Iraq Veterans Against the War Veterans Day message to Barack Obama

IVAW.org, November, 2009

President Obama:
In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated "These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil." Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.

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Africa denounces rich countries at climate talks

By Simon Butler, Green Left Weekly, November 6, 2009

African nations walked out of climate talks in Barcelona on November 3, blaming rich nations for undermining the negotiations. The Barcelona meeting was the final international meeting before the UN-sponsored climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

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Maine says no to Nestlé

By Jamilla El-Shafei, Socialist Worker, November 9, 2009

Once again, Maine voters said "No to Nestlé!"
Activists in the communities that surround the Branch Brook Aquifer, located in the southern part of the state, handily defeated a water extraction ordinance on a referendum vote in the town of Wells.
The ordinance, written with the direction of the Nestlé lawyers, would have opened the door to large-scale bottled water extractors. The November vote was 3,194 against large-scale extraction and 1,420 in favor--a 69.2 percent margin. This was convincing testimony that a grassroots campaign cannot be replaced by slick marketing.
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In spite of Nestlé's McCarthyist attempt to discredit opposition leaders some months ago and their most recent dirty tricks, the largest multinational food and beverage corporation in the world, which is well-connected in the statehouse, lost an important battle to a grassroots campaign fought by a handful of water warriors.
Activists in Maine are now looking forward to focusing their efforts on state legislation, in the hope of putting groundwater in the public trust and abolishing an antiquated law called "absolute dominion." The law states that what is under your land belongs to the landowner. It benefits industrial polluters and water miners.
From Maine to McCloud, Calif., Nestlé's pursuit of community water has been met with successful resistance. These struggles are part of a bigger battle, as a national and international water justice movement is bubbling up to fight the privatization of our water resources and insure access to clean drinking water for all--a fight to keep water in the commons.

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Vets Battle Unemployment and War Injuries

By Aaron Glantz & Cliff Parker, New American Media, November 11, 2009

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A 2007 VA survey found that 18 percent of recently discharged veterans were unemployed and that of those who had found a job 25 percent made less than $22,000 a year. And that was before the recession began.

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Tire Iron to the Head: That's What They Do If You Look A Little Weird

By Abby Zimet, Common Dreams, November 11, 2009

A new Rasmussen poll has 57% of people concerned the Fort Hood shootings will prompt a backlash against Muslims. Good thing: The insanity has started. Approached by a bearded man in a robe, Florida Marine reservist and apparent beefcake Jasen Bruce attacked him with a tire iron, chased and pinned him, and told 911 he'd captured a terrorist - who was a Greek Orthodox priest asking for directions. Bruce said the guy yelled "Allahu Akbar"; clearly he should have yelled, "You are a racist idiot!"

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," Bruce told police.

LINK

Most Vulnerable Nations Seek Climate Justice

Climate and Capitalism, November 10, 2009

Final Draft of declaration issued November 11 in the Maldives, by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, comprising the 11 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change: Maldives, Kiribati, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Barbados and Bhutan.

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"Cape Canaveral" By Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band One Year Ago

From the youtube description:

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band perfoming "Cape Canaveral" on KCRW 11/11/08

Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash

By Lindsey Hoshaw, New York Times, November 9, 2009

Aboard the Alguita, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement. Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.
Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans.

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10 Suicides a Month at Ft. Hood -- War Stress Is Taking Soldiers to the Brink

The shooting tragedy at Fort Hood on Friday points to a much larger problem of combat
stress and overdeployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Dahr Jamail, Washington Peace Center, November 10, 2009

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Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is one of the largest US military bases in the
world. It contains up to 50,000 soldiers, and is one of the most heavily deployed to
both occupations.
Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more
suicides than any other army post since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. This year
alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month - at least 75 have been
recorded through July of this year alone.

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California’s Gov. Schwarzenegger backs new tax breaks for the rich

By Reem Nour and Dan Conway, World Socialist Web Site, November 10, 2009

Last month, the Commission on the 21st Century Economy, created by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and members of the Democrat-controlled state legislature, proposed an overhaul of the tax code that would benefit the state’s most affluent layers and big business.

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Koalas 'could face extinction'

BBC News, November 10, 2009

Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers.

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Dark Clouds Gathering Over Copenhagen

By Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service, November 7, 2009

It has been a bad week for the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. During the week the last meeting in the formal round of pre- Copenhagen talks collapsed in Barcelona. Then, meeting here on the weekend, the G20 finance ministers put the seal on that failure by failing to agree a financial package.

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House Passes Landmark Healthcare Bill with Amendment Backed by Anti-Abortion Lawmakers

Democracy Now!, November 9, 2009

The bill has been described as the biggest overhaul of the country’s healthcare system since the Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965. Among those who voted no was Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich, a leading proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all healthcare system. Reproductive rights took a hit Saturday night when the House also passed an amendment to establish limits on the funding of abortions within the new framework that would be established by the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

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Where Will They Get the Troops?

By Dahr Jamail & Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, November 9, 2009

As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in.
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While the Obama administration decides how many thousands of troops to send to Afghanistan, service men and women are already facing repeated deployments, oftentimes while having already been diagnosed with medical conditions that should render them unfit for deployment.
Nothing has changed for these beleaguered troops, except the venue of their maltreatment and the desperation with which the military is now struggling to make the necessary deployment numbers as it continues to fight two endless wars.

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Poll: Widespread Global Dissatisfaction with Free-Market Capitalism

By James Robbins, BBC, November 9, 2009

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found widespread dissatisfaction with free-market capitalism.
In the global poll for the BBC World Service, only 11% of those questioned across 27 countries said that it was working well.

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Fort Hood: The Making of a Tragedy

By Eric Ruder and Trey Kindlinger, Socialist Worker, November 9, 2009

Even when they weren't filling the air with racist hate, the media's explanations for the shootings at Fort Hood missed the real questions we need to ask.

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When the War Comes Home: Iraq Veteran at Fort Hood Speaks Out About Last Week’s Mass Shooting

Democracy Now!, November 9, 2009

As families and friends mourn the thirteen individuals who were shot dead at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, questions continue to be raised about what might have motivated Thursday’s rampage. The suspected gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was an Army psychiatrist who had spent most of his career at Walter Reed Hospital before being transferred to Fort Hood earlier this year. He had also recently received orders to deploy to Afghanistan. We speak to Private Michael Kern from Fort Hood and independent journalist and author Dahr Jamail.

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Obama and Perverted Priorities: One Year Later

By Paul Street, ZNet, November 5, 2009

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. - Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967
REDUCED EXPECTATIONS
One year after President Barack Obama's historic election in the name of "change" and "hope," Gallup and USA Today report that the U.S. citizenry's initially high expectations of the Obama presidency have fallen along with the president's popularity.

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US Army major kills 12 at Fort Hood, Texas

By Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site, November 6, 2009

A US Army major and psychiatrist specializing in combat stress opened fire Thursday afternoon on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, the largest US military base, killing 12 and wounding 31.
The horrific shooting spree erupted in a waiting room at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where troops are processed before being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The officer, Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, began the shooting spree at 1:30 in the afternoon. Initially, press reports said he had been killed by return fire from police, but the base commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, said at a press conference Thursday night that he was still alive, having been wounded multiple times by gunfire.
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Cone refused to speculate on a motive for the mass killing, but the Pentagon issued a statement saying that it did not believe that the shootings were an act of political terrorism.
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The mass killing at Fort Hood is one more indication that the escalating war in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation of Iraq are straining the all-volunteer US military to the breaking point.
While combat deaths in Afghanistan rose to a record high last month, suicides among US soldiers both overseas and at home also rose precipitously, reaching 16 in October. A total of 134 active-duty soldiers have taken their own lives so far this year. The suicide rate in the military has risen 37 percent since 2006 and for the first time last year surpassed the rate for the US population as a whole.
Military commanders attribute the rising suicide rate to back-to-back combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past eight years.
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The tragic killings at Fort Hood will inevitably have a further demoralizing effect on US troops, who are being thrust year after year into colonial-style wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unbearable stress that is producing the growing incidents of violence and suicide will only be intensified by the Obama administration’s plans to send tens of thousands of additional troops to suppress the resistance of the Afghan people to US occupation.

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What happened on November 3?

When voters get the chance to ratify the status quo or "throw the bums out," it doesn't matter that the Republicans' policies are disastrous for working people. The Democratic bums get tossed out just the same.
By Lance Selfa, Socialist Worker, November 6, 2009

There are two wrong interpretations of the November 3 election results circulating in the political establishment and among its chatterers.
One interpretation, the one coming from the White House, says they don't matter at all. The other, coming mainly from the Republican Party and the likes of Glenn Beck, holds that the elections were a sharp repudiation of Barack Obama's "big government" agenda and a signal that Americans are ready to embrace the right wing again.
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The worst conclusion that Democrats and their supporters can draw from the elections is that they must move to the "center"--i.e., to the right--to placate "swing voters" who went for the Republicans in 2009. The Democrats are already governing from "the center," and that certainly didn't do them much good in mobilizing their base voters in 2009.
Politicians are, by nature, cowardly and risk-averse. So we're likely to hear a lot from them about how the Democrats mustn't go "too far," "must reconnect with the people," yada, yada, yada.
If liberal interest groups follow that lead and don't pressure the Democrats for their demands, the end result will be more rotten compromises with the right, more demoralization for their supporters--and a right-wing comeback that seemed impossible only a few months ago.

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