INSIDE LOOK AT HEALTH CARE TOWN HALL EVENT
Very interesting short Real News documentary report on the Reston, Virginia town hall with Dr. Howard Dean and Rep. Jim Moran and 2,000 pro- and anti-health care reform participants.
Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. @BruceKGagnon
This Air Force recruiting advertisement shows Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) and their connection to military satellites......these war-fighting satellites have to now be viewed as actual weapons in space as they direct warfare on the ground.
These UAV's, or drones as they are popularly called, are the theme of our Keep Space for Peace Week in 2009. They are the key link between Iraq and Afghanistan wars and understanding how space technology coordinates all modern warfare.
The rocket Naro is the name of South Korea's ill-fated first rocket launch that went awry a couple days ago. It appears I am one of the first to publicly speak out against the launch. Can't wait to see what the article said. We spent more than two-hours talking to the reporter. What Sung-Hee gets wrong is that I didn't do it. She did it. She was the one that made it all happen.
South Korea's most popular president died while I was in their country. Kim dae-Jung served as president from 1998-2003. One peace activist in South Korea told me Kim was a "stepping stone to democracy."
Kim was almost killed in August 1973, when he was kidnapped from a hotel in Tokyo by South Korean CIA agents in response to his criticism of then President Park's yushin program. Although Kim returned to Seoul alive, he was banned from politics and imprisoned in 1976 for having participated in the proclamation of an anti-government manifesto and sentenced for five years in prison, which was reduced to house arrest in 1978.
Kim was arrested again in 1980 and sentenced to death on charges of sedition and conspiracy in the wake of a popular uprising in Gwangju, his political stronghold. The sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison and later he was given exile to the United States. Kim temporarily settled in Boston and taught at Harvard University as a visiting professor to the Center for International Affairs, until he chose to return to his homeland in 1985.
His policy of positive engagement with North Korea has been termed the "June 15 joint statement". In 2000, he participated in the first of two North-South presidential summits with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il, which later led to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Kim actively called for restraint against the North Koreans after they detonated a nuclear weapon and defended the continued warming towards Pyongyang.
One South Korean academic wrote about the deceased former president, "Kim's life was like a flower that endures a harsh winter but blooms in the early summer, giving a sliver of hope to people deep in despair."
In addition to Kim's historic opening to North Korea, while in office he also implemented a law to guarantee minimum standards of living for the people of the nation.
The current president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak, is trying to roll back the social and foreign policy progress South Korea made during Kim dae-Jung's time in office. The progressive movement in South Korea is currently mobilizing at a vigorous pace to resist the right-wing policies of Lee Myung-bak. His presidential approval ratings have now plummeted to the mid-20% range. A member of Korean Veterans for Peace told me that the current President Lee "is the greatest liar in South Korean history."
On my last day in Seoul we drove past an area where huge numbers of people were lined up to participate in official mourning ceremonies for Kim. The Korean people have long suffered - first from the 35-year Japanese occupation of their country, then the deadly Korean War, forty-some years of US sponsored right-wing dictatorship in South Korea, and now the occupation of the Korean peninsula by the US military.
Kim dae-Jung gave all the people of Korea hope that reunification of the divided country was indeed possible.
Having been away a month now most of my news about the US has come from the Internet. I've regularly checked my favorite progressive web sites and I try to read the Washington Post regularly to get an idea what the "mainstream media" is saying. The issue that has fascinated me most while I have been away is Obama and health care.
I watched Obama move from the "public option" to now crawling into bed with the insurance corporations and leaving the public option far behind, just as he previously did with single-payer health care.
My early reading of Obama is turning out to be pretty accurate. He will not stand up to the corporations on any issue and fight on behalf of the American people. He is betraying the legions of progressive voters who put him into office who thought they were voting for "hope and change".
On this trip I've been asked many times about Obama as you would imagine. My response is: George W. Bush was a bad cowboy. Obama is a good cowboy, but still a cowboy. He is an agent of the corporations. I usually get a good laugh with this one.
Now that Obama has betrayed those on the "left" that voted for him, he is dropping steadily in the polls. He is losing his base. His base will not stand with him as he brazenly crawls into the sack with the corporations. The independents who voted for him will see that he is just another "say one thing, but do another politician" and they will abandon him. The right, of course, will never support him - except when he is pushing endless war.
So Obama, almost nine months into the job, has proven to be just another Democratic Party corporate hack - posing as a progressive to get elected and then bailing out once in office.
At this rate Mr. "hope and change" can count on being a one-term president.
Are you ready yet to talk third party?
This is what US plans for space dominance will bring us, a new arms race in space and on the Earth as well. No world nuclear power will strip itself of nuclear forces as long as America pursues global military dominance and wars like Yugoslavia and Iraq, says Andrey Kokoshin, former First Deputy Minister of Defense in Russia.
In the modern high-tech warfare age there can be no real security as long as any country is trying to achieve dominance. The only way to real peace is reducing conventional, nuclear, and space weapons. Anything else is a prescription for disaster.
Let's spend our resources dealing with our real crisis which is climate change.
The world needs to speak out loudly now that moving the arms race into space is unacceptable.
Please join us by organizing a local event during the Global Network's annual Keep Space for Peace Week which will be held during the period of October 3-10. Download the poster here
I learned alot yesterday in my meeting with folks from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). In addition to Young-Je Kim, who is the Director of the Reunification Unit, the meeting also included the editor of the KCTU newspaper, a reporter, and a translator to help Sung-Hee with that task.
The union bi-weekly paper, called "Work in World," which has a circulation of 30,000 is planning to do a full-page story about my visit.
The KCTU is the largest "democratic" union in the country and represents more than 525,000 workers in 1,144 unions. Most impressive of all the KCTU is an integral part of the progressive movement in South Korea and sees its success by being a part of the larger movement for peace, justice, democracy, and reunification.
I was first asked to brief them on the space issue and after I finished I asked for them to tell me more about the aerospace industry in South Korea.
Kim told me that their aerospace industry plays a subordinate role to the US military industrial complex. The big South Korean corporations have set up "component shops" in the southern part of the country where workers get "special treatment" such as being exempt from the military draft. In return the workers are not allowed to strike. They build low-tech component parts for US space technology systems. The South Korean government gives tax incentives to these huge conglomerates.
Kim told me a story to illustrate how the US twists arms in South Korea to keep control of the military sales market. When South Korea was preparing to scrap some older American-made fighter planes, a Korean Air Force study found that French jets would be a better deal for them, both in price and technology. The Korean Air Force officer who made this recommendation was fired, under US pressure, and the government agreed to buy the US-made jets. The former Air Force officer is now working in the peace movement.
Kim asked me to explain what the US peace movement was doing to better understand the North Korea perspective. I told him that little is being done, largely because of the "anti-Communist" climate that still exists in our country. He said that North Korea feels they need "insurance for survival". His union began cultural interactions with North Korea ten years ago. They send South Korean union workers to the north to play soccer games against workers there. North Koreans were considered "demons" by South Koreans, but these trips have helped KCTU members to see the humanity of the workers in the north and contributed to lessening of tensions.
Kim suggested that the Global Network pursue organizing trips to North Korea. He said that the North Koreans are very interested in having discussions with peace movement people and suggested that the KCTU could help the Global Network organize such trips. I told him I was eager to work with him on this idea.
Following our meeting Kim took me for a tour of the ten-story KCTU building. The biggest KCTU member union is the metal workers and they are the ones that recently settled the 77-day strike at Ssangyong Motor factory. One of the issues in the strike settlement agreement was that leaders would not be arrested after the strike ended. Key leadership of the union though were arrested immediately after the union concluded the strike and the president of the union is now on a hunger strike inside prison in protest of the corporation and government rescinding of the agreement.
In the evening I spoke at an event put together by Global Network board member Cheong Wooksik from the Peace Network. A good group of young people listened to my presentation and then had many good questions afterwards. I told them that the founders of the Global Network were getting grey in the hair and we needed a younger generation to come along and help us prevent an arms race in space.
Just yesterday South Korea was to launch its very first space rocket but it had to be scrubbed when problems arose during the final minutes of the countdown. I am told that very few are paying attention to the space issue in South Korea but I think that after this trip that is going to begin to change.
These "health care fairs" are popping up all over the country as currently almost 50 million Americans have no real health care. Is this the kind of reform the health insurance corporations suggest we have?
Last night at the cultural rally in Seoul one of the songs had a chorus line that went: "Say good-bye to the world you thought you lived in"......a fitting way to describe America's race to the bottom of the barrel.
Isn't it past time that we began to demand more and to fight for it?
We have become a colonized people in the US by the corporate powers but we still seem to suffer from the illusion that we are a democracy and that the people are in charge. The sooner we wake up from this misbegotten dream the better for us all.
I am Hiroko Watanabe of Tsuiki, where we have the Tsuiki ASDF Base. We locals founded a small grup named 'Circle watching for Peace and all lives' in 1987, opposing the joint exercise by the US force and Japan's ASDF at Tsuiki Base. On April 2, 1989 we made a demonstration of surrounding Tsuiki Base with 2,500 people, in opposition of F-15 deployment there. In order not to forget the feel of the firm grips on that occasion of 'human chain,' and also so as to aim at 'continuation of the struggle,' we have conducted, for these 20 years, monthly 'anti-base sitting-in' at the front gate of the base. This August 2 saw our 243rd return, and 40 people participated in the sitting-in.
However, as for the PAC-3, which is soon to be deployed at this base in my hometown in this fall, local people have no, absolutely no, interest in it.
It is every body's knowledge that PAC-2 is already here in this base, having deployed in May, 1994. At the time of its deployment, we locals voiced our opposition and also acted against it, with the local government and assembly and the labor union together with us. We conducted the same kind of human-chain demonstration of surrounding the base where they had the air defense artillery's. Even those who were non-committed to these opposition movements must have paid heed to what was going on at that time.
So, what a contrast between then and now! There are no public concerns nor oppositions. For us locals around Tsuiki Base, the problem of Patriot missiles are all over as a result of our loss in the struggle against PAC-2 deployment. The imminent deployment of PAC-3 is only the matter of a new type of missiles taking over the current one.
I myself is at a loss what to do with that. I assume you all here tonight know what has become of the labor union, which was our strong ally in the past two opposition movements including the human-chain. The labor union has stopped its systematic participation in our continued monthly sitting-ins named 'Every 2nd day Action.' So, we locals are now the only player in the town of Tsuiki in dealing with almost all the social issues deriving from the ASDF base. I know this sounds defensive, but we cannot handle such problems by ourselves while being engaged in our daily work, as there are too many.
However, I am not in despair. One example of good signs: Although Japan's Ministry of Defence and the SDF had been proceeding their 'Expansion Plan of Tsuiki Base' in order to reinforce the functions of the base according to the global transformation of the US forces, the association of local residents living next to the area planned for the expansion had strongly been opposed against this plan, finally forcing the Ministry of Defence recently to withdraw the current expansion plan. This is a remarkable victory by local citizens.
Local residents, who had been in the opinion of 'co-prosperity with the base,' never saying NO to the base, seem to be changing. I think we, local activists, can self-praise ourselves for our 22-year-long struggle, as it may have raised the consciousness in such people.
I know our power is limited and we cannot stage a big opposition action in Tsuiki, regarding the forth-coming PAC-3 deployment, but I want to carry on what I and we, as a group, can do in our daily life, never giving it up.
Now I believe it most important for us to have a strong will in ourselves: such will as 'I shall not to retreat,' 'I shall never give up,' 'I shall not to obey.' Only from such wills can we derive solidarity with comrades and true social reforms for the sake of citizens. This is my conviction obtained through my struggle during these 22 years. Thank you.
This is the powerful message of a hibakusha (survivor of the US atomic bombing in Nagasaki), Ms. Shimohira.
I am now in Fukuoka and will write more in the morning about the last day at the Mayors for Peace conference. Right now I need to go through my many emails and then get some rest. I am a bit worn out today.
I am hearing that many of my emails to friends and family back in the US are not getting through to them. I recommend looking in your spam filter box. If not there they must be lost in space.
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At the tail end of this fake health care story is a short bit about Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) abruptly resigning from the US Senate. Mel and I go back to early 90's in Orlando, Florida where we coached our sons Little League baseball team together. We used to debate Cuba policy while throwing batting practice to the kids. He was a nice guy but had a huge desire to climb the political ladder and sadly was willing to do and say most anything to get to the top of the heap.
Maybe his leaving early indicates he discovered that life on top isn't so great after all. I actually think the reason he is quiting is because with the Democrats in control of Congress now he has no power. He will likely return home and cash in on his name and become a multi-millionaire and return to his real love - the baseball field where he can coach his youngest kid.
My advice to Mel, don't be afraid to have the kids bunt now and then.
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