Rally to Save AdultBasic on Tuesday in Philly:
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One of the 46,000 people relying on this program is Kathy from Doylestown. "Without adultBasic I would not have had the proper diagnosis and would have most likely died from cervical cancer." Last summer over 100 people came out for rallies across the state and 1500 of you signed the petition. The same day as the rallies, Blue Cross announced they would keep adultBasic for an additional 6 months. Now, they've decided to go back on their word. Let's hold them accountable! Join the Rally This Tuesday, December 7th!! Philadelphia - 12 Noon
outside IBX, 19th and Market These are people trying to do the right thing: they are working hard and buying coverage through adultBasic instead of turning to the ER and driving up our costs. Sign the Petition to Save AdultBasic! Have a story about you or someone you love on the program? One of the best ways to help is to share that story. Email Athena at aford@pahealthaccess.org today! - The push will continue in another week with rallies in other parts of the state. Want to see an event near you? Let us know! ______________________________________________ Join Veterans for Peace are holding a demonstration in Washington, D.C. on December 16 to protest the futile and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Daniel Ellsberg, Medea
Benjamin, Ray McGovern and several military veteran activists are
planning to do ================================= |
NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL ACTION:
(It probably won’t
come as a surprise that)
Monsanto actually feels they have the right to bypass the US Federal
Court system.
Just last August, a Federal court ruled that the USDA’s prior approval
of Monsanto’s GE “Roundup Ready” sugar beets was unlawful because the
USDA had neglected to conduct adequate analysis of the impacts of this
crop on farmers and the environment. The ruling made it illegal to
plant or sell GE sugar beets until further studies were conducted,
which the USDA estimated would be finished in 2012.
But Monsanto doesn’t play by the rules, and now the USDA has
proposed to allow the planting and sale of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready
sugar beets before the agency has completed its environmental
assessment. To add insult to injury, we have an absurdly short window
to voice our opposition - the USDA is giving us till December 6th to
submit comments regarding their proposal.
Let’s send the USDA 10,000 signatures to oppose
Monsanto’s GE sugar beets before they get their foot in the door. Click
here to sign our petition to the USDA by the December 6th deadline.
http://action.freshthemovie.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4856
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Update on the veteran-led civil resistance at the White House Dec. 16.
1.Wednesday, Dec. 15:Evening gathering at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church 1525 Newton St. NW (corner of 16th and Newton Streets), where we will go over plans for the next day's action. People can begin arriving at St. Stephen's by 5 pm and Food Not Bombs will provide a simple vegetarian meal that evening.Daniel Ellsbergand others who will be joining us on Thursday as well as some of the organizers will speak. People can sleep at St. Stephen's that night (bring sleeping bags) and also after 9:30 PM on Thursday night if necessary.
2.Thursday, Dec. 16:Brief motivational rally at 10 am in Lafayette Park (near the White House) with speakers:Daniel Ellsberg(of Pentagon Papers fame), subject of the documentaryThe Most Dangerous Man in America;Brian Becker,National Coordinator, ANSWER coalition;Peace MomCindy Sheehan, Peace of the Action;Ray McGovern, retiredCIAofficer and former U.S. Army Intelligence officer;Mike Ferner, president, Veterans For Peace;Diane Wilson, environmental activist and author ofAn Unreasonable Woman;Debra Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait;Mike Prysner, Iraq vet, cofounder of March Forward!,Medea Benjamin, co-founder Code Pink and others.
From there we will do a silent vigil march to the White House (route to be determined) to take our stand for peace. You don't have to bring signs - we'll provide them so we can have a uniform look. At the White House, many of us will dononviolent civil resistance,the key word beingnonviolent. We want peace but we need to demand it in a dignified, determined and peaceful way. We expect everybody to observe nonviolent guidelines that will be handed out at St. Stephen's the night before and at the rally. There will be a legal support team and legal observers on hand for the civil resistance.
3. A limited quantity of heavy duty, hoodedsweatshirts(design attached) will be available at St. Stephen's on Wednesday night. The price is $25.
4. A pdf ofpostcardsto be delivered to the president is also attached. We want to get as many individually signed as possible. If you would like printed copies of these postcards to collect signatures to bring to Washington on December 16, please emailstopthesewars@gmail.comwith your mailing address.They will also be available Wednesday night at St. Stephen's and at the rally December 16.
5. Also attached are pdfs of a black-and-whiteflyer, front and back, and a full-colorposter(11 x 17) Feel free to copy and distribute either or both.
Visit our website atwww.stopthesewars.orgor on facebook join our group "Take A Stand for Peace"!
Here's two articles on the December 16th White House demonstration: David Swanson
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Stop-These-Wars-Or-We-ll-F-by-David-Swanson-101129-195.html
Chris Hedges: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hope_in_the_21st_century_20101128/
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I just signed a petition online to save adultBasic and encourage you to click here to do the same!
If you don't know, adultBasic is a low cost affordable health insurance
program available to over 43,000 Pennsylvanians. This is the only
program in PA for people making a little too much to qualify for
Medicaid, but not enough to afford health insurance.
A major part of this program's funding comes from the Non-For-Profit "Blues" in PA, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, that have a combined surplus of over $6 Billion! Because they get special tax credits from the state with their 'non-profit' status, they are required by law to make charitable contributions.
Right now, 'The Blues' need to give a portion of those contributions to funding adultBasic. Their legal commitment ends in December. Help us tell leaders in Harrisburg to continue this program and the Blues to keep doing the right thing!
Sign this petition now!
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Daniel Ellsberg's Goodbye
Letter to Amazon
Daniel Ellsberg, AntiWar.Blog
Daniel Ellsberg says goodbye to Amazon with conviction. Here's just the
first paragraph: "I'm disgusted by Amazon's cowardice and servility in
abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the
face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional
right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that
encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China's
control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing."
READ MORE
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Today Wikileaks encountered a new form of censorship that should make all of us shudder. Rather than being shutdown at the web hosting level, EveryDNS shutdown the wikleaks.org domain name.
Unlike most aspects of the Internet, the domain name system is hierarchical. There is pyramid - with a limited number of Domain name registrars (just "over 500" according to Wikipedia) that control all the domain names in the world. When you type a domain name, like wikileaks.org, into your web browser, that domain name must be translated into an IP address that is used to route your request to the correct server. The 500 or so registrars control this process.
So what can you do?
Wikleaks responed by registering wikileaks.ch (woops! shutdown as well), wikileaks.de, wikileaks.fi, and wikileaks.nl.
That's a good start. But what if there were more? Here's an idea. What if everyone who controlled a domain name volunteered a subdomain for wikileaks? For example: wikileaks.mayfirst.org. Just create an A record that points to the IP address 88.80.13.160.
If wikileaks has to change providers (and therefor their IP address again), our subdomain won't work until we update it. On the other hand, seems like a good way for us all to really pitch in and share the risk that the folks at Wikileaks are taking all by themselves. And, if the IP address changes, wikileaks only needs to leave behind a simple page on the old IP with a redirect to the new one.
Any takers?
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Sign a petition to Obama re Cuba!
By signing this petition, you will encourage President Obama to improve
relations between the United States and Cuba through the good will of
our citizens. Help us amplify the importance of compassion and
friendship towards the people of Cuba through your support of this
petition. Your signature will increase our momentum to change the
direction of 50 years of mis-guided foreign policy in relation to Cuba.
Every action, as simple as it may be, has an effect. Sign the petition
here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/end_the_unjust_and_unfair_ban_on_travel_to_cuba
Latin America Working Group (www.lawg.org, 202-546-7010)
Join
us and the many other groups that support this effort: Center for
Democracy in the Americas (www.democracyinamericas.org/)/
New America Foundation (www.newamerica.net/)
, Washington Office on Latin America (www.wola.org)
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Short Guide to Political Salvation
By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/node/55775
By popular demand in response to a lengthy blog on war-to-peace economic conversion, here's the attention-span-adjusted introductory version.
Our main industry is weapons. The U.S. is far and away the world's leading exporter of weapons. We fight wars with and against weapons we've produced. Our largest public expense, eating up over half of every tax dollar, is also weapons and wars -- including wars in which we fund both sides, as in Afghanistan where our payoffs are the largest source of income for the Taliban.
In addition to all the non-economic negative consequences of our wars, wars drain our economy. Even domestic spending on the military machine hurts the economy in that it drains public resources that could have produced many more jobs and better paying jobs if invested elsewhere.
Yet we cannot throw those employed by the war machine out of work. Instead, we need to convert the factories making unnecessary and unhelpful weapons into factories making trains and solar panels and other useful products. We need economic conversion, something written about extensively during the better part of the last century by Seymour Melman. Melman helped draft legislation that was introduced into Congress for years but never passed.
HR 441, which had 53 cosponsors in the 102nd Congress, would have established a council to develop plans for conversion of some portion of the military economy to a peacetime economy. This would have involved taking steps to encourage conversion and to ensure employment for workers whose jobs were lost, and investment for communities where industry was lost.
As Washington has grown obsessed with the deficit, the economy has collapsed, and some of the stupidest wars we've ever seen (and that's saying something) have broken records for duration, a movement has formed to encourage the shifting of our resources from war to peace. For links and resources, see http://defundwar.org
War as a money-making business has benefitted from the ever-growing investment in war, its privatization, the growth of the "nation-building" or "reconstruction" industry, and the legalization of election spending. As with any important issue in Washington, everyone pointing out that this one will be nearly impossible to solve without cleaning the money out of the system is perfectly right. Groups working on that include these: http://movetoamend.org and http://freespeechforpeople.org
We'll also need a decent communications system, an end to complete party dominance of party members, verifiable elections, and all kinds of other reforms. But we have to push on multiple fronts, and we have to have a vision of what we want to achieve. This includes having an answer to why we would dare suggest cutting back in the one area where our economy is booming.
Conversion is the way. Get involved: http://defundwar.org
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Progressives
Must Start Agitating
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3412?akid=295.84929.B2LEex&t=2
Small
Business Owner Retorts GOP Talking Point: 'Tax Cuts Don't Trickle Down'
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3413?akid=295.84929.B2LEex&t=4
Bush
Officials Celebrate Tax Cut ‘Trap’ They Laid Nine Years Ago
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3415?akid=295.84929.B2LEex&t=8
Julian
Assange Answers Questions in Online QandA
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3416?akid=295.84929.B2LEex&t=10
Cyber
Attack Forces Wikileaks to Change Web Address
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3417?akid=295.84929.B2LEex&t=12