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Skunks at the party…

4th August 2008, 04:01 pm by Stan

In just a few weeks the Democratic National Convention will be held in Denver, Colorado, where I live. For the past few months leading up to it I have been organizing with Alliance for Real Democracy (ARD), one of the local formations that is building towards a week of protests, teach-ins, and concerts at this event.

It has occurred to me that the reasons for protesting the Democratic Convention are not clear to everyone. As usual, much of the mainstream press coverage has centered on speculations about “Seattle, ‘99- style” confrontations, and this has served well the purpose of burying the actual issues involved. Coverage on local TV, in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News have all vied for our attention with competing headlines, ranging from the benign to the absurd. But the general “theme” has been established as “multi-million dollar security appropriations” versus “the masked Spectre of anarchism.”

But what are the fundamental issues addressed. Is the Democratic Party an inept opposition that is out of touch with its constituency? Don’t citizens have a right to assemble publicly and air their grievances? Isn’t a country that welcomes debate and dissent, even when it is “civilly disobedient”, preferable to a National Security State where all dissent as attacked for even existing as such?

The reason why most in ARD are protesting is…

FULL

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4 Comments

  1. Lyndon McLeod:

    Stan:

    Will you be at the convention in Denver?

    STAN: No.

    11 August 2008, 1:47 am

  2. Stan:

    “Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.

    The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work. The bankruptcy act of 2005 was just one sample. In concert with his fellow corporate serf, Senator Tom Carper…

    FULL

    23 August 2008, 4:59 pm

  3. Stan:

    The recent news that ExxonMobil’s second-quarter profits rang up at $11.7 billion–the largest quarterly profit of any company in history–rightly enraged millions of working people in the U.S. and abroad who are feeling the sting of high gas prices.

    Democratic contender Barack Obama, among others, has been critical of such mega-profits. As a recent Obama campaign ad warns, “Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets.” In response, Obama promises to stand up for workers’ rights by instituting a windfall profits tax on oil companies if he becomes president.

    But there’s another industry that is currently reaping record profits that Obama most likely won’t criticize: agribusiness companies that are currently raking in millions on the push towards ethanol and other biofuels.

    In the U.S., corn-derived ethanol has been promoted as an “environmentally friendly” alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Thanks in part to massive government subsidies, millions of acres of land has been diverted from crops like soybeans to corn, and dozens of ethanol distilleries have popped up around the country, particularly in the Midwest.

    Ethanol is not the savior it’s made out to be, however. Some scientific studies–including one by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen–show that ethanol derived from corn is potentially more polluting…

    FULL

    23 August 2008, 5:04 pm

  4. Lisa:

    How the Democrats Helped Bush Hijack the Country

    By CYNTHIA McKINNEY

    Our country has been hijacked and the Democrats have proven themselves to have been in on the plan. When it came to the Constitution, the Democratic leadership showed us that aiding and abetting illegal spying on us was more important to them than protecting our civil liberties.

    When it came to war and occupation, the Democratic leadership showed us that financing an illegal and immoral war, based on lies, was more important to them than the people’s desire for peace.

    And when the people, hurting from the financial mismanagement of this country, called for accountability for the crimes that have been committed against the people here, against the global community, against nature, itself, the Democratic leadership took impeachment off the table!

    Grassroots Democratic Party activists want a livable wage! A “Medicare-for-all” type of health care system, repeal of the Bush tax cuts that have ushered in the greatest income inequality in this country since the Great Depression. But the Democratic Party has shown itself to be incapable of providing even a semblance of the values even of its own activists.

    Full Article:
    http://counterpunch.org/mckinney08272008.html

    27 August 2008, 5:53 pm

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