Corporate Agenda: Cleansing the Campus

They call it being "values neutral" on the American college campus these days as the 'institutions of higher learning' cast about for money from anybody in order to replace cuts in state support.  At the head of the line are the corporate oligarchies who want to purge the colleges of any and all social conscience and turn them into 'free market indoctrination mills'.

Imagine just one generation of American youth being run through these corporate training mills with the likely result being no sense of history, no working class identification, no social awareness, no concern for the planet - all worship of the $$$, consumerism, and wanton materialism.

Happily there is growing fightback at some colleges against this corporate control of higher education but there is yet much work to be done.

Last Call - It's Not Free Trade!

In a word, everyone. Democrats, Republicans, tech companies, unions, libertarians, environmentalists, and Internet freedom advocates all oppose Fast Tracking the TPP. It's common sense: decisions that affect everyone shouldn't be made in secret without public input.

Take action now here

House Votes Down Withdrawal from Iraq/Syria

U.S House of Representatives FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 370
(Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined)
      H CON RES 55      YEA-AND-NAY      17-Jun-2015      4:06 PM
      QUESTION:  On Agreeing to the Resolution
      BILL TITLE: Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces deployed to Iraq or Syria on or after August 7, 2014, other than Armed Forces required to protect United States diplomatic facilities and personnel, from Iraq and Syria

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Republican	19	222	1	3
Democratic	120	66		2
Independent
TOTALS	139	288	1	5

---- YEAS    139 ---

Adams Bass Becerra Benishek Beyer Blum Blumenauer Bonamici Brady (PA) Burgess Capps Capuano Cárdenas Chu, Judy Cicilline Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Clawson (FL) Clyburn Cohen Conyers Cummings Davis, Danny DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene DeSaulnier Dingell Doyle, Michael F. Duncan (TN) Edwards Ellison Eshoo Esty Farr Fattah Foster Frankel (FL) Fudge Gallego Garamendi Garrett Grayson Griffith Grijalva Gutiérrez

Hahn Hastings Heck (WA) Higgins Himes Hinojosa Honda Huffman Hurt (VA) Jackson Lee Jeffries Johnson, E. B. Jones Kaptur Keating Kelly (IL) Kennedy Kildee Kirkpatrick Kuster Labrador Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lawrence Lee Lewis Lieu, Ted Lofgren Lowenthal Luján, Ben Ray (NM) Lynch Maloney, Carolyn Maloney, Sean Massie Matsui McCollum McDermott McGovern McNerney Moore Mulvaney Murphy (FL) Nadler Napolitano Neal Nolan Nugent

O'Rourke Pallone Pascrell Payne Pelosi Pingree Pocan Polis Posey Quigley Rangel Rice (SC) Roybal-Allard Rush Ryan (OH) Sánchez, Linda T. Sanford Sarbanes Schakowsky Schiff Schrader Scott (VA) Sensenbrenner Serrano Sires Slaughter Speier Swalwell (CA) Takai Takano Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Titus Tonko Torres Tsongas Van Hollen Velázquez Visclosky Waters, Maxine Watson Coleman Wilson (FL) Woodall Yarmuth Yoho

---- NAYS    288 ---

Abraham Aderholt Aguilar Allen Amodei Ashford Babin Barletta Barr Barton Beatty Bera Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Bishop (MI) Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Bost Boustany Boyle, Brendan F. Brady (TX) Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Brooks (IN) Brown (FL) Brownley (CA) Buchanan Buck Bucshon Bustos Butterfield Calvert Carney Carson (IN) Carter (GA) Carter (TX) Cartwright Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Chabot Chaffetz Clay Cleaver Coffman Cole Collins (GA) Collins (NY) Comstock Conaway Connolly Cook Cooper Costa Costello (PA) Courtney Cramer Crawford Crenshaw Crowley Cuellar Culberson Curbelo (FL) Davis (CA) Davis, Rodney Delaney Denham Dent DeSantis DesJarlais Deutch Diaz-Balart Doggett Dold Donovan Duckworth Duffy Duncan (SC) Ellmers (NC) Emmer (MN) Engel Farenthold Fincher Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Fleming Flores Forbes Fortenberry Foxx Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gabbard Gibbs Gibson

Gohmert Goodlatte Gosar Gowdy Graham Granger Graves (GA) Graves (LA) Graves (MO) Green, Al Green, Gene Grothman Guinta Guthrie Hardy Harper Harris Hartzler Heck (NV) Hensarling Herrera Beutler Hice, Jody B. Hill Holding Hoyer Hudson Huelskamp Huizenga (MI) Hultgren Hunter Hurd (TX) Israel Issa Jenkins (KS) Jenkins (WV) Johnson (OH) Johnson, Sam Jolly Jordan Joyce Katko Kelly (PA) Kilmer Kind King (IA) King (NY) Kinzinger (IL) Kline Knight LaMalfa Lamborn Lance Langevin Latta Levin Lipinski LoBiondo Loebsack Long Loudermilk Love Lowey Lucas Luetkemeyer Lujan Grisham (NM) Lummis MacArthur Marchant Marino McCarthy McCaul McClintock McHenry McKinley McMorris Rodgers McSally Meadows Meehan Meeks Meng Messer Mica Miller (FL) Miller (MI) Moolenaar Mooney (WV) Moulton Mullin Murphy (PA) Neugebauer Newhouse Noem Norcross Nunes Olson Palazzo

Palmer Paulsen Pearce Perlmutter Perry Peters Peterson Pittenger Pitts Poe (TX) Poliquin Pompeo Price (NC) Price, Tom Ratcliffe Reed Reichert Renacci Ribble Rice (NY) Richmond Rigell Roby Roe (TN) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rohrabacher Rokita Rooney (FL) Ros-Lehtinen Roskam Ross Rothfus Rouzer Royce Ruiz Ruppersberger Russell Ryan (WI) Salmon Scalise Schweikert Scott, Austin Scott, David Sessions Sewell (AL) Sherman Shimkus Shuster Simpson Sinema Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Stefanik Stewart Stivers Stutzman Thompson (PA) Thornberry Tiberi Tipton Trott Turner Upton Valadao Vargas Veasey Vela Wagner Walberg Walden Walker Walorski Walters, Mimi Walz Wasserman Schultz Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Welch Wenstrup Westerman Westmoreland Whitfield Williams Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Yoder Young (AK) Young (IA) Young (IN) Zeldin Zinke

---- ANSWERED “PRESENT”    1 ---

Amash

---- NOT VOTING    5 ---

Byrne Hanna

Johnson (GA) Kelly (MS)

Sanchez, Loretta

---

Getting Ready for War with Russia - Yankees Go Home!

US war games in Poland with NATO allies getting ready to push toward conflict with Russia. Very dangerous strategy that the US-NATO are developing.



Ukrainian protesters demonstrated outside the US embassy in Kiev, Wednesday, demanding that US soldiers leave western Ukraine (where they are training "National Guard" units made up of neo-Nazis) and stop interfering in the domestic affairs of the country.  They chanted "Yankees Go Home".

Support Okinawa Movement to Stop U.S. Base Expansions

In Henoko on Okinawa two US Marine V-shaped runways will extend out into pristine Oura bay covering a total area of 205 hectares.  Of this total area, 160 hectares is to be in-fill, dredged from the sea.  Already large concrete blocks weighing as much as 45 tons were dropped on 75 seabed sites destroying 94 colonies of coral. Okinawans regularly protest at base gates and try to block sea construction operations in their kayaks.  Like on Jeju Island, South Korea they are manhandled and arrested by the Japanese government.

Outrage Over Kiev's Shelling of Donbass

The passion and outrage of the people speaks volumes.  The US-NATO directed war against the innocent people of eastern Ukraine is immoral, violates international law, and is ultimately genocide.

When the people fight back to defend themselves they are called 'terrorists'.  But the real terrorism is coming from the puppet regime in Kiev that is ultimately armed, trained, and directed by Washington and Brussels.

How would you feel if you were constantly on the receiving end of these missile shells?

How Propaganda Works for Corrupt US-UK Regimes

Glenn Greenwald, a US journalist who published the first reports on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, says allegations in the British press that Russian and Chinese spies accessed Snowden’s documents are lies aimed at smearing the whistleblower.

Who Are the Thugs?

U.S. Planning Major Military Basing in Poland

The Daily Mail reports:
 

Russia last night warned that it will build up weaponry on the EU's borders if the US stations tanks and heavy arms in Poland.

A Moscow defence ministry official called the US plans reported in Washington 'the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and Nato since the Cold War'.

General Yuri Yakubov said: 'Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the western strategic front.'

Protect the Arctic from Drilling

Maine Peace Walk: Militarization of the Seas

Pentagon’s Impact on the Oceans

October 9-24 

Ellsworth, Maine to Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The Pentagon has the largest carbon footprint on our Mother Earth. Waging endless war consumes massive amounts of fossil fuels and lays waste to significant environmentally sensitive places on the planet – particularly the oceans.

The oceans are inhabited by a multitude of different life forms, from microorganisms to whales, many of whom are able to sense sound and use it to find food, navigate, communicate, and avoid predators. Navy sonar blasts wreak havoc on these creatures, disrupting their lives, leaving animals more susceptible to disease and lowered reproductive success, and sometimes injuring and killing them.

Because Navy sonars are extremely loud, depending on ocean conditions, that noise can travel at harmful levels for tens or even hundreds of miles, impacting huge numbers of animals. By the Navy’s own estimates, sonar noise can still be as high as 140 decibels 300 miles from the source, a level that is a hundred times more intense than the level known to result in behavioral changes in large whales.

Some of these exercises will even take place inside designated critical habitat for the already endangered right whale, frequenter of Maine waters. In fact, the Navy is now constructing a 500 square mile instrumented range off the coast of Georgia where it intends to conduct 470 sonar exercises annually - the Navy chose this site just offshore of the only known calving grounds of the right whale! In March 2015 Navy sonar testing near Guam led to the stranding of three beaked whales.

Shipyard Impacts in Maine

Pier-side testing of sonar occurs at Bath Iron Works (BIW) and at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery which results in significant fish kills. Navy off-shore weapons testing exercises puts toxic chemicals and hazardous materials and waste into Maine’s marine environment.

The Kennebec River that BIW fronts is often dredged in order to allow the deep hulled destroyers built there to get into the ocean. Dredging takes a heavy toll on aquatic life.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has caused serious pollution of the local environment. The shipyard is on an island that the Pentagon considers as one of their facilities most vulnerable to climate change, particularly their dry-dock facilities. Rising sea levels could affect shipyard toxic waste sites which are now mostly right on the shoreline and would seriously impact water quality and sea life.

Ocean Acidification

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the early 1800s, fossil fuel-powered machines have driven an unprecedented burst of human industry and society. Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in ocean pH caused by human fossil fuel emissions. Oceans currently absorb approximately half of the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuel. An estimated 30–40% of the carbon dioxide released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes.

Arctic Militarization Due to Climate Change

In early 2014 Maine’s Sen. Angus King went on a nuclear submarine ride under the Arctic Sea ice which is now melting due to climate change. Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations was on the sub and said, “In our lifetime, what was [in effect] land and prohibitive to navigate or explore, is becoming an ocean… We need to be sure that our sensors, weapons and people are proficient in this part of the world,” so that we can “own the undersea domain and get anywhere there.”

When Sen. King returned from the trip he told his constituents that there has been "a 40% reduction in ice as a result of global warming." He reported that "previously inaccessible" gas and oil reserves were now going to create "new opportunities". King concluded, "I am convinced we need to increase our capacity in the region, something I intend to press upon my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee as we work on our military priorities for the coming years."

Rather than drill for more fossil fuels in the Arctic, and create a new arms race in that environmentally sensitive region, the US should be working to convert our military industries to build offshore wind turbines, rail, solar and tidal power. According to studies done by theUMASS-Amherst Economics Department shipyards in Bath and Portsmouth could nearly double their number of jobs by building rail or wind turbines. The Gulf of Maine has more wind power generating potential than any other place in the US.

Help Save Our Seas

If the seas die so do humans on Earth and much of the wildlife. Now is the time to speak out for ending the massive military impacts on the world’s oceans and for conversion of our fossil fuel dependent military industrial complex to sustainable technologies. We will walk to bring attention to these crucial issues. Please help us carry this message to the public by joining with us.


Maine Walk for Peace is sponsored by: Maine Veterans for Peace; PeaceWorks; CodePink Maine; Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST); Peace Action Maine; Veterans for Peace Smedley Butler Brigade (Greater Boston); Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space; (List in formation)

Contact: 207-443-9502 or 207-422-8273   globalnet@mindspring.com 

Save Our Seas

Dr. Richard Kirby is a plankton scientist interested in how the plankton influence the marine food web from fish to whales, and from penguins to polar bears. In 2003 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. In addition to his scientific research he enjoys science outreach and showing that science and plankton are both fun and interesting. You can find Richard on the internet as the Plankton Pundit.

Thanks for the Safe Space

I suffer
from my own
brand of PTSD

As a boy
I was often beaten
and repeatedly
told
"If you had
a brain
you'd be dangerous"

I barely made
it thru high school
I had no confidence
I joined the military
it was the only
thing I knew

My Air Force
step-dad
married my mom
when I was three
he came
from western Maine
paper mill town
he was abused
as a child
became rebellious
got in trouble
and was given the choice
jail or the military
he picked the Air Force

I never knew
what a happy
loving
family relationship
looked like
I had to
figure it out
on my own
making mistakes
along the way
trying to learn,
by watching others,
how to be
a real person
comfortable
with my own soul

The terror
around the world
still shakes me
that's why
I always pick
the underdog

It's remains a journey
for me
some days
I feel safe
and loving
other days
I feel broken
and alone
thankfully
MB helps me
as do
the many others
in my life

I thank them all
for their love
and patience
and for the
safe space
they provide
for me
each day

Three Reasons Why Hillary is a Republican

Bill and Hillary Clinton alongside the Rev. Billy Graham, longtime known as the favorite preacher of the Nixon and Bush families

I'll always remember being on the exercise machine some years ago watching CNN.  They were covering the story of the Rev. Billy Graham's last big Christian revival in a stadium.  In the middle of Graham's sermon he stopped and pointed out Bill and Hillary Clinton sitting in the front row.  Graham said, "Bill, you would have made a great preacher.  Hillary, you are going to make a great president."

This happened before Hillary lost the Democratic party nomination to Obama in the 2008 election.  I've always been convinced that she was supposed to have won that time (with Obama as the Vice-President) but the young folks were excited about Obama and things got out of hand.  But it turned out well for the oligarchy anyway as Obama has continually sold out the American people on behalf of corporate interests and has kept the left mostly demobilized (at least his liberal base anyway) during his two terms.  The oligarchy wanted to develop Obama knowing that in the coming years people of color will be the majority population across the US and if the corporations were to continue their stranglehold on the government they had to come up with candidates who could appeal to this new American demographic.

One of my sisters recently called me and asked me to write this blog post giving "three reasons why Hillary is a secret Republican".  So here we go:

1)  She was long ago publicly endorsed by the Republicans' favorite Christian fundamentalist Rev. Billy Graham.  The day after I saw that particular endorsement of Hillary by Rev. Graham I noted with interest that Bill Clinton made the trip to Kennebunkport, Maine to play golf with George H. W. Bush (daddy Bush).  I took that as a sign that the Clintons were politically linked to the CIA-godfather Bush who was heavily involved in the assassination of JFK.  I've long believed that since the killing of Kennedy no one is allowed to become president unless they are fully under the control of the CIA and corporate oligarchy.  I've written before that as Governor of Arkansas Clinton helped kill an investigation of CIA gun and drugs running through the Mena, Arkansas airport.  So he proved early on to the Bush crime family that he'd play ball with the CIA.  (In order to make the whole democracy thing seem real the CIA has to run both Republican and Democrat horses in every race.)

2)  This recent quote by Hillary indicates that her foreign policy will be more of the same: "No other country [USA] on earth is better positioned to thrive in a XXI century. No other country is better equipped to meet traditional threats from countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran, and to deal with the rise of new powers like China."  Clinton is a hawk and never met a war she didn't like.

3)  In recent days Hillary has tried to get on-board the public outrage over the TPP trade deal that would sell out the sovereignty of the US and other nations that become signers of the corporate trade pact.  Just last night I heard a very weak statement from Clinton where she basically said Congress should "reject the deal or not" which really made no sense.  But it is a typical Clinton-ism as she tries to take both sides which then gives her wiggle room later to justify supporting the deal.

Should We Go To War With Russia?

Squeeezing the Movement

Democrats Hope To Bury Black Lives Matter Under Election Blitz

By Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com

The movement that is emerging under the banner Black Lives Matter is not yet one year old, but it will be dead before it reaches the age of two if the Democratic Party has anything to say about it. The movement’s greatest challenge will be to survive the impending mass mobilization of Black Democratic officeholders and operatives in a $5 billion presidential election season.

The current Black-led grassroots campaign is, in very important ways, even more vulnerable to Democratic cooptation and dismantlement than was the white-led Occupy Wall Street movement, which succumbed to a combination of Democratic infiltration and repression – on top of its own contradictions – in the early months of 2012. Although its slogans remained imprinted in the minds of much of the “99%,” by the time the November election rolled around, Occupy had long been a spent force, swept from the streets and encampments by mainly Democratic mayors acting on orders from their Party leader and president, Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party poses a far greater institutional threat to the Black Lives Matter movement, by virtue of the fact that the Party permeates every aspect of African American civil society. Not only are virtually all Black elected officials Democrats, but all the major civic organizations – the NAACP, the Urban League, most Black local churches and labor organizations, fraternities and sororities, not to mention Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-Push Coalition and “King Rat” Al Sharpton’s National Action Network – are annexes of the Democratic Party.

Put another way: the nascent Black-led movement for social transformation poses a grave threat to the Democratic Party’s chock-hold on Black politics. Therefore, the movement is inevitably on a collision course with the Democratic Party, although this may not yet be clear to many activists.

As I said at the closing plenary of the recent Left Forum gathering in New York City, the Democratic Party sits atop the Black polity “like a grotesque Sumo wrestler,” squeezing out the Black radical tradition. The Black Lives Matter movement consciously draws on this authentic – and still deeply honored – radical tradition, seeking to put it into practice under 21^st century conditions.

 In both its resistance to a criminal justice system designed to contain, criminalize and crush Blacks as a people, and its broader demand for social and economic transformation and global peace, the nascent Black-led movement picks up where a previous mass movement left off, two generations ago. The Sixties liberation movements were shut down through a combination of government repression and the rise of a class of Black office-holders and aspiring corporate collaborators whose interests lay in joining the existing order, not transforming it. Their political vehicle was, and remains, the Democratic Party – the organization through which this “Black Misleadership Class” became embedded in local and national power structures. As a loyal and key component of the ruling political duopoly, these Black Democratic politicians and power brokers have facilitated the exponential growth of the Black Mass Incarceration State in all its genocidal aspects, and greased the wheels of gentrification that is dispersing Black populations to the four winds, limiting the geography of effective Black political self-determination.

See the rest of the article here

Interesting and Revealing.....

The US-NATO strategy on Ukraine...... and the counter Kremlin strategy

Sunday Song

G7 Protest in Germany

Keep your Eyes on the Magician's Hands

US President Barack Obama's ambitious trade agenda has been dealt a severe blow by the House of Representatives. The Lower House has blocked a workers aid programme - part of a package to strengthen trade ties with Asia-Pacific nations.President Obama went to Capitol Hill, but failed to convince fellow Democrats to back him. Al Jazeera's White House correspondent Patty Culhane reports.

The bottom line is this ain't over yet.  Obama, on behalf of corporate globalization, is pulling out all the stops on this one.   Keep the phone calls and emails going to Congress - the Democrats have a history of caving in on these corporate trade deals.  It ain't over til it is over.

West Keeps Ukraine on a Short Leash

Are western Ukrainians to surrender the right to determine their economic policy and risk the loss of state-owned industries and assets in exchange for loans from the International Monetary Fund? In the first of three videos, Michael Hudson, Jeffrey Sommers, and James Carden explain why economic integration with the West won’t turn Ukraine into an economic success story.

The videos, produced by Endless Picnic, include interviews with Michael Hudson, a former balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and an author of a major study of the IMF; Jeffrey Sommers, associate professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a visiting lecturer at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia; and James Carden, a former adviser on Russia to the State Department.