Julian Assange Speaks
WikiLaks founder Julian Assange last addressed the press and supporters from the
Monarchs and religious leaders, generally step to the podium around this time of year. So why not Julian Assange? You might be a Wall street Wunderkind soaking up the sun in laundered drug cartel investments, You might be a a 17 year old German Anarchacker who doesn't know day from night, swinging through the cyberjungle ; you might be a lunatic-fringe tea party wingnut housewife in
San Diego sitting at a lap top in a state of the art kitchen... it's all the same. we all love/hate Assange.
Today Assange will deliver a message to the world from a balcony at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.
The Left so often cannibalizes its own. We are nudged into the anti-Assange contingent, forgetting what we saw happening in Iraq thanks to Assange's Wikileaks. So Thank you, Julian Assange – and Feliz Navidad.
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The plaza reopened to the public on Monday afternoon after an inmate work crew “completely cleaned” it, county spokeswoman Jennifer Inman said.
New signs posted on the plaza clearly inform people that camping and cooking are prohibited on the property. The signs also say the area is closed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless someone receives written permission to be there during those hours.
“The rules aren’t new or different. They’re just expressed more clearly than they were before,” Inman said.
A protest group known as Safe Legally Entitled Emergency Places to Sleep, or SLEEPS, spent two nights on the plaza before voluntarily leaving last Wednesday afternoon.
The county fenced off the area shortly after the group’s departure — acting on an order issued during the protest by County Administrator Liane Richardson. She said it needed to be temporarily shut down “to ensure the health and safety and uninterrupted county operations.”
Richardson told protesters last week that human feces had been found in a planted area on the plaza.
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Warrantless Spying Bill Extension Through Without Debate
The Senate is about to vote on an extension of the controversial FISA Amendments Act -- the unconstitutional law that allows the NSA to spy on Americans speaking to people abroad without a warrant. Yet you wouldn't know it by watching CSPAN because the Senate isn't debating it.
The law was set to expire on December 31, 2012 to ensure thorough review. But Senate leaders have so far refused to schedule any time on the Senate floor for debate or consideration of vital privacy-protecting amendments. Worse, they won't even tell the American public when they're going to vote on it.
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Does the post-election outpouring of secessionist fervor exemplify a passing fancy? Or does it rather suggest a deeper, even revolutionary, change in the American political terrain?
The immediate trigger was Barack Obama’s victory, which heralded a new coalition of voters—women, people of color and young people—who voted for the Democratic candidate at such a rate that, given the prevailing demographic trends, the Democratic Party appears to possess a major advantage for the foreseeable future.
After the election, right-wing activists immediately called for Texas to secede from the union. This echoed a declaration by progressive Vermonters, first made in 2003, to explore ways to opt out of a country that they deemed too reactionary.
A November 9 petition asking the Obama administration to “peacefully grant the state of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America” has garnered nearly 120,000 signatures to become by far the most popular petition on WhiteHouse.gov. Additional secession petitions have come in from the other 49 states, with those from Louisiana, Florida and Georgia amassing more than 30,000 signatories apiece.
One thing is certain: a bloc of Southern states that once were essential to any Democratic majority—from Wilson to Clinton, from the onset of World War I to the defeat of Al Gore in 2000—is no longer. Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina: The Democrats now can lose every one of these states in a presidential race and still win handily. Obama just did. The “Southern strategy” is gone.
Both parties’ wooing of the Deep South proved enormously beneficial to many states, such as Alabama, that began to split away from the Democrats in the 1970s and today are wholly alienated from the Democratic Party. Alabamans receive $2 in federal spending for every $1 they pay in taxes; this dramatic imbalance is an artifact of a dysfunctional U.S. Electoral College that encouraged the leaders of both major parties to court Southern states.
With the South now politically unhinged from the process of deciding the presidential election, calls for secession are the first evidence of the new panic on the Right. Facing the specter of more liberal Supreme Court justices and a political logic that will slowly extinguish political incentives to deliver federal aid to the Southern states, extremists in the region have resurrected a 19th century strategy. Playing the only political card they have left, they are threatening to exit the nation.
The talk is loudest in Texas chiefly because of the state’s size, national clout and pride of place. Admittedly, the Texas secessionists are loony. The most vocal organization, the Texas Nationalist Movement, states baldly: “The fact of the matter is, that there cannot be a union between those that esteem the principles of Karl Marx over the principles of Thomas Jefferson. Here in Texas, we esteem those principles of Thomas Jefferson—that all political power’s inherent in the people.”
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Bite Me
The Portland City Council will consider a resolution Thursday to move a public vote on water fluoridation from the May 2014 ballot to the May 2013 ballot. It's likely to pass, like it or not. Because our elected representatives are flagrantly ignoring the will of the people on this one. And if they are willing to pull it this time, count on them to do it again…After all, they know what’s best for our teeth.
Today’s vote decides the date and the fate of the fluoride ballot.
Fluoridation opponents prefer a May 2014 vote to a May 2013 vote. The extra time would allow them to set up an independent review committee to study both sides of the issue, preferably with the cooperation of pro-fluoridation Upstream Public Health.
Saying "no" to such an unnecessary delay might irritate fluoridation opponents, but it wouldn't violate the public's trust. There isn’t any trust to violate…