Montana Green Bulletin
July 16, 2007. Volume VI, Number 29
A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
Table of Contents:
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Greens at national party meeting pledge to seek 51 ballot lines for 2008
FROM THE MONTANA GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
Energy Issues
COMMENT
about CCE, the Legislature, the Highwood Station, etc.
IRAQ WAR NEWS AND LINKS
Bush's Incredible Shrinking "Coalition" By Dave Lindorff
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Was Baucus ever a Democrat?
Is there hope for a Montana Green Party?
FROM HELENA INDEPENDENT RECORD
Baucus sets fundraising record By CHARLES S. JOHNSON - IR State Bureau
Frank Kromkowski's Response
Baucus Blocks Dem Push to Permanently Prevent Massive Middle-Class Tax Hike By David Sirota
FROM THE MISSOULA INDEPENDENT
Second chance: Will Senate Democrats do the right thing? By George Ochenski
FROM JEANETTE RANKIN PEACE CENTER, MISSOULA
Peace News & Calendar for 7-12-07
FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!
Recent stories about Iraq War
FROM GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Open Letter from Green Party to Michael Moore, as 'Sicko' opens nationwide
Fixing Health Care: Not Government vs. Market
By Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t Columnist
FROM DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE
FROM GLOBAL RESEARCH.CA
Spiraling US Federal Debt Triggers Decline of Dollar --A Non-Inflationary Solution to the Federal Debt Crisis by Ellen Hodgson Brown
ZNET COMMENTARY
On the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War
By Francis A. Boyle
Reviewing The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media
By Seth Sandronsky
A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE GREENS SUPPORT:
HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS
STOP THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE NOT A LOCAL GROWTH INDUSTRY!
COAL DEVELOPMENT MUST BE MINIMIZED, NOT MAXIMIZED: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL!
END CORPORATE DOMINATION AND PREDATION: CORPORATIONS AREN'T PEOPLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE "PROPERTY" OR OTHER RIGHTS!
For an introduction to Green Party philosophy and programs, go to http://www.gp.org/welcome.shtml
You can join the Montana Green Party at the NEW MONTANA GREEN PARTY WEBSITE!!
http://www.mtgreens.org
Please read the Platform to find out what we support and oppose:
http://www.mtgreens.org/node/25
New section on Instant Runoff Voting with model bills/initiatives:
http://mtgreens.montanalinux.org/node/22
Please help us circulate petitions to regain our ballot status. Some information is available at http://www.mtgreens.org/node/112
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
We are circulating petitions to regain Green Party ballot status
Please help us circulate petitions to regain our ballot status. Some information is available at http://www.mtgreens.org/node/112
Log in to download the pdf petitions from the website.
For assistant, call 216-2711 or send me an e-mail greateco@3rivers.net , or contact Chris Frazier, MGP Secretary in Billings greenfuture2000@yahoo.com or Steve Kelly, MGP Coordinator in Bozeman at 586-0180 botanica@imt.net
_______________
Wednesdays, 5:30 to 6 pm, on the Great Falls Civic Center steps. Join the Quakers Peace Vigil. Also on August 6 at 8:30 pm, they are holding their 13th Hiroshima Commemoration on the banks of the Missouri River at Odd Fellow's Park. For info, call Lucretia Humphrey at 453-2714 or Starshine at 453-8989.
_________________
FROM THE MONTANA GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
Energy Issues
Our modern world is one that runs on electrical energy. We cannot eliminate its use but we can ensure that we produce it in the most responsible ways possible. The Montana Green Party promotes the use and development of renewable energy sources: solar, bio-mass, hydrogen and wind power. We want to discourage the expansion of fossil-fuel burning energy production, the construction of new dams, and we advocate the total phase-out of nuclear power generation. We believe that the state has an important role to play by investing in and regulating our energy system. The Montana Green Party supports the establishment of a State Power Authority and the re-regulation of power production and distribution in the state. We believe that power should be produced and controlled by Municipal Utility Districts that are responsible to the people and communities they serve and are focused on providing clean, inexpensive power, not profits for out-of-state corporations.
For those who haven't read the complete Montana Green Party Platform, please do so at:
http://mtgreens.montanalinux.org/node/25
We can change or update it as circumstances demand.
_______________
Perhaps the above (which I wrote) explains the frantic opposition to the Green Party on the part of some (Republican) "Citizens for Clean Energy" leaders who are anti-labor, anti-co-op, and anti-municipal power companies like Electric City Power. It sounds as though we should be aligned with the City of Great Falls and SME instead of opposing their project, the Highwood Generating Station. This is why we had to part company with CCE (after being systematically marginalized and kicked out of that organization). While we were demanding of the City and SME that they take the preferred environmentally (and financially) responsible course, and not build or permit to be built any more coal fired power plants, CCE was allying itself with corporate monopolies like Northwestern Energy as well as the coal industry in order to promote IGCC and other projects which sounded suspiciously like "the Saudi Arabia of coal" rhetoric of Gov. Schweitzer and his predecessors. In the legislature, we found the Martz-Racicot Republicans allied with a few "Resource Democrats." Any and all good energy and environmental protection bills were tabled, and even the bedrock Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) was very nearly repealed in its entirety.
This is why we need a Green Party and a few articulate Green spokespeople in the Legislature.
We are anti-coal (and other fossil fuels), not anti-municipal power. And it was our own Great Falls Democrats who used this as an excuse to further punish and marginalize the Greens. By trying to foist off an obsolete, dirty power plant in the name of co-ops and locally-owned and democratically-controlled Municipal Power, some people (Lawton and Gregori) know full-well that they would forever discredit the very idea of clean, renewable energy, as well as the idea that local governments can do anything right. For this, they are praised for their "leadership". But most people aren't buying it.
So, the Greens were (falsely) accused by the Democrats for opposing "cheap public power", and damned by the Republicans for our progressive, anti-corporate agenda in general. We don't follow or serve the "corporate parties." We serve the people. But "the people" aren't listening (or allowed to listen by the corporate media monopolies), and in most cases are too fearful to respond, except with resentment toward the very people who are trying to save them. Such is "the crisis of democracy" and the moral dilemmas we face on a daily basis. --PHS
KEEP THE FOCUS
"The Montana Green Party promotes the use and development of renewable energy sources: solar, bio-mass, hydrogen and wind power. We want to discourage the expansion of fossil-fuel burning energy production, the construction of new dams and we advocate the total phase-out of nuclear power generation."
_____________
IRAQ WAR NEWS AND LINKS
From: William Crain, Progressive Democrats of America
williamcrain@earthlink.net
Message from Sender:
I feel we have to keep the pressure on. We're taking action this July in Billings with recruiting at MSU-B and not holding any public events like the last 4 months... August 6th the anniversary of Hiroshima we plan to hold as big an Impeachment Rally/Out of Iraq as possible...can we get at least 4 cities in MT to hold the same...??? i feel we should dove-tail with every like minded organization we can. I'm thinking of making some Museum Board cutouts of the Mushroom Cloud ... and perhaps teasing the Media with pix before the event... the friggin media here has to be succored into our lair ...otherwise they're absent as usual.
Where is Great Falls, Kalispell and Bozeman???
_____________
Bush's Incredible Shrinking "Coalition"
By Dave Lindorff http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=forward/23892/email_ref
Bush’s "Coalition of the Willing," that motley crew of cajoled and pressured mostly minor nations that provided token troops to send to Iraq along with the U.S. juggernaut during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is looking decidedly smaller today.
Since 2004, 17 countries, which had sent a total of 10,500 troops have pulled out entirely and brought everyone home. These include Italy, which at one point had the fourth-largest contingent of troops in the coalition (3200) and Ukraine, which had 1650 troops in Iraq, and also Iceland, which at one point had sent 2 soldiers, making it the smallest member of the invasion force.
Click here to read more on our site
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=forward/23892/email_ref
___________________
I've also been communicating with Helena activist Paul Edwards of the Progressive Democrats of Montana. He tells me the two organizations are entirely separate, but share similar goals, along with the Greens. He can be reached at hgmnude@bresnan.net
Timid Democrats Need to Stand Up or Get Lost, by Paul Edwards
http://www.counterpunch.org/edwards07042007.html
___________
House Passes Largest Increase in College Aid Since 1944 GI Bill
Michelle Rabinowitz reports for MTV: "Student loans got you down? Well, get ready for what is being touted as the biggest increase in higher-education funding since the GI Bill enabled millions of veterans to attend college after World War II. On Wednesday July 11 the House of Representatives passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 and - pay attention - backers say it could save students thousands of dollars. The bill passed by a vote of 273-149, and the Senate is set to take up the issue later this month. The White House released a statement on Tuesday that stated the president would veto the bill in its current form."
Military Files Left Unprotected Online
Mike Baker reports for the Associated Press: "Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq. Geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad. Plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The military calls it 'need-to-know' information that would pose a direct threat to US troops if it were to fall into the hands of terrorists. It's material so sensitive that officials refused to release the documents when asked. But it's already out there, posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and contractors, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
Was Baucus ever a Democrat?
Maybe so, in the sense that William Andrews Clark, JFK, FDR, or William Randolph Hearst were Democrats. He was certainly never any sort of "peace Democrat" or "Social Democrat," or anything more (or less) than a "corporate Democrat" or "machine Democrat." In short, Baucus remains a member of Montana's traditional, Stanford-educated, copper-collared dynasty of lawyers and large land-owners, allied in every case with the oppressors of Native Americans and destroyers of the environment.
I've taken the "dump Baucus in 2008" slogan out of the headlines for this Bulletin, for the benefit of those Democrats who might be reading (and might stop there), but still don't understand that Baucus is to the right of most congressional Republicans. I still count defeating Baucus in the next Senate race as one of our highest priorities. No matter how much he pretends otherwise, Max just doesn't "get it." He still thinks that governments are designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. He thinks most Montanans are warmongers, corporate welfare cheats, and in favor of a police state. He thinks we're an empire which can loot, steal, and destroy any other part of the world targeted by our "elected leaders." He is the K Street favorite -- the man always for sale to wealthy lobbyists and bill factories representing nothing but the corporate elite. In short, Baucus is a fascist. No one should doubt that. If the Democratic Party can't put forward a better candidate, then we, the Greens and other lesser parties, will have to do so.
I have no further interest in 'reforming' the Democratic Party, or trying to "reason" with people who have shown a propensity to destroy the Greens, Socialists, and anyone to the left of the Democratic "mainstream." And I doubt that Progressive Democrats are going to have much luck, either, but I am more than willing to work with them, as well as Libertarians and even Republicans who still believe in the principles of Abraham Lincoln, the American Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Max Baucus is one of the greatest single threats to all of these, and its time we recognized it.
Is there hope for a Montana Green Party?
In 2000, the percentage of Green Party voters for Ralph Nader in Montana was second only to Alaska's. Nader got 17% of the vote in Missoula, where today it is difficult to find anyone who will admit to being a Green. A decade or two earlier, the Montana Libertarians also had one of the highest percentages of voters, with Alaska again leading. So, Alaska is the "last frontier," with Montana a close second among the 50 states. Yet, both of us have histories of electing some of the most corrupt and socially/environmentally destructive Senators and Congressmen. How can this be?
Perhaps we just don't take politics (or government) very seriously. Baucus was probably first elected because the alcohol-soaked Congress needed a wine-god to straighten it out. The bad joke continues to the present day, even as Montana's per-capita alcohol consumption has dramatically declined, and the Tavern Association has morphed into the Machine Gambling Lobby. The bi-annual circus of the Montana Legislature hasn't gotten any better, either. It is still approximately on the same level it was in the early 20th century when William Andrews Clark walked in with a suitcase full of cash, and proceeded to buy himself (twice!) a seat in the United States Senate. It was Great Falls' founder, Paris Gibson, who was chosen to complete Clark's term after the U.S. Senate censured and evicted him.
Montana has had two great Senators besides Gibson (who wasn't there long enough to do much good): Burton K. Wheeler, who ran as Bob LaFollette's running mate on the Progressive ticket, and Lee Metcalf, who had one of the best records in Senate history for opposing corporate power as well as protecting the environment. Both of these Senators were vastly popular; both were Democrats; and neither of them ever spent very much on campaigns or campaign advertising. Baucus's gargantuan fund-raising efforts show dramatically how little liked and how little support he has among average or below-average income Montanans.
Please consider once again joining, helping organize, and contributing to the Montana Green Party. If there were any better answer, I would certainly be advocating for and supporting it. Or if you must stay a Democrat, then please take back your party from the Baucus's and Schweitzer's, and make sure that the Tester's, few that they are, know what you want and represent your views. Change is imperative. More of the same will mean the end of the United States, the Constitution, and our very survival as a community and species. -- Paul Stephens
For those who haven't read the complete Montana Green Party Platform, please do so at: http://mtgreens.montanalinux.org/node/25
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
FROM HELENA INDEPENDENT RECORD
Baucus sets fundraising record
By CHARLES S. JOHNSON - IR State Bureau - 07/12/07
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007/07/12/montana/a010711_05.txt
HELENA - U.S. Sen. Max Baucus has shattered a Montana political fundraising record, racking up $6.1 million in total donations and other receipts through June 30, including $1.6 million the past three months, a campaign-finance report showed Thursday.
The Democrat reported spending $2.1 million so far, including $198,419 the past three months, his latest campaign-finance report said. That leaves Baucus with about $4 million left in the bank as of June 30, 16 months before the November 2008 election.
Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has not yet officially announced he will be a candidate for a sixth, six-year Senate term, despite garnering campaign money at a record clip for Montana.
"He’s the Finance chairman; his fund-raising is going to be good,’’ said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the Cook Political Report in a phone interview. "He also probably realizes it probably dissuades any serious challenger. He’s doing what he needs to do.’’
In its latest rating as of June 27, the Cook Political Report, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter that analyses races, ranked the 2008 Montana Senate race in the "solid Democrat’’ category. The newsletter does not consider Baucus’ re-election race to be competitive, nor is it likely to become closely contested.
So far, Baucus has only one challenger, state Rep. Michael Lange, R-Billings.
Baucus is proud to have received donations from all 56 Montana counties and has ’’an army of supporters across the state focused on returning him to the Senate in 2008,’’ spokesman Barrett Kaiser said.
"He’s got the support of folks representing firefighters, farmers and ranchers, teachers and small business owners,’’ Kaiser said. "Max is stronger than he’s ever been. His popularity shows that he’s using his seniority to do what’s right for Montana.’’
The report summary did not break down what percentage of the money came from Montanans versus out-of-state residents.
For years, Baucus and former Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., routinely broke each other’s campaign fundraising records when each was up for election.
As of June 30, 2005, Burns had raised about $3.2 million with 16 months before the election, compared with Baucus’ $6.1 million at the same point in his current campaign.
Burns, who lost to Democrat Jon Tester, went on to raise $9.3 million for his entire 2006 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finances. Baucus raised $6.7 million in his 2002 race, it reported..
The summary pages of his current campaign finance report show Baucus snagged $2.93 million in donations from individuals, including $820,528 the past three months.
Political action committees, or PACs, have ponied up $2.87 million so far, including $696,686 the past three months. PACs are groups of people from a business, union or other special-interest group that pool their money for donations to candidates.
Montana Republican Party Chairman Erik Iverson of Missoula said he isn’t surprised Baucus is raising ’’huge sums of money’’ because as Senate Finance chairman, Baucus ranks as "one of the top recipients of special-interest PAC dollars."
"Money doesn’t buy you a new voting record,’’ Iverson said. "No matter how much money Senator Baucus has in the bank doesn’t change the fact that he has voted to give Social Security benefits to illegal aliens. He’s voted to raise taxes. Senator Baucus’ voting record is going to be what’s front and center in the U.S. Senate race, not how much money he has in his bank account.’’
In response, Kaiser said, "Max is proud of his record of accomplishment in the U.S. Senate. and we’re prepared to defend that record.’’ Baucus was the "architect of the largest tax cut in the generation’’ and "staunchly opposed the most recent immigration bill before the U.S. Senate,’’ Kaiser said.
__________________
Frank Kromkowski's Response:
The Baucus claim that he is the "architect of the largest tax cut in the generation’’ should be examined more closely. It would have helped if the story ( "Baucus sets fundraising record," ) would have :
(1) explained or at least referenced what those "largest tax cuts" were;
(2) noted that critics and analysts have claimed (and shown through careful research) that those tax cuts have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy (not the moderate income firefighters, farmers and ranchers, teachers and small business owners that Baucus cites); and
(3) that Baucus is known to be darling of K Street's corporate lobbyists and advocates, "K Street's Favorite Democrat" by ARI BERMAN
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070319/berman ; and
(4) that Baucus is currently blocking the Democrats' push to permanently prevent massive middle-class tax hikes (David Sirota article,
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/07/baucus_blocks_dem_push_to_perm.html .
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
http://www.cbpp.org/, has some solid research and analysis of all this at:
http://www.cbpp.org/pubs/fedtax.htm and
http://www.cbpp.org/9-27-06tax.htm
________________
Baucus Blocks Dem Push to Permanently Prevent Massive Middle-Class Tax Hike
By David Sirota, 7/11/07
"Donnie," sighs Walter Sobchak to the Big Lebowski, "These men are cowards."
Words to remember when watching the political system these days. Take, as just today's example, the Associated Press's new report about how Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D) is using his position as the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to block a proposal to permanently protect middle-class taxpayers from a massive tax increase. Reading this story makes you realize that it was no coincidence that The Onion in 2001 ran a now-famous satire piece authored by a fictional Baucus entitled "I'm Such a Shitty Senator" and featuring a fantasy of Max lamenting "Christ, what a hack I am." Yes, Max, you really are.
Here's the AP's excerpt:
"House Democrats' promise to permanently protect millions of middle-class families from a mostly unknown tax increase is faltering before it's even unveiled...[House Democrats] would like to rewrite the AMT to once-and-for-all prevent it from ensnaring about 20 million additional and unsuspecting middle-class taxpayers...The problem is that Rangel's and Neal's plan is a nonstarter in the Senate where the tax-writing Finance Committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is up for re-election next year...Baucus has shown no interest in a Rangel-Neal proposal to pay for protecting middle-class voters from an AMT increase by instead imposing a new 4 percent or so surcharge on incomes above $500,000 a year. That would effectively raise the marginal tax rate on those with half-million-dollar incomes back to 39 percent, where it was in 2000...Many Democrats, including party leaders, appear comfortable with Baucus' temporary fix rather than forcing a politically risky vote to raise taxes."
Washington is indeed a screwed up place, utterly divorced from the reality the rest of the country faces. But this is just about the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. Somehow, inside the Beltway it is considered "politically risky" to even consider a proposal that permanently protects tens of millions of middle-class taxpayers and is paid for by merely returning the tax rates of the tiny handful of Americans who make $500,000 a year to Clinton-era levels. The fact that Democratic leaders think it is politically safe and LESS risky to refuse to permanently address this imminent middle-class tax hike is an even more sad commentary on how incredibly out of touch some of our "representatives" really are with the majority of Americans.
This is all made even more insane considering both the increasing political impotence of the GOP's tax arguments in the Rocky Mountain West, and Baucus's position representing one of the lowest income states in the country. I don't know off the top of my head the exact number of people in Montana who make over $500,000 a year - but if I had to guess, I'd say it's extremely small, perhaps under 1,000 total people. The fact that he is afraid to permanently protect middle-class taxpayers as the senator from Montana shows just how bought-and-paid for American politics truly is. To put it into Montana terms, this is a senator who is now on record refusing to protect the vast majority of his constituents for fear of making the folks at the Yellowstone Club angry.
Here's the deal, folks: A Senate Finance Committee chairman that refuses to permanently prevent a massive, regressive tax increase on middle-class families from occurring - and actually goes out of his way to stop that permanent fix - is effectively endorsing the massive, regressive tax increase in question. That's not an interpretation - that's just a fact. While Baucus may worry about the GOP making the absurd charge of "tax raiser" if he supports the Rangel plan to protect the majority of American taxpayers, he should quake in fear at the idea of the GOP making him American history's poster boy for tax increases if he continues blocking a permanent solution to this problem.
Walter Sobchak is correct. These professional politicians in the Senate club, these Wise Old Men of Washington - yes, Donnie, it's true: These men are cowards.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
FROM THE MISSOULA INDEPENDENT
Second chance: Will Senate Democrats do the right thing?
By: George Ochenski
Posted: 07/12/2007, Missoula Independent
Democrats hold a slim majority in the U.S. Senate, so slim that any attempt to keep their promise to the voters to end the Iraq War via legislation seems doomed, since they don’t have the votes to over-ride the veto President Bush has vowed to issue. But this week, as the Senate debates a new $649 billion budget for the Department of Defense, they have a second chance to do the right thing: de-fund Bush’s tragic and disastrous wars and shift those expenditures to the nation’s critical needs. The question is, will they?
This spring Senate Democrats took it on the chin in editorials, columns and commentaries nationwide when they voted to authorize more than $100 billion in a separate bill to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the good senators thought the public was just kidding when we voted them into office on the strength of their promises to get us out of the war. But when the polls started coming out, it became clear that the American people were more than slightly disappointed with Congress’ "business as usual" approach-especially where funding the war is concerned.
The latest polls show President Bush’s approval rating is at 29 percent…the lowest of his time in office. But the approval rating for Congress is even lower! Polls done by CBS, Newsweek, Gallup, NBC and Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg at the end of June found Congressional approval ratings ranging from 23 to 27 percent. If that doesn’t move even the most sedentary, undecided, fence-sitting Democrat to action, they ought to take a look at their disapproval numbers, which run from 64 to 71 percent-roughly the same percentage of the public that wants us out of Iraq.
Obviously, these are not good numbers for the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. After all, it took Bush nearly seven years to fall this low-or maybe it took seven years for the American public to realize just how much baloney Bush has been peddling from the bully pulpit in the form of propaganda, fear-mongering and cover-ups in his attempts to make it look like we’re winning a war that we’ve already lost. But make no mistake about it, that part of Bush’s Great Game, at least, is over. Just this week ABC News reported that the White House is "in panic mode" over the mounting defections of Republicans unwilling to continue Bush’s wars.
Given this opportunity, and especially with the president and his disintegrating administration on the ropes, what will the Democrats do? Consider that the proposed $649 billion defense spending bill, with the additional hundreds of billions in separate war appropriations, means this country will soon be draining its treasury on military spending to the tune of $2 billion a day.
While it’s hard to put that kind of number in perspective, consider that a 1.35 megawatt wind generator currently costs about $1 million to purchase and install. Two billion dollars would buy the nation 2,000 wind turbines. What that means in real life is that we could supply all of Montana's electricity needs (approx 2,000 megawatts) from windpower with just one day’s worth of war funding. Of course we could also do a lot of other great things with the money now being spent to manufacture weapons and wage wars. Two billion bucks a day could send a lot of kids to college debt-free-what a radical idea-or institute real universal health care, or bail out Social Security, for instance.
The decision now before the U.S. Senate is whether the world’s only remaining superpower really needs or can afford to spend this outrageous amount of money on the military. In the past, Congress has basically allowed itself to be bullied by Bush’s rhetoric that if "we don’t fight them over there, we’ll be fighting them over here" so we need to "support the troops" at all costs. Given the rise, not fall, in global terrorism incidents since Bush initiated his futile wars of aggression, however, one could reasonably conclude that spending more on the same activities-or "staying the course," as the president likes to say-will only engender more terrorism and more international hatred toward the U.S., further imperiling us in the future.
Seems like it would be easy for the Senate to weigh all these considerations and find the administration’s request for massively increased military spending unjustified, unnecessary and unwise-especially considering that the proposed new level is more than twice what was being spent during the Cold War era, and far surpasses the military spending of any other nation on earth.
Perhaps, to help the good senators in their decision making, they might find it useful to see just where a good portion of this money is going by reading a newly released book titled Blackwater-The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, wherein author Jeremy Scahill reveals the ugly machinations between top-level Bush administration officials and Blackwater USA, the company that hires and deploys former special forces military personnel from around the world on contract to our government.
Would our senators be shocked to know that we are now using former Central American death-squad goons to fight our wars? Or that hundreds of Chileans who formerly carried out General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime and "disappeared" thousands of their own countrymen and women are now cutting loose on the Iraqis? Maybe our senators would even become slightly curious at the billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on activities that we can’t even verify because they’re classified "black ops."
Senate Democrats have a chance to get answers to some of these questions in the coming weeks-and they have a second chance to live up to their campaign promises and finally stop the insanity of the Bush wars. The question remains: Will they?
Helena’s George Ochenski rattles the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Independent.
Contact Ochenski at opinion@missoulanews.com
/\/\/\/\/\/\
From: Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
Peace News & Calendar for 7-12-07
Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
E-newsletter & Calendar - July 12, 2007
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." ~Edmund Burke
Dear peace seekers,
The next few months are critical in our efforts to end the war in Iraq. Every member of Congress is focused on Iraq right now. The Senate and House are beginning to vote on amendments and bills to withdraw troops from Iraq and otherwise change U.S. policy in Iraq, including the $648 billion Defense Authorization Bill. And all of this will lead up to a probable showdown in September, when they will take up the War Funding Bill and Gen. Petraeus will issue his report on the state of the war in Iraq. It is imperative that Congress hear from the peace movement that we will NOT be satisfied with halfway measures. While it's great that more members of Congress from both major political parties are saying they disagree with the President, we need to make sure they know that we want all of the troops brought home, now! Many in Congress may support a troop reduction but settle for a modified version of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. They may vote to bring "combat" troops home, but allow Bush to keep tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq to "fight terrorism," protect U.S. installations and train Iraqi troops. And they are doing nothing to address the growing numbers of U.S. mercenaries, who now outnumber troops in Iraq, involved in the occupation. These halfway measures will do nothing to end the bloodshed and destruction, and may even put American troops there in greater harm. If you’ve never written a letter to Congress before, now would be the time. And if you’re a veteran letter-writer, please keep it up. I’m also sure that there are many creative ideas out there for other ways we can impact Congress and raise awareness. Let’s add all of our individual efforts together and make a surge for peace, Betsy
For a full listing of events, please visit
~PEACE ACTION OPPORTUNITIES~
The Progressive Democrats of America invite you to Call today to let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office know whether or not you support Impeachment (Kucinich's bill H Res 333 to impeach VP Cheney). All calls will be forwarded to the Speaker. Call 202-225-0100, fax her at 202 225-8259, or email You can also call the capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Sign the Live Earth Pledge
Be Part of the 90% Reduction Group, a worldwide Yahoo group that talks together and helps each other figure out how to keep cutting back their us of carbon emitting items and behaviors. It helps to see what other people are doing. The email to join the conversation is 90PercentReduction@yahoogroups.com
2nd Annual WALK FOR PEACE, Bigfork, Montana on Saturday, September 15th. The walk will raise money for the Peace Alliance’s Campaign for a U.S. Department of Peace (www.thepeacealliance.org ). For more information and sponsor sheets, contact Debi at 406.471.0565 or bfbear@aboutmontana.net . You can also sign up to lead a Walk of your own in your community!
Montana Partners for Impeachment is planning a Hiroshima Day Rally Aug 5-6th. After 17 groups paraded in Butte for peace and Iraq withdrawal July 4th, MPFI is encouraged it can get 6-8 of them locally--and religious communities that stand for no more Iraqs--to rally together in a local park on Hiroshima Day. Have your group contact us with your thoughts for the event and perhaps a presentation you'd like to make. Other Montana cities may have peace groups wishing to rally the same day. You can also request their DVD "Fraudulent War' for public viewings at . For more information, contact Bruce at or 549-4128.
Tuesdays, 5-6:00 pm, Higgins Avenue Bridge. Bring your signs or flags or pick up one at JRPC and join this weekly peace presence. If you can’t stand with the group, perhaps you could make a sign for someone there to hold or help out in another way. Bring signs or ideas to the Peace Center.
Thursdays, 5-7 pm, JRPC Library. Know the Government: An Introduction, sponsored by the Missoula Free School and covering the basic inner workings of the US government, from the Federalist Papers, the structure of the government based on the Constitution, civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, and landmark Supreme Court Decisions. For more information, contact missoulafreeschool@gmail.com
Fridays, 12:15-12:45, Higgins Avenue Bridge. The Missoula Women in Black stand in solidarity with the international movement of women mourning the victims of war and other forms of violence. The Missoula Women in Black come together in the shared belief in peace. Everyone is invited to join them. For more information email or call Carel at 406-721-2482.
Sundays, 7:00 pm, Mission Valley Peace Vigil at the shelter in Ronan City Park. Anyone interested is encouraged to join. For more information, call Pete at 883-5553.
Regular CAJA meetings will resume in September. Contact Jay Bostrom at for information or to be on an e-mail list for regular notices of summer CAJA events.
GlobalWarmingSolution.org Meeting Schedule: Next meeting is Thursday, July 12, 7 pm in the JRPC Library. For more information, call 542-8089 or .
Pull For Peace on Peace Park Land! With the dry weather, it's probably past prime time for pulling toadflax, but it's now time to tackle the knapweed. Gloves and a dandelion digger type tool are needed. If you feel confident you know what, where, and how to pull, please grab a friend or two and go to the Peace park any time. Every effort counts! If you have questions about what, where, or how to help, call Ethel at 549-9722.
~OF INTEREST~
Iraq: Go Deep or Get Out, by Stephen Biddle
The Road Home, The New York Times Editorial
The Jeannette Rankin Peace Center is celebrating 20 years of working to build non-violence, social justice and sustainability. Thanks for your support!! We are pleased to be a member of the Montana Shares Network. Check and see if your workplace participates in Montana Shares - It’s a great way to help JRPC! If not, call us and find out how you can sign your workplace up.
The JRPC e-newsletter is sent to our listserv each Thursday. Deadline for calendar items is noon, Wednesday, each week. If you would like to be taken off our mailing list, please reply to and let us know. If you know of others who would enjoy receiving our News and Calendar, forward this to them. To sign up, send a "subscribe" email to .
Betsy Mulligan-Dague, Executive Director
Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
_________________
Montana Peace Seekers Network (a coalition of 16 Montana Peace organizations; alsowith links to Idaho and Wyoming peace organizations and to the Helena Peace Seekers website, )
Veterans for Peace
Iraq Veterans Against the War
United for Peace and Justice (a coalition of more than 1300 local and national groups throughout the United States)
Voices for Creative Nonviolence (a campaign led by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly)
Code Pink: Women for Peace
___________________
FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!
* The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of Attacks on
Iraqi Civilians *
The Nation magazine has published a startling new expose of fifty American combat veterans of the Iraq War who give vivid on-the-record accounts of the US military occupation in Iraq and describe a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts. The investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate assertions of indiscriminate killings and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq. We speak with the article¹s co-author, journalist Laila Al-Arian, and four Iraq veterans who came forward with their stories of war.
Listen/Watch/Read
* Iraq War Vets Describe "Brutal Techniques" Used by U.S. Military Against Iraqi Civilians *
Two Iraq war veterans, Sgt. John Bruhns and Spc. Garett Reppenhagen recount their experience in Iraq, particularly describe the brutal house raids they conducted on a regular basis in Iraq. Spc. Reppenhagen says, "You could see the frustration on [the Iraqi's] faces, the anger, the sadness, the worry, the fear. You know, it was very hard to see the faces of the Iraqi people when you took their family members away...especially when you know most of the time you have bad intelligence and you are raiding the house that usually the people inside are innocent."
Listen/Watch/Read
* If Soldiers Came From Another Country And Did This To My Family, I Would Be An Insurgent Too -- War Vet Describes Iraq House Raid *
Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, who served in Iraq for one year, recalls raiding a sprawling farm on the outskirts of Tikrit in 2004 and the screams he can still hear of the man he woke up inside. Sgt. Westphal says, "He was so terrified and so afraid for his family. I thought of my family at the time and thought 'If I was the patriarch of the family, if soldiers came from another country and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent too.'" We also speak with Sgt. Dustin Flatt who describes unarmed civilians being shot or run over by U.S. military convoys.
Listen/Watch/Read
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
FROM GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Open Letter from Green Party to Michael Moore, as 'Sicko' opens nationwide:
Democrats are a lost cause on health care, while the Green Party's candidates and platform demand a single-payer national health plan
Americans will only get a true universal health plan (Single-Payer / Medicare For All) when Greens are elected
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States sent an open letter to Michael Moore, whose movie 'Sicko' opened in theaters last week, urging him to join the efforts of the Green Party and its candidates and officeholders to enact a single-payer national health plan (also called Medicare For All).
The Green Party agrees with Michael Moore's premise that the US's private insurance system must be dismantled, and that the country must convert to a single-payer plan similar to the Canadian system.
Greens warned Mr. Moore that the Democratic Party (like the Republican Party) is too awash in corporate money to end the stranglehold of the private HMO-insurance industry and enact genuine coverage for all Americans. Congress will only seriously consider a single-payer plan when Greens begin to win seats in the US House and Senate.
The Green Party letter encourages Mr. Moore to help Greens get elected to Congress, as well as state legislatures and city councils, and predicts that the Green Party's 2008 nominee and national slate will be the only candidates on most ballots who support single-payer.
The text of the letter follows below.
Dear Mike,
Congratulations on the opening of 'Sicko' and all the glowing reviews!
We in the Green Party hope that millions of Americans will see 'Sicko' and understand that America has a choice: we can either have quality health care guaranteed for everyone, or we can maintain a system based on corporate insurance and HMO coverage. We can't have both. And we hope that the American people will realize that it's time to demand a single-payer national health plan and stop privileging corporate profits over the health -- the very lives -- of the American people.
Here's the problem: we're not going to get a national health plan as long as the political landscape remains limited to two parties addicted to corporate contributions. Republican and Democratic politicians alike refuse to consider any plan that doesn't leave private HMOs and insurance corporations in charge.
There are some exceptions among Dems, like Reps. John Conyers (Mich.) and Dennis Kucinich (Oh.), but Rep. Conyers' single-payer bill has as little chance of passage as Rep. Kucinich has of getting nominated. Once upon a time, the Democratic Party supported national health coverage and even endorsed it in the Democratic national platform in 1948. But they deleted it from the platform in the 1990s to make room for President Clinton's 'managed-care' phony reform scheme, which would have enlarged the power of major insurance firms. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry both rejected national health insurance. (Mr. Gore saw the light and endorsed it a couple of years later.)
There's only one prominent national party that supports single-payer/Medicare For All -- the Green Party. The Green Party and its candidates have demanded single-payer ever since we were founded, and we don't accept corporate contributions from HMOs, insurance firms, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or any other corporate lobby.
Let's be honest, Mike. The USA will never have a national health insurance program until we break the two-party stranglehold and see the emergence of a new party that's free of corporate influence.
If we can get a few Greens into Congress, as well as into state legislatures and city halls all across America, and if our presidential candidates can draw significant percentages on Election Day, it'll change the political landscape. When Democratic politicians have to compete with Greens as well as Republicans, more of them will embrace single-payer. (And some maverick Republicans will support it, too!)
When the 2004 election season began, you and Bill Maher got down on your knees in front of 2000 Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader and begged him not to run again in 2004. You and Bill insisted that 2004 wasn't the time for a third-party challenge, and that the priority of every rational American should be the removal of George W. Bush from the White House.
Millions of Americans who support a national health plan -- as well as an end to the Iraq War -- agreed with you and Bill and voted for John Kerry, a candidate awash in corporate money. Mr. Kerry dismissed national health care and declared himself solidly in support of the Iraq War....
read complete letter >>
Hey, Mike, do you really want to see a national health plan enacted? Do you really want the message of 'Sicko' to be part of the public debate over health care in the 2008 election and beyond?
Then let's stop wasting time. Help us run a Green candidate for president in 2008. Help us get Greens elected to Congress. Help us place Greens in statehouses and county commissions and city halls and school boards. (Yes, we know you have supported Green candidates in the past!) Help us get ballot access in every state. Help us bring the Green message to the American people. Help us make the Greens a major political US party. Help us spark the kind of revolution in US politics that will make a single-payer national health plan a reality!
Yours truly,
The Green Party of the United States
MORE INFORMATION
Green Party of the United States
1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, DC 20009.
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
Green Party News Center
Green Party Speakers Bureau
Archives from the 2004 Cobb-LaMarche presidential campaign, including information on the Ohio and New Mexico recounts
The Green Party and Single-Payer National Health Insurance:
"Sen. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders are obstacles to real health care reform, say Greens" (press release, February 26, 2007)
"Democrats and Republicans Downplay Health Care Crisis" (press release, August 24, 2006)
Video: Pennsylvania Green gubernatorial candidate Marakay Rogers discusses national health insurance
Green Party Platform: Universal Health Care
http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/socjustice.html#1004214
Physicians for a National Health Program
Frequently Asked Questions
"CBS's 'Sicko' Spin: Americans Don't Want Single-Payer Health? Except They Do"
FAIR Action Alert, June 25, 2007
Information on rigged US elections:
"The GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad"
By Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis, The Free Press, April 23, 2007
"Will The Next Election Be Hacked? Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted"
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rolling Stone, October 5, 2006 issue
"Our Rigged Elections: The Elephant in the Polling Booth"
By Mark Crispin Miller, The Washington Spectator, October 3, 2006
"Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rolling Stone, posted June 1, 2006
"None Dare Call It Stolen: Ohio, the election, and America's servile press"
By Mark Crispin Miller, Harper's Magazine, August 2005
"New Florida vote scandal feared"
By Greg Palast, BBC, October 26, 2004
"Did Bush camp err on ballot papers? Democrats say the president may have missed Florida's filing deadline, but say they don't plan a challenge."
St. Petersburg Times, September 11, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/11/Decision2004/Did_Bush_camp_err_on_.shtml
________________
Fixing Health Care: Not Government vs. Market
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t Columnist
Tuesday 10 July 2007
With "SiCKO" rallying popular support for universal health care coverage, defenders of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are shifting into high gear with their scare tactics. The key to their efforts is to frighten people about the prospect of the government managing their health care.
Whether or not this sounds scary, the reality is that the government already structures the way in which we receive health care. However, the current pattern of government intervention ensures high profits for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries; it is not designed to provide adequate health care.
Starting with a very simple but important form of government intervention, insurance contracts are enforced in a very different way than most other types of contracts. When a person fails to disclose information on an insurance contract, it is grounds for voiding the contract. This means, as shown in "SiCKO," if a person did not report a pre-existing condition, even if it seemed trivial and irrelevant at the time, an insurance company can treat this fact as grounds for voiding a policy and not paying claims.
By contrast, most contracts have a buyer-beware structure. If I buy a house and didn't bother to notice that the roof was falling in, that's my problem.
We actually have a great model for reforming health insurance contracts that would bring them closer to the buyer-beware model. In 1994, the Gingrich Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. This law made it far more difficult for shareholders to sue corporate executives for stock manipulation. The law essentially requires the shareholder to prove that there was a deliberate act of fraud. It is not sufficient to show that the CEO dumped $100 million of company stock the day before announcing a plunge in earnings.
We can follow Gingrich's lead and say that health insurers must pay claims unless they can show a deliberate act of fraud on the part of the beneficiary. In other words, unless the insurance company can show that the insuree deliberately lied or concealed information, they must pay the claim. After all, why shouldn't the law give the same protection to ordinary people that it gives to CEOs.
In a similar vein, the extraordinarily high prices for many drugs and medical devices are almost completely attributable to patent protection. Virtually all drugs, medical devices, and medical tests would be cheap, if it were not for the monopolies that the government grants patent holders. Patent monopolies should be thought of as a prize that the government gives to reward innovation. It is because of this government intervention in the market that millions of people cannot afford the treatment they need. If the government stayed out of the market, treatments that can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars would instead cost a few hundred dollars.
It can be argued that if the government restructured the law on insurance contracts that the private insurance market would disappear. Given the incredible inefficiency of the private market (administrative costs in the United States are approximately 10 times as high as in Canada), it is not clear why we would want a government intervention that makes the market less efficient.
Similarly, patent monopolies are one way in which the government can promote innovation. It is almost certainly not the best mechanism. We need a real discussion of the alternatives to patent monopolies .
The key point is that we must first recognize the important ways in which the government already shapes the health care market, before we can decide on the best way to structure the market. The choice is not whether the government will intervene, but how.
The insurance and pharmaceutical industries don't ever want the question to be posed this way, because they know they benefit from public prejudices by having the issue portrayed as the market versus the government. The media, including the liberal media like the New York Times and National Public Radio (e.g. see "2008 Candidate Vow to Overhaul U.S. Health Care "), routinely frame their stories in ways that advance the insurance and pharmaceutical industries' agenda.
But, if we are ever going to think seriously about how best to restructure health care, we will have to clearly understand how the system works now. The current system is not a free market; it is a set of government rigged rules that ensure that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries prosper, and that tens of millions of people go without access to care.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org ). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE
...on the web
eNewsletter: Thursday, July 12, 2007
CONTENTS:
Planning for the New Orleans Conference
New Mexico Medical Marijuana Program Goes Into Effect
Former Secretary of State George Shultz Joins DPA Honorary Board
Vancouver Votes for Innovative Harm Reduction Programs
2. In Other News
Congress Votes to Lift Washington, DC Syringe Funding Ban
Remembering Barry Beyerstein
3. Announcements
DPA Seeks Part-time Website Assistant
World Psychedelic Forum: Call for Papers, "Rising Researchers" Session
4. Highlight
In Pot We Trust
_____________________________________________________________________
F E A T U R E D C O N T E N T
PLANNING FOR THE NEW ORLEANS CONFERENCE
December's conference in New Orleans is shaping up to be the biggest in our history. Register now for the conference ( ) and be sure to join DPA ( ) in order to take advantage of the membership discount!
Bookmark for frequent updates about the conference program, announcements, awards and more!
See you in December!
Stefanie Jones
Conference Coordinator
Drug Policy Alliance
and
Co-host organizations the ACLU ( ),
the Harm Reduction Coalition ( ),
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition ( ),
Marijuana Policy Project ( ) and
Students for Sensible Drug Policy ( ).
NEW MEXICO MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROGRAM GOES INTO EFFECT
Following a seven-year fight to pass legislation, New Mexico's landmark medical cannabis law went into effect July 1.
According to the state law, the Department of Health must issue rules and regulations by October 1 advising the state-licensed production and distribution of medical marijuana for registered patients. The production and distribution of medical cannabis overseen by the Department would ensure a safe and secure supply of medicine for patients, particularly for those individuals who do not know where or how to access cannabis.
"New Mexico did the right thing by guaranteeing the protection of patients under state law," said Reena Szczepanski, director of DPA New Mexico. "As we've seen in other states that allow medical marijuana, the federal government very rarely arrests or prosecutes qualified and registered patients."
New Mexico is the twelfth state to endorse the use of medical cannabis and only the fourth state legislature to enact such a measure. Gov. Bill Richardson, who signed the bill in April, is the first presidential candidate to have supported medical marijuana by signing it into law.
The hallmark of New Mexico's medical marijuana law is its strict controls and safeguards to prevent abuse. It will be one of the most tightly regulated programs in the country.
Applications for identification cards for both patients and their primary caregivers are available at the Department of Health's website: .
The law protects qualified patients suffering from certain debilitating medical conditions, including HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, epilepsy, spinal cord injury with intractable spasticity, or admittance into hospice care, to use medical cannabis for relief of their symptoms.
For questions regarding qualification for the program or the application process, please contact Melissa Milam with the Department of Health at (505) 827-2321.
VANCOUVER VOTES FOR INNOVATIVE HARM REDUCTION PROGRAMS
In keeping with Vancouver's history of innovation in response to drug misuse, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and the Vancouver City Council voted last week to support two public health-oriented drug policy measures. One would extend the operation of the city's safer injection site, the first in North America, for three and a half years. The other would create a research trial to transition people struggling with addiction from using illegal street drugs to using legal prescription drugs. This would have international significance as a program that does substitution not only for heroin--which is currently being done in both Vancouver and Montreal--but for stimulant drugs.
Insite ( ), the safer injection facility, is similar to programs already in operation throughout Europe and in Australia, but met a great deal of opposition in Canada when it sought to open its doors more than three years ago. With support from Vancouver's past mayors, the facility opened and has since been incredibly successful.
The current mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan, has also strongly supported Insite in the face of pressure from Canada's Conservative government. The facility operates thanks to a federal exemption to Canada's drug laws, and last week's resolution called for the government to extend that exemption, set to expire this year....
The other measure the City Council voted to support is a research trial called Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment (CAST: ). The trial would target people for whom traditional treatment methods have not worked, helping them switch from illegal street drugs, including stimulants, to legally available, orally-administered prescription medications. The program would put participants in contact with counseling and housing services.
The ultimate goal of the trial is ending drug dependency, but the proposal also articulates the measurable outcomes of reducing the open air drug market, lowering property crime, and improving health, housing access, and employment options for drug users.
"If there's a leader in North America when it comes to drug policy, it's Vancouver," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of DPA. "It's truly an outpost of European pragmatism in North America, which DPA is working hard to replicate in our own country. Vancouver has led the way in introducing safer injection sites and heroin maintenance trials on this continent, and now they're demonstrating global leadership with the CAST research trial. Mayor Sam Sullivan and his two predecessors as mayor, Philip Owen and Larry Campbell, deserve great credit for spearheading a bipartisan consensus in dealing with the city's tough drug problems."
The implementation of CAST and the continuation of Insite would both require exemptions granted by Health Canada, the federal health agency.
_____________________________________________________________________
I N O T H E R N E W S
WANT TO END THE DRUG WAR? DITCH UNREASONABLE LAWS. Nadelmann, Ethan, USA Today. July 9, 2007. Voters are tired of elected officials breaking up families and wasting taxpayer dollars on ineffective policies. When dealing with drugs and addictions, offenders need treatment and second chances, not knee-jerk, lock-'em-up policies. Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann discusses these issues in this USA Today piece.
STANDING SILENT NATION. Hermann, Courtney and Towfighnia, Suree. July 1, 2007. For three years, an Oglala Sioux family planted industrial hemp. But each year, their harvest was disrupted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). From the hemp fields of Pine Ridge to the US Federal Court of Appeals, the one-hour documentary Standing Silent Nation tracks one family's effort to create economic independence for themselves, their reservation, and their future generations.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations
John Solomon of the Washington Post reports: "As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. 'There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,' Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005. Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act."
Iraq Government Missed All Targets
Anne Flaherty and Anne Gearan report for the Associated Press: "A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the US-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reforms. 'The 'pivot point' for addressing the matter will no longer be September 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called 'surge' plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released,' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion."
62 Immigrants Die in US Jails
"Sixty-two immigrants have died in US jails since 2004 for lack of medical care, human rights groups told members of the US Congress Monday. 'Deficient medical care in immigration detention is a systematic problem and needs to be addressed,' said Tom Jawetz, of the American Civil Liberties Union, the largest US group defending civil rights," reports Agence France-Presse.
EU Mediterranean States Call for Middle East Peace Conference
Francois Murphy reports for Reuters that the foreign ministers of EU's Mediterranean states - Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Romania and Slovenia have welcomed Arab states' efforts for peace following the failed US-backed "road map." The EU states have called for an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying Israel should make more concessions for peace.
US Army Falls Short of Recruiting Goals Again
Agence France-Presse reports, "The US Army fell short of its recruiting goal in June for the second straight month, raising concerns over the impact of an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, US defense officials said Monday."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
Global Research Feature Article www.GlobalResearch.ca
Spiraling US Federal Debt Triggers Decline of Dollar --A Non-Inflationary Solution to the Federal Debt Crisis
by Ellen Hodgson Brown
Global Research, July 11, 2007
webofdebt.com
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6288
The U.S. federal debt has reached crisis proportions, approaching $9 trillion in 2007. U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker has warned that just the interest on the debt will soon be more than the taxpayers can afford to pay. He observed in 2003:
We cannot simply grow our way out of [the national debt]. . . . The ultimate alternatives to definitive and timely action are not only unattractive, they are arguably infeasible. Specifically, raising taxes to levels far in excess of what the American people have ever supported before, cutting total spending by unthinkable amounts, or further mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren to an extent that our economy, our competitive posture and the quality of life for Americans would be seriously threatened.1
Nearly half the public portion of the federal debt is now owed to foreigners, and they are pulling out of dollars into other currencies as the dollar shrinks in value. Oil-producing countries are also moving to other currencies for their oil trades, removing a major incentive for foreign central banks to hold U.S. government bonds. In an April 2005 article in Counter Punch, Mike Whitney warned:
This is much more serious than a simple decline in the value of the dollar. If the major oil producers convert from the dollar to the euro, the American economy will sink almost overnight. If oil is traded in euros then central banks around the world would be compelled to follow and America will be required to pay off its enormous $8 trillion debt. That, of course, would be doomsday for the American economy. . . . If there's a quick fix, I have no idea what it might be.2
Today, the "quick fix" of the Federal Reserve and its affiliated banks is to quietly buy back the bonds with money created with accounting entries on their books. This is not actually a new practice. The fact that banks buy government bonds with money created out of thin air was confirmed as far back as 1935, when Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles testified before the U.S. House Banking and Currency Committee:
When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered . . . they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars.3
In 2005, however, this scheme evidently went into high gear, when China and Japan, the two largest purchasers of U.S. federal debt, cut back on their purchases of U.S. securities. Market "bears" had long warned that when foreign creditors quit rolling over their U.S. bonds, the U.S. economy would collapse. They were therefore predicting the worst; but somehow, no disaster resulted. The bonds were still getting sold. The question was, to whom? The Fed identified the buyers as a mysterious new U.S. creditor group called "Caribbean banks." The financial press said they were offshore hedge funds. But Canadian analyst Rob Kirby, writing in March 2005, said that if they were hedge funds, they must have performed extremely poorly for their investors, raking in losses of 40 percent in January 2005 alone; and no such losses were reported by the hedge fund community. He wrote:
The foregoing suggests that hedge funds categorically did not buy these securities. The explanations being offered up as plausible by officialdom and fed to us by the main stream financial press are not consistent with empirical facts or market observations. There are no wide spread or significant losses being reported by the hedge fund community from ill gotten losses in the Treasury market. . . . [W]ho else in the world has pockets that deep, to buy 23 billion bucks worth of securities in a single month? One might surmise that a printing press would be required to come up with that kind of cash on such short notice.4
In September 2005, this bit of wizardry happened again, after Venezuela liquidated roughly $20 billion in U.S. Treasury securities following U.S. threats to that country. Again the anticipated response was a plunge in the dollar, and again no disaster ensued. Other buyers had stepped in to take up the slack, and chief among them were the mysterious "Caribbean banking centers." Rob Kirby wrote:
I wonder who really bought Venezuela's 20 or so billion they "pitched." Whoever it was, perhaps their last name ends with Snow [referring to then-Treasury Secretary John Snow] or Greenspan.5
Those incidents were apparently just dress rehearsals for bigger things to come. In late 2005, the Federal Reserve (or "Fed") announced that beginning in March 2006, it would no longer be publishing figures for M3 (the largest measure of the money supply). M3 has been the main staple of money supply measurement and transparent disclosure for the last half-century, the figure on which the world has relied in determining the soundness of the dollar. But the curtain was now to drop. What was it that we weren't supposed to know? March 2006 was also the month Iran announced it would begin selling oil in Euros. Some observers suspected that the Fed was gearing up to use newly-printed dollars to buy back a flood of U.S. securities dumped by foreign central banks. Another possibility was that the Fed had already been engaging in massive dollar printing to conceal a major derivatives default and was hiding the evidence.6
Whatever was going on, the question raised here is this: if the Fed can buy back the government's bonds with a flood of newly-printed dollars, leaving the government in debt to the Fed and the banks, why can't the government buy back the bonds with its own newly-printed dollars, debt-free? The inflation argument long used to block that solution simply won't hold up anymore. To the contrary, it can be argued that for the government to buy back the bonds and take them out of circulation would actually avoid the dangerous inflation that is occurring now. When the Federal Reserve and commercial banks buy government bonds with money created out of thin air, they don't void out the bonds. Two sets of securities - the bonds and the cash - are created where before there was only one. This inflationary duplication could be avoided by allowing the government to redeem the bonds itself and then removing them from the money supply.
Swapping Government Bonds for Cash
Would Not Drive Up Consumer Prices
The idea that the government could liquidate the federal debt by simply printing up dollars and buying back its own bonds with them is dismissed out of hand by economists and politicians on the ground that it would produce rampant runaway inflation. But would it? Inflation results when the money supply increases faster than goods and services, and replacing government securities with cash would not change the size of the money supply. Federal securities are already money. They have been money ever since Alexander Hamilton made them the basis of the national money supply in the late eighteenth century. Converting federal securities into government-issued U.S. Notes would not cause prices to shoot up because consumers would have no more money to spend than they had before.
A "security" is a type of transferable interest representing financial value. The federal securities composing the federal debt (bills, bonds and notes) are treated by the Federal Reserve and by the market itself just as if they were money. Federal securities are traded daily in enormous volume among banks and other financial institutions around the world just as if they were money.7 If the government were to buy back its own bonds with cash, these instruments of financial value would merely be converted from interest-bearing notes into non-interest-bearing legal tender. The funds would move from M3 into M1 (cash and checks), but the total money supply would remain the same.
Policy-makers track inflation by looking at the widest measure of the money supply, called "broad liquidity." According to Investopedia (an online investors' encyclopedia):
Broad Liquidity [is] a category of the money supply which includes: all funds in M3, individual holdings in accounts, savings bonds, T-bills [Treasury bills] with maturity of less than one year, commercial papers, and banker's acceptances.8
"Broad liquidity" thus includes most government securities. Longer-term securities are not technically included in this definition, but the principle still holds: cashing them out would not affect consumer prices, because the money supply would not increase and the bondholders would have no more spending money than they had before. Consider this hypothetical:
You have $20,000 that you want to save for a rainy day. You deposit the money in an account with your broker, who recommends putting $10,000 into the stock market and $10,000 into corporate bonds, and you agree. How much money do you have in the account? $20,000. A short time later, your broker notifies you that your bonds have been unexpectedly called, or turned into cash. You check your account on the Internet and see that where before it contained $10,000 in corporate bonds, it now contains $10,000 in cash. How much money do you have in the account? $20,000 (plus or minus some growth in interest and fluctuations in stock values). Paying off the bonds did not give you an additional $10,000, making you feel richer than before, prompting you to rush out to buy shoes or real estate you did not think you could afford before, increasing demand and driving up prices.
As foreign central banks reduce their reserves of U.S. securities, U.S. bonds will be coming back to U.S. shores whether we like it or not. The question for the U.S. government is simply who will take up the slack when the creditors quit rolling over U.S. debt. Again, when the Fed and commercial banks step in and buy U.S. securities with dollars created with bookkeeping entries, the result is highly inflationary. This result could be avoided by letting the government buy back its own bonds and taking them out of circulation.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt pronounced the country officially bankrupt, exercised his special emergency powers and, with a wave of the royal Presidential fiat, ordered the promise to pay in gold removed from the dollar bill. The dollar was instantly transformed from a promise to pay in legal tender into legal tender itself. Seventy years later, Congress could again acknowledge that the country was officially bankrupt, propose a plan of reorganization, and turn its debts into " legal tender." Alexander Hamilton showed two centuries ago that Congress could dispose of the federal debt by "monetizing" it, but Congress made the mistake of delegating that function to a private banking system. Congress needs to rectify its error and monetize the debt itself, by buying back its own bonds with newly-issued U.S. [currency].
Notes
1 National Press Club speech by David Walker in Washington on September 17, 2003.
2 Mike Whitney,"Coming Sooner Than You Think: The Economic Tsunami," www.counterpunch.com (April 8, 2005).
3 Quoted in Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (New York: S. Erikson Inc., 1972).
4 Rob Kirby, "Pirates of the Caribbean," www.financialsense.com (March 18, 2005).
5 Rob Kirby, "Currency Conundrums," www.financialsense.com (November 21, 2005).
6 Robert McHugh, "What's the Fed Up to with the Money Supply?", safehaven.com (December 23, 2005); Ed Haas, "Iran, Bourse and the U.S. Dollar," www.NewsWithViews.com (January 28, 2006); "The Dollar May Fall This March," Pravda (January 14, 2006); Martin Walker, "Iran's Really Big Weapon," www.globalresearch.ca (January 23, 2006); and see Chapter 32.
7 William Hummel, "Zeroing the National Debt," Money: What It Is, How It Works, http://wfhummel.net (March 3, 2002).
8 "Broad Liquidity," www.investopedia.com (2006).
Ellen Brown, J.D. developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
ZNET COMMENTARY
Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet. To learn more folks can consult ZNet at
On the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War
By Francis A. Boyle
On the 40th Anniversary of the so-called Six Day War, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stated that the Palestinians were on the verge of a civil war--as if he had nothing to do with it, in contrast to his predecessor.
To be sure, by signing the Oslo Agreement in 1993, the late President Yasser Arafat knowingly accepted a Palestinian Bantustan that was offered to him by Israel and the United States in the hope and expectation that it would ripen into a liberated Palestinian State within five years.
Yet, to his everlasting credit, President Arafat refused to set-off a Palestinian civil war in the name of consolidating this Oslo Bantustan, which was the ultimate objective of Israel and the United States all along.
That is precisely why President Arafat was marginalized, demonized and ultimately eliminated. Nevertheless, Israel and the United States are still doing everything humanly possible to promote a Palestinian civil war by means of arming, financing and encouraging comprador Palestinian surrogates toward that diabolical end.
To the contrary, the Palestinian People must strive to maintain their current Government of National Unity that was originally called for by Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi, while better organizing comprehensive resistance to the colonial Israeli military occupation regime of their State (including Jerusalem) that they had originally proclaimed on 15 November 1988 and is now recognized by about 130 other States and has Observer State Status at the United Nations Organization.
Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at:
==================================
ZNet Commentary
Reviewing The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media
By Seth Sandronsky
[The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media By Lila Rajiva (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2005), 224 pp. Paper, $14.95.]
When the Iraq war began in 2003, Lila Rajiva was so upset by it that she quit her job teaching school. Based in Baltimore, the author tracked press coverage as a web activist and sent out anti-war petitions. In late April 2004, the U.S. TV news magazine "60 Minutes II" ran photos of naked Iraqi men, sexually disgraced, in detention at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Rajiva penned a series of web articles on publications such as Dissident Voice and Counterpunch. They considered the absence of imprisoned Iraqi women in the torture photos, and how the media had covered - and covered up - Abu Ghraib and other reports of torture in the war on terror since the attacks of September 11 generally. Web journalism surfaced as a popular press during the lively 1999 street protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization.
In The Language of Empire, Rajiva studies the factors and forces behind Iraqi detainees' torture, shining a light on corporate journalism and its role as a service provider to the second Bush administration, which claimed, falsely and in violation of international law, that the U.S. had to go to war with Iraq, on the grounds of its involvement in the September 11 attacks and possession of weapons of mass destruction.
With a keen eye, Rajiva clarifies and demystifies the official narrative of the U.S. forces (including private contractors), to show how, corporeally, psychologically and sexually, they tortured Iraqi detainees. For the record, a partial list of such torture included asphyxiation, actual and simulated drowning and execution, rape and sodomy, prolonged incarceration in putrid, tiny metal cages in extreme weather and desecration of the Qur'an. She begins by analyzing circumstantial evidence from the scandal at Abu Ghraib, where Iraqis had also been tortured during the regime of Saddam Hussein. And she casts a critical eye on U.S. civilian and military policy-makers, broadly defined as the neo-conservative faction in the second Bush administration. Questions of what they knew and when they knew it remain unanswered, as the US occupation of Iraq officially ended in June 2004.
One of the convicted, photographed torturers of racially brutalized Iraqis at Abu Ghraib was Charles Graner, a former prison guard in Pennsylvania's maximum-security penitentiary where black author and journalist Mumia Abu Jamal has also been held for years on death row. Crucially, Rajiva untangles the class-based media attacks on Graner as a kind of rogue redneck, cast as the proverbial bad apple in an otherwise pristine barrel and sentenced to eight years for his crimes. This framing of the scandal, according to Rajiva, had the partial effect of absolving U.S. policy-makers of legal and moral accountability - though one high-level official involved in authorizing the torture of Iraqi detainees was Michael Chertoff, head of the criminal division of the U.S. Justice Department. He was later promoted to head of Homeland Security.
Rajiva decries a media narrative that erases vital history and, bogged down in political and legal minutiae, reinforces rather than critiques the official view of Iraq's invasion and occupation as liberation. She strengthens her case by the placing of editorials and reports from the U.S. right wing and "mainstream" press into a historical context. Thus, for her, "the establishment media" (the western media news feeds like AFP and Reuters, the media conglomerates like CBS and Fox) "will continue to erase the colonial legacy of the modern world and present Abu Ghraib as an aberration, and yet present the policy behind it as somehow vital to a righteous ''war on terror.''" Rajiva argues succinctly that the absence of this contextual view from the mass media indicates its importance.
In addition, she explains how media coverage during Senate Armed Services Committee Hearings on the Iraq torture scandal was derailed by the beheading, in Iraq, of Nicholas Berg, an American-Jewish citizen and contractor. To deconstruct Berg's tale (he, a GOP operative, was supposedly on a humanitarian mission), Rajiva turns to the mythic figure of Prometheus, the Greek titan. A stress on individualism and optimism was at the core of the media's empathy with Berg. But Rajiva points out, it was "another instance of the extraordinarily skewed and inadequate news coverage that has left American audiences with no sense at all of the suffering inflicted on Iraqis during the ongoing pacification of their country, a suffering measured beside which a single death, however excruciating, does not have an equal political significance." Berg in Iraq was an honored victim. But the tens of thousands Iraqis who perished during and after the U.S. invasion (following 14 years of trade sanctions, weapons inspections and U.S./UK bombing missions), were effectively deemed unworthy of the humanizing portrayal that Berg received. In the process, the media assiduously helps to create a flawed view of the world and the place of U.S. citizens within it.
In her final chapter, Rajiva turns to the relationship between media and religion. Charges that Israel oppresses the Palestinians have been judged by papers such as the New York Times to be evidence of anti-Semitism. And the U.S. Christian Right has, successfully, amplified this distortion of geopolitical reality. Meanwhile, the Jewish state's continuing theft of Palestinian land has fateful consequences for the present. "It is this secular history that provides the context for the emergence of the anti-Arabism whose visible face we see in the extraordinarily demeaning images of Abu Ghraib," Rajiva writes.
She is no academic who constructs a theory of empire, media and torture and leaves it at that; rather, she concludes with a heartfelt appeal "to the media of the future, to Web-based activists, citizen journalists and people of conscience to uncover the whole truth of the imperial conquest of Iraq and the overt and hidden savagery on which it rests, for which Abu Ghraib is the deepest and truest emblem."
Seth Sandronsky lives and writes in Sacramento, CA .
[First published in Race & Class in January 2007]
______________
Bleak Assessment of Bush Iraq Policy in GSA Report
Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef writing for the McClatchy Newspapers report: "The Shiite Muslim-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has made only 'halting efforts' to end the power struggle fueling the war between Iraq's religious and ethnic communities, a new US intelligence report said Wednesday. The conclusions also appeared to be bleaker than a White House assessment produced by the top US officials in Baghdad, which found that Iraqi politicians have made satisfactory progress on some of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May."
Dick Cheney's Psychology Part 2: The "Attendant Lord"
John P. Briggs, M.D., and JP Briggs II, Ph.D. conclude their Truthout report on the psychological side of Dick Cheney.
Bush Refuses to Explain Libby Order
Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the Associated Press reports that Bush has refused to explain to Congress why he commuted the prison sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Pentagon: US Troops Shot 429 Iraqi Civilians at Checkpoints
Nancy A. Youssef reports US soldiers have killed or wounded 429 Iraqi civilians at checkpoints or near patrols and convoys during the past year, according to military statistics compiled in Iraq and obtained by McClatchy Newspapers.
A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in US Security
Eric Lipton reports in The New York Times that investigators from the Government Accountability Office have demonstrated the security measures put in place since the 2001 terrorist attacks to prevent radioactive materials from getting into the wrong hands are insufficient.
Hendrik Hertzberg Cheney: The Darksider
Hendrik Hertzberg, editor of the New Yorker writes: "A few weeks ago, on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the vice president issued threats of war with Iran. A 'senior American diplomat' told The Times that Cheney's speech had not been circulated broadly in the government before it was delivered, adding, 'He kind of runs by his own rules.' But, too often, his rules rule. The awful climax of 'Cheney/Bush' may be yet to come."
____________________________________
A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
If you value this publication and want to see it continue, please contact me, and send a contribution. I don't have any other income or source of livelihood. We are down to the last few issues without some sort of plan for reader support. This is an independent publication -- something which is practically non-existent in America, today. We will not sell out to any corporate or special interest, nor are we editorially controlled by any outside forces. This is the real "free press." A large donor or two who values this content would be especially helpful at this point. I hate to beg, and I'm a terrible salesman and self-promoter. I'm also open to re-locating.
-- Paul Stephens greateco@3rivers.net 406 216-2711
THE MONTANA GREEN BULLETIN is an unofficial publication of the Cascade County Greens. We network among the Green Party of the United States and other Green Party organizations, including the Montana Green Party, Glacial Lake Missoula Greens, Yellowstone Greens, Greens/WORK, and others. We also belong to the Montana Peace Seekers, and various other peace, justice, and environmental sustainability groups. All opinion and analysis is presented according to traditional "fair use" doctrines, and remains the property and responsibility of the authors. Any corrections or retractions will be made the following week, if received in time to do so.
This Bulletin is distributed without charge to public officials and the media, as well as those who request it. It should be taken as a kind of weekly press release, and anything in it which isn't otherwise copyrighted or reserved may be freely reprinted or distributed with attribution, or may be used as a news source (again, with attribution) by other media.
For more information, to volunteer or join the CascoGreens, please contact
Paul Stephens (406) 216-2711 greateco@3rivers.net
PO Box 2501
Great Falls, MT 59403
We accept donations and contributions of all kinds, but we are not a 501 C-3, and they are not tax deductible. We accept cash, checks, and money orders only -- no credit cards. We also work by the hour, day, or week (Figure $25/hour. Long-term commitments unlikely). Call or e-mail me with proposals or offers. -- PHS
__________________________
Valuable websites and other resources:
Alternative Radio from Boulder, CO http://www.alternativeradio.org/ is broadcast Mondays at 1:00 p.m. on KUFM/KGPR, 89.9 FM in Great Falls, and at other frequencies in western Montana. Making Contact originated by Norman Solomon can be heard Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. on the same stations. You can hear Pacifica radio on the internet at http://www.kpkf.org (that's the LA station), or your favorite part of the country, linked from there. Great Falls native Suzi Weissman's show, Beneath the Surface, airs Monday nights at 6:00, Mountain time, and is archived at Pacifica's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman is available M-F and archived on the net at http://www.democracynow.org .
Try other major stations by searching the web, or browsing (call letters).org. Internet radio is coming to be a necessity here in Montana, and is an excellent source of foreign language news and culture, as well. You can also get KEMC, Billings public radio from
http://www.yellowstonepublicradio.org in various streaming formats.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/ national Bozeman-based election/corporate law reforms
http://www.greeninstitute.net/ non-profit educational institute for Green values
http://www.wildrockies.org/ Alliance for the Wild Rockies member organizations
http://www.meic.org website of the Montana Environmental Information Center
http://www.aeromt.org/ Alternative Energy Resource Organization, Helena
http://www.newworldwindpower.com/ Russ Doty's site for MT energy links, etc.
http://OrganicConsumers.org news and information about food safety
http://www.ippn.org links to just about every Green, peace, and justice organization
http://www.montanapeaceseekers.org Montana peace seekers, local chapters
http://www.greencommons.org national website and discussion forum for Green activists
http://www.chlorophyll.us/ another prominent Green blog
http://www.wagingpeace.org/ "Sunflowers" Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
http://www.pnhp.org Physicians for a National Health Policy (single payer system)
http://www.native-voice.com Website for bi-weekly newspaper, The Native Voice
http://www.IndianCountry.com Indian Country Today, daily national newspaper
http://www.missoulanews.com Missoula Independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.billingsnews.com Billings Outpost independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.queencitynews.com Helena independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.drugpolicy.org Website of the Lindesmith Center, Drug Policy Foundation
http://www.fairvote.org/irv/ The Center for Voting and Democracy
http://www.rachel.org/ Great resource for health and environmental issues
http://nukeinfo.org/ Website by Missoula green Rick Gold -- all sorts of nuclear links
http://www.gp.org/ Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml GP News links and blogs
http://www.greens.org/s-r/ Synthesis/Regeneration, publication of Greens/GPUSA
No comments:
Post a Comment