist Alison Smith helped it pass also exemplifies how individuals can proceed into social involvement step by step.

Editor - Thanks to a shy red-faced embarassed woman in Maine with no college education nor community rousing experience who, upset by politicians elected with corporate money and not accountable to citizen voters, went on to help fire up a national drive of the League of Women Voters in Arizona, Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico and North Carolina, all of which now have clean elections paid for with public funds.
Worth a read for all those who want to live in a democracy.

"The strength of a democracy is, as in nature, in the roots, not in the flamboyant leaves that wither and die after two terms or so in public office." -- John Davidson Miller

Shades of South Africa Divestment | UC Berkeley student senate votes in favor of divestment
The Electronic Intifada - By Dina Omar - March 19, 2010
- LINK ^

Early yesterday morning, the University of California Berkeley Student Senate (ASUC) passed a bill to divest from companies that provide military support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Debate began the night before at 9:00pm and ended and six hours later when the vote was held at 3:00am. The session was attended by more than 150 students, educators and concerned community supporters, forcing the meeting to be relocated to a larger room. Never before has the senate chambers been so overcrowded, signifying the importance and interest in the issue of Israel-Palestine on the Berkeley campus. Ultimately, the bill passed with 16 senators in favor and 4 against.

During the debate, Rahul Patel, a Student Senator and supporter of the bill from the beginning, said that "In the 1980s the Berkeley Student Government was a central actor in demanding that the university divest from South African apartheid. Twenty-five years later, it is a key figure in shaping a nationwide movement against occupation and war crimes around the world." He added that "Student Government can be a space to mobilize and make decisions that have a significant impact on the international community. We must utilize these spaces to engage each other about issues of justice worldwide."

Authoritative Palestinian calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel
Electronic Intifada - Current
- LINK ^

The overarching, intrusive influence of the Israeli military occupation on every key aspect of Palestinian life has totally undercut the capacity of any Palestinian government to function effectively. A key, enduring barometer of the will of the Palestinian people is found in the calls from grassroots civil society organizations. An overwhelming majority of organizations have endorsed Palestinian civil society's two calls for boycott, divestment and sactions against Israel and for academic and cultural boycott of Israel -- until it ceases to deny Palestinian history, ends the Occupation, ceases discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and permits displaced Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

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