(no subject)
Dear Amy,
I want to level with you in a way that Bush administration officials have not, and likely never will: America can take steps right now to break our dependence on foreign oil, disentangle our future from the whims of Saudi princes, clean the air we all breathe, and create millions of good American jobs at the same time. Does this sound impossible? Well, it's not.
The Campaign for America's Future is bringing together the labor and environmental activists who are making energy independence a reality in America right now! Together with our "Apollo Alliance" coalition, we've already secured millions of dollars for clean energy investments in American cities and states. In addition, we've seen major elements of our 10-Point Plan for good jobs and energy independence echoed directly in John Kerry's energy strategy. And today, I'm proud to report that the 13-million member strong AFL-CIO officially endorsed the plan, adding more muscle to our growing movement for energy independence.
To keep this incredible momentum moving, we've developed what we think is a powerful 30-second video about the need to move beyond Big Oil now. Please take a look and help us get it in front of the eyes of voters in the battleground states:
http://www.ourfuture.org/your_gas_money.cfm
Despite what the Bush team might have you believe, there is a common thread connecting today's soaring gas prices, the reality of American troops in Iraq, the dismantling of US air quality standards, and the creation of lucrative clean energy jobs overseas instead of in America. The common thread here? On all fronts, the Bush team is tightening our dependence on Big Oil, regardless of the price we have to pay.
America needs an oil change! At the Campaign for America's Future, we know that energy independence is completely within reach. American innovators are poised to perfect new energy technologies and succeed in new lucrative global energy markets. American workers are ready to step into new, good-paying energy sector jobs. And American consumers are ready for a break at the gas pump.
Please take a moment to watch this 30-second video, and help us get it in front of more voters eyes - especially in election battleground states:
http://www.ourfuture.org/your_gas_money.cfm
In the 1960s, a great American President and leader, John F. Kennedy responded to the growing challenges of the Cold War, and mustered the political will to land an American on the moon. At the Campaign for America's Future, we feel it is time for an equally ambitious Apollo project for energy independence. By challenging and inspiring the American public, and positioning our government to support (not obstruct!) American ingenuity, our next president can move America away from an out-moded era of Big Oil to a new era of energy independence. The solutions are here, and I personally look forward to working with you and the rest of tomorrow's leaders to usher in the brighter future they will offer.
For additional confirmation that, yes!, the time is now for a change in American energy policy, please enjoy this video and help us to spread the word:
http://www.ourfuture.org/your_gas_money.cfm
Sincerely,
Adam Luna, Policy Director
Campaign for America's Future
Dear MoveOn member,
We’re going for it.
Last week, MoveOn PAC members gave over $2.1 million to launch Leave No Voter Behind: MoveOn PAC's Neighbor-to-Neighbor Victory Drive to turn out 440,000 additional votes for Kerry from 10,000 targeted neighborhoods. We're bowled over by this level of enthusiasm, but to make it work, we'll also need tens of thousands of volunteer leaders like you.
Just because you don't live in one of the 'swing' states doesn't mean you have to sit this election out. We're looking for 10,000 people to adopt a key battleground state voting district, or 'precinct'. These volunteers will partner with local residents in that precinct to contact a few hundred voters, educate them on the issues and the candidates, and turn them out to vote. The Goal: 40 or more additional votes for Kerry per precinct, enough to tip the balance in this close a race. Using new online tools plus coordinated road trips and phone calling, we will help you focus your energy where it matters the most.
Help us Leave No Voter Behind by adopting a precinct. For more info and to sign up, just click here:
http://www.moveonpac.org/precinctpartners/signup.html
We know that talking to people about the election might sound intimidating, but MoveOn PAC members who have tried it are almost always glad they did, and we'll train you ahead of time to make sure you're prepared.
Can we count you in? Sign up now to be a Precinct Partner:
http://www.moveonpac.org/precinctpartners/signup.html
Florida taught us in 2000 that just a handful of votes can decide a presidential election and the fate of a nation, and it may come down to a handful again this year. Through personal contact with voters as a part of Leave No Voter Behind, you can make that difference. Together we plan take our country back. This is our chance to make history--with your help.
Thanks for all that you do.
Sincerely,
--Adam Ruben, Field Director
MoveOn PAC
Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
PS: If you can’t commit to being a leader at this point, but want to support this important effort, please make a contribution to this program today at:
https://www.moveonpac.org/donate/leavenovoterbehind.html
PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC www.moveonpac.org
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
To: George W. Bush
As Jim Rassman writes, "35 years after the fact, some Republican-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Bush are suddenly lying about John Kerry's service in Vietnam; they are calling him a traitor because he spoke out against the Nixon administration's failed policies in Vietnam. Some of these Republican-sponsored veterans are the same ones who spoke out against John at the behest of the Nixon administration in 1971. But this time their attacks are more vicious, their lies cut deep and are directed not just at John Kerry, but at me and each of his crewmates as well. This hate-filled ad asserts that I was not under fire; it questions my words and Navy records. This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency, people who don't understand the bond of those who serve in combat. As John McCain noted, the television ad aired by these veterans is 'dishonest and dishonorable.' Sen. McCain called on President Bush to condemn the ad. Regrettably, the president has ignored Sen. McCain."
As a candidate, you promised to "be a uniter, not a divider" ... "restore honor and integrity to the White House" ... and "change the tone in Washington."
We therefore call on you to condemn the lies by your supporters about John Kerry's Vietnam medals.
Click here to sign the petition!
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To subscribe to Democrats.com (Daily or Weekly - it's free!) click here.
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http://mediastudy.com/articles/av8-12-04.html
Caging Dissent
The Republicans are Coming
by Michael I, Niman, ArtVoice 8/12/04
We now know that in 2000 Jeb Bush's administration in Florida purged 50,000
people who had the right to vote from Florida's voting roles. They simply
misidentified these voters as ex-felons to whom Florida denies voting
rights. The list was disproportionably black and overwhelmingly Democratic.
All other irregularities aside, this is ultimately how they stole the
election. And this is not an untested theory - it's uncontested fact.
OK, so what happens in America when we learn an election was stolen? In this
case we call the crook "president" for four years and, hush hush, sweep
reality under the carpet. The basic idea, which most Democrats acquiesced
to, is to protect the supposed integrity of the system by making believe it
worked, and in the process, avert a constitutional crisis.
At it Again
The criminals who purposefully stole our democracy from us in 2000, however,
are unrepentant. To the contrary, they're looting the treasury via fat cat
military contracts to their sponsors while corrupting the judiciary with the
appointments of neo-fascist federal judges. And they're getting ready to
steal the next election by any means necessary. Hence, it comes as no
surprise that Florida, still run by Jeb Bush, recently issued a list of
47,000 more "ex-felons" to be purged from the voting roles before the next
presidential election. Again, the list was overwhelmingly black and
Democratic.
The Florida administration tried to keep the new list secret, but a judge
ordered them to make it public. Once it was public, journalists noticed a
strange anomaly - the total absence of Hispanic ex-felons. It seems that Jeb
Bush's people removed Hispanics, who in Florida tend to be
Republican-leaning Cubanos, from the list. They also outsourced vote
counting to a Republican-controlled private electronic voting machine
company whose machines don't create recountable paper records. (see Getting
a Grip 10/30/03 or for the most comprehensive article written to date on
electronic voting, see Ronnie Dugger's cover story in the August 16, 2004
issue of The Nation).
On the rare occasions that I meet someone who admits to voting for George W.
Bush, I'm always astonished, and I ask them, "Why did you give up your vote
so easily?" I mean, with all the election fraud that we saw in 2000, with
all the efforts Republicans made to steal the election, there was no need to
steal their votes. They just gave them away.
The Right Sign
This year the Republicans are not only doing everything they can to stifle
dissent at the ballot box - they're working to stifle it in the streets as
well. Their latest contribution to the American political lexicon is the
oxymoronic phrase, "free speech zone." As I wrote last week, all of America
is a free speech zone. If speech is caged or penned, it's not "free" at all.
Yet, since 2000, we've seen these zones of oppression pop up all over the
country. Whenever George W. Bush appears in public, the Secret Service
appears first, instructing local police agencies to quarantine protestors
into free speech pens.
The pens, however, aren't for everyone. People demonstrating in support of
the Bush regime or any of their pet policies, are often exempt from the
pennings. This was documented at the 2002 trial for Bill Neel, a Pittsburg
retiree who showed up to greet Bush during a Labor Day visit to that city,
with a sign reading, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made
so many of us." According to The American Conservative (12/15/03), he was
arrested for refusing to take his anti-Bush placard to a "free speech zone."
Neel, it turns out, was in the middle of a sign-wielding crowd of Bush
supporters lining W's motorcade route when police ordered him to relocate to
a fenced in ball field seven blocks away from the motorcade route. At his
trial, a Pittsburgh police spokesperson, John Ianachione, explained that the
Secret Service ordered the police to remove anyone who expressed an opinion
"against the president and his views." The judge threw the case out of
court, angrily explaining to the Assistant District Attorney, "I believe
this is America."
This certainly was not an anomaly. In another celebrated case, a South
Carolina police officer arrested a man for refusing to leave a similar
motorcade route, telling him that it wasn't his presence per-se that was the
problem, but it was "the content of your sign that's the problem." When
South Carolina prosecutors dropped the charges, John Ashcroft's Justice
Department, the agency ironically responsible for protecting protestors'
civil rights, stepped in and charged the man under federal law for the crime
of "entering a restricted area around the President of the United States."
Protestors in St. Louis in 2003 were actually incarcerated in their pen and
not allowed to leave. The media, by contrast, were not allowed to enter the
pen, hence they could not talk to the protestors. In Louisiana, pro-Bush
demonstrators were allowed to again line W's tree-lined motorcade route
while anti-Bush demonstrators were dispatched to bake in the sun at a
designated free speech solar oven. And again, when asked why those other
people could line the route, a police officer explained, "it's because
they're pro-Bush." In Crawford, Texas, a police officer recently told a
court that wearing a peace button can constitute an illegal demonstration.
The examples go on and on.
"Protestors are Terrorists"
The Bush administration's disdain for democracy is inherent in its
abhorrence of dissent. In May of 2003, the Department of Homeland Security
issued a terrorist advisory to local police departments warning them to be
on the lookout for people who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions
of the US government." This attitude was evident last April 7 th, when
police under the command of the federally funded California Ant-Terrorism
task force opened fire on peaceful demonstrators in Oakland, shooting
several with "non lethal" rubber bullets - a tactic borrowed from
Apartheid-era South Africa and the Israeli military in the Occupied
Territories of Palestine.
California Anti-Terrorism Task Force spokesperson Mike van Winkle justified
the attack, explaining to the Oakland Tribune, "If you have a protest group
protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is
international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can
almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." Hence, though
having no link to terrorism, the protestors were terrorists none-the-less,
evidenced solely by the fact that they were exercising their democratic
right, and patriotic duty, to dissent. Van Winkle also argued that since the
demonstrators were blocking the entrance to the Port of Oakland, they were
terrorists. He explained, "I've heard terrorism described as anything that
is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly
would have some economic impact."
The problem is that van Winkle isn't just some drunken wacko pontificating
his fascist views in a dank pub to fellow droolers as Fox News blares on in
the background. No. He represents the post-coup American federal government.
And he sets policy. And people get shot.
These shootings terrorize other would be protestors into staying home and in
the end democracy dies a slow death. This is the real terrorism that we're
facing. This terrorism has never been stronger than right now, leading up to
the massive protests scheduled for the Republican National Convention later
this month in New York City.
Republicans Invade
New Yorkers are angry, likening the upcoming convention to an "invasion."
Writing for New York's Indypendent, A.K. Gupta argues, "We are being invaded
- by a band of crooks and criminals called the Bush administration. In the
name of 'safety' our fair city is being locked down and the public
terrorized so some right-wing lunatics can exploit the tragedy of September
11 th - our tragedy."
The "terror" is coming in the form of official warnings about supposed
lunatic protestors. In one instance, New York's police commissioner Ray
Kelly intoned the passive voice to warn of instructions supposedly appearing
on the internet for protestors to sprinkle themselves with gunpowder. A
quick Google search of the net, however, attributes the quote, which only
turns up on a bunch of right wing news sites such as Fox News, to
Commissioner Kelly. None of the protest sites suggest such lunacy. To the
contrary, they call for nonviolence. Kelly claims the demonstrators are
"hard core groups looking to take us on," thus setting the stage to confront
protestors with an intimidating military style police presence.
The Bush administration has also done its part to up the terror level at the
convention protests, elevating their "terror alert" in New York City. While
the heightened alert scored frightening front page headlines, the supposed
threat turns out to be based on documents dating back to before September 11
th, 2001. And while they list targets, they don't list any dates. In other
words, the new alert is based on old nonspecific information regarding a
supposed threat that has always been with us. Unleashing this alert now,
however, offers arguments to justify the police state about to be unleashed
in Manhattan.
The Function of Terror
Chris Anderson, a Ph.D. candidate and researcher at the Columbia School of
Journalism, has documented a pattern over the last five years of media
generated hysteria surrounding public protests. According to Anderson, the
mainstream media "consistently repeat unsubstantiated police claims about
violent troublemakers." Once arrests occur, Anderson found that the same
media "parrot" exaggerated or outright false police statements explaining
why the arrests occurred. "Many of the same journalists denounce their own
manipulation once the protests have ended," Anderson adds.
This is exactly what's happening in New York. Government officials are using
the media to create terror and hence, a political opening for official
repression of protestors, such terror intimidates most would-be protestors
into not attending demonstrations.
If the media reports haven't scared them away, perhaps a maze of razor wire
topped fences, police touting military weaponry and the NYPD's new South
African style armored assault vehicles complete with gun turrets will. This
terrorism is the true threat to American democracy. It transforms legal
protest from the festival it was just a decade ago, into a brave act of
defiance. To not defy the Bush administration and their lackeys at this
critical juncture in American history, however, could spell the end of our
imperiled democracy.
CCopyright 2004