Republican Elephant Political Cartoons News January 26, 2012 Republican Elephant Political Cartoons News: More Hypocrisy and Nonsense from the Right-Wing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shelters. Solving the mystery of Mitt Romney’s Swiss and Cayman bank accounts.Mitt conveniently moves his … Continue reading
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With many people dealing with drug addiction today, there are many rehabilitation centers aimed at helping them overcome addiction. However, the choice of a drug rehabilitation center involves more than just walking into one with the most appealing buildings. You must consider various issues ranging from the staff they have, the people they are currently dealing with and what their programs involve.
Programs
The programs offered at the center are actually key to the decision one makes. For instance, some of the centers offer holistic treatments while others are focused on certain areas. In addition, there are the traditional treatment options as well as alternative therapies. Although all these options work, personal preferences differ and one option might be more appealing than others.
Different Addictions
The choice between these centers is also determined by the experience one has had with drugs. For instance, someone dealing with a cocaine addiction might not fit-in in a clinic dealing with alcohol addicts. Therefore, depending on the substance you have been abusing, you must look for the most appropriate clinic to help you overcome your addiction.
Inpatient/Outpatient Care
After selecting the appropriate center to help you or those you love, you need to consider other issues. For example, there can be the options of outpatient or inpatient care, which you need to consider. The outpatient program involves those addicted patients who live near the clinics where they receive treatment. Therefore, deciding to go for the outpatient program may not be appropriate if there is not one located near you. This is because the patient will have temptations and stress, which lead him to experiment with drugs repetitively and will lead to relapses so an easily accessible facility is very important.
Inpatient Advantages
With this in mind, choosing an inpatient program might be the best option. If the patient does not seem fully committed to the treatment, choosing a clinic far away from the place the addiction took place might present better results. This is because the person is no longer dealing with the same conditions that prompted the use of drugs.
Accreditation
The appropriate clinic is the one that is recognized and licensed. Therefore, when making a choice on the clinic you will use, you should ensure that the authorities of the state have recognized and issued a license to the clinic. This provides you with the proof that experts execute the programs offered by the clinic and will assure you that quick recovery from the addiction is not only possible but probable.
Aftercare
Finally, the type of medical detoxification aftercare offered is very important. This is what ensures that the patient does not suffer a relapse. For the best results, the clinic should have an established aftercare program that also has referrals to other recovery programs or support groups. The staff should also collaborate with the patient to create a discharge plan before he or she leaves the clinic.
Will Iran be the next “front” in the Global War on Terror? It has appeared that way for the past several years. In fact, the American government has been involved in the affairs of Iran for some time. A petition being circulated by the Solidarity Center states, “Iran has suffered greatly at the hands of the U.S. We recall the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. M. Mossadegh and returned the Shah to the Peacock Throne – ‘the proudest achievement of the CIA’. For 25 years the Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist for the benefit of U.S. oil corporations before the people of Iran, in the millions, overthrew his tyranny at a terrible cost in lives. For the past 27 years U.S. sanctions have impeded Iran’s right to development and brought great suffering to the people.“
Do not forget the rush to invade Iraq after the attacks on September 11, 2001. In October of 2002, President Bush said, “… we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
“Now in the Obama Administration, we see reports that are all too similar being made to justify military action against the people of Iran.” The petition by the Solidarity Center continues, “[t]aking Iran to the UN Security Council is a prelude for unilateral action. Just as in the case of Iraq, none of the claims made by the U.S. government stand up to unbiased scrutiny.”
During the recent State of the Union address, President Obama seemed intent on continuing to involve the American government in Iran. He said, “[a]nd we will safeguard America’s own security against those who threaten our citizens, our friends, and our interests. Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”
I urge you to make your voice heard. Let your friends, family, neighbors and elected officials know that you demand an end to the U.S. drive towards war with Iran; you demand an end to the U.S. campaign of lies, demonization, and sanctions directed at the people of Iran; and most importantly, let them know that you oppose any military attack on Iran.
In Peace, Freedom, Love & Liberty,
Darryl W. Perry
Chair Boston Tea Party National Committee
Owner/Managing Editor Free Patriot Press
2016 candidate for President of the United States of America
Darryl W. Perry is an Activist, Author, Poet & Statesman. Darryl writes a weekly article for the Mountaineer Jeffersonian, a monthly article for The Sovereign and has appeared on various alternative media talking about his books, political career and goals. Darryl is the Chairman of the Boston Tea Party National Committee and Owner/Managing Editor of Free Patriot Press.
Gail Elberg and Lorraine Stevens organizing the unorganized on January 28, 1972 in response to Fred Newman saying — in an intense collective meeting of diverse (and contentious) collective sixties types who sound off on any given topic – as they please! – AND have the (correct) (and incorrect) positions up the wazoo, as it were:
“I don’t care who you are (or what you think about or how you are feeling today)… Go out there and organize the people.”
So far, so good!
NH
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Obama’s State of the Union – Too Little Too Late
by Stewart Alexander, 2012 Socialist Party USA Presidential Candidate
The phrase that came to mind immediately upon hearing President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech is “too little, too late.” After spending the last few years coddling the banks and the richest 1%, Obama has the nerve to now call for “economic fairness.” To him, this means tweaking payroll taxes and making a rhetorical call to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich. For working people in America real fairness means the right to a job, a guarantee of healthcare for all and an end to the Military Industrial Complex. Obama won’t deliver this. That’s why I am running for President against him.
Job creation has been and will continue to be the most obvious way that Obama has sold out working people throughout America. These decisions were made early on in his administration when he made the conscious decision to pour billions of dollars into the Banks that had funded his campaign instead of using those funds to create an emergency employment program to put people back to work. The result is that Americans have experienced nearly three consecutive years of more than 9% unemployment and nearly double that when those workers who given up looking for jobs are counted. This has meant real human suffering for millions of people.
Although Obama has hailed the recent decline in these same unemployment rates, a closer look at the numbers reveal the hollowness of his claims. Economist Doug Henwood has paged through the Unemployment report and discovered that much of the reduction is due to the effects of holiday seasonal employment and, in particular, a shift to online purchasing for Christmas gifts. Of the 200,000 jobs created in December, some 42,000, or over 1/5, came from the hiring of extra couriers and messengers. Bars, restaurants and healthcare companies picked up the bulk of the rest of the new hires. Hardly the manner in which we want to grow the economy.
The jobs program that the Alexander/Mendoza 2012 campaign is proposing calls for the creation of a Full Employment economy. We have a three-pronged approach. First, we want to create an Emergency Jobs Program that will put millions of workers back to work immediately in fields like environmental cleanup, infrastructure creation and maintenance, and education. Second, we support proposals to publicly fund a worker owned and managed cooperative sector. This will serve to not only put people back to work, but to re-build the manufacturing capacity of our country. Finally, we want to fund job training programs that lead to job sharing or job splitting, where workers will work less yet retain the same amount of pay and benefits.
A serious restructuring of the tax code that allows us to take back the wealth created by our work and accumulated by the 1% is key to funding our job creation plan. We want more than Obama’s proposed payroll tax cut. We deserve more than just reversing Bush’s economically suicidal tax breaks for the rich. We need a radical restructuring of the way in which we think about wealth. The great riches of this society need to be put to use to help us all – to make life better for the 99% and create new opportunities for work, relaxation and community.
This is why we propose creating a progressive tax structure where the rich pay far more than the average working person. In a democratic socialist society neither Obama nor Romney would be allowed to pay an effective tax rate of 26% and 17% respectively. Corporate taxation, financial gains taxes and personal income taxes will be modernized – all loopholes will be closed and the rich will pay a steep tax on their income. This is what economic fairness looks like to a socialist.
If Obama’s proposals for “Economic Fairness” are hard to believe, his attempt to present his Presidency as one of peace is simply a farce. The hands of the Obama administration are dripping with blood. He has approved a brutal Drone war on the people of Pakistan that has resulted in massive civilian casualties. He has accelerated the war in Afghanistan, which has increased casualties among soldiers and terrorized the civilian population driving them into the political arms of the Taliban. And Obama has continued to take an aggressive political stance on Iran thereby moving the country closer to another war.
All this, plus a clear continuation of the Bush era security state policies. Obama’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) annihilates centuries of civil rights protections. The President now has the right to indefinitely jail any citizen in the America without having to work within the protections of habeas corpus. Added to the NDAA is the fact that, as I write this, Bradley Manning is rotting in a jail cell. Manning is Obama’s prisoner – a moral testament to the President’s commitment to continue the job of restricting civil liberties.
My campaign is staunchly anti-militarist. This means that I commit to bringing the troops home now through the elimination of all foreign occupations and the closing of all foreign military bases and I aim to dismantle the Military Industrial Complex. My campaign calls for an immediate 50% reduction in military spending. We think that democratic socialism offers the best hope for the creation of a world based on peace and solidarity. Eliminating the security state will move us a long way in that direction. America should be a model for civil liberties not a test case for how many rights can be restricted.
I am writing this also to encourage voters to take a serious look at my campaign. They will find that socialist politics are clearly distinct from the politics of the 1% peddled by politicians such as Obama, Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. Under their leadership, the State of the Union is neutered – reduced to an exercise in cheerleading for the politicians that have faithfully towed the line for their corporate benefactors. The proposals of the Alexander/Mendoza campaign are made in the interest of the 99%. We think Americans deserve a clear choice come November. We will be working hard to make that possible. Join us in making a demand for jobs, peace and freedom in 2012!
A beautiful part of the Kwanzaa ceremony is the invoking of names of people not there, honoring mentors in absentia,…
Posted at socialism.com:
In response to a rigged political system, New York City FSP Organizer Stephen Durham and feminist immigrant rights advocate Christina López are running a national write-in campaign.
Inroducing the FSP candidates:
Stephen Durham for president
Stephen Durham brings abundant experience and a generous heart to the electoral arena. Dedicated to changing conditions at their root, he is a lifelong radical in the best sense of the word.
In the 1970s and ’80s Durham, now 64, was the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) organizer in Los Angeles; he has since guided the New York City branch.
From the party’s storefront in Central Harlem, it’s a short subway ride to the international heart of capitalism. Durham has ridden that train many a time to confront the corrupt financial elite — in recent months, often to march with Occupy Wall Street and conduct teach-ins on economics.
Durham was radicalized as a student and campus worker at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), where he participated in the movement against the Vietnam War and became a conscientious objector. He also stood shoulder to shoulder with students of color in the historic battle for Third World Studies at UCB.
As a pioneering queer activist, he took part in the first national lesbian and gay conference in 1969. A consistent advocate of women’s rights and supporter of female leadership, Durham fights to keep feminist issues up front in all the movements.
Durham became a union militant while working as a waiter in California and then New York City. He provided rank-and-file leadership in the 1985 NYC Hotel Trades Council strike by 16,000 workers, predominantly people of color, women, and immigrants.
Durham’s long involvement in Latin America began during high school as an exchange student to Brazil during the military dictatorship. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he has traveled in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, building bonds and joint work with other leftists and revolutionaries.
Running for New York State Assembly in 1998, Durham campaigned door to door in the largely Latino and African American 71st District. His campaign was endorsed by Puerto Rican activist Father Luis Barrios, longtime Harlem radical Yuri Kochiyama, former state Assemblywoman Marie Runyon, and Haitian immigrant rights advocate Ray LaForest, among others.
A thinker as well as a doer, Durham has written on topics from the AIDS crisis to the Cuban Revolution, from freeing Lynne Stewart to the environmental disaster of hydraulic fracking.
Now Durham brings his global perspective and decades of valuable political experience to a working-class campaign for president.
Christina López for vice president
Christina López is a dynamic, eloquent Chicana from the barrio in Phoenix, whose working-class family has roots in the Southwest that predate U.S. borders.
She has been an organizer since her youth. As a member of the Chicano student group MEChA, she worked against a racist English-only law in Arizona.
After moving to Seattle, López was drawn to the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) by its emphasis on fighting for racial liberation as an essential component of building class solidarity. She has spread this message and challenged racism through extensive work defending immigrant rights, affirmative action, and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Her deep involvement in the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006 and 2007 included opposing the profoundly flawed “guest worker” bill. She has spearheaded protests against police brutality and worked with Somali women to protest FBI raids.
In jobs ranging from production at Revlon Cosmetics to county court clerk and library associate, López has been a member of several unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
Recently her activism in the Occupy movement has extended from Philadelphia to Seattle, where she helped pass a “cop-free zone” resolution at the general assembly.
Today, at 43, López is Seattle Radical Women (RW) president. She has been key to building RW’s Sisters Organize for Survival campaign, which has fought state budget cuts and layoffs of public workers for the past three years. Radical Women is affiliated with FSP on the basis of a shared socialist feminist program.
López battles for reproductive rights as a passionate feminist of color and led RW’s collaboration with Black feminists in Jackson, Miss., to defend the last abortion clinic in the state. She has pinpointed the special impact of war on women and children and the need for the anti-war movement to prioritize this issue.
She is the author of the forthcoming RW position paper “Estamos en la Lucha: Immigrant Women Light the Fires of Resistance,” which focuses on the impact of U.S. immigration policies on women and children and highlights the central role of immigrant women in this country and internationally.
Her passion for racial justice helps her guide the National Comrades of Color Caucus, a joint caucus of the FSP and RW.
As candidate for vice president, López will be a fierce partisan of the downtrodden.
Freedom Socialist Party launches presidential write-in campaign centered on bold working-class solutions
This election year, the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) is running New Yorker Stephen Durham for U.S. president and Seattleite Christina López for vice president in an energetic national write-in campaign.
Says Durham, 64, “The FSP ticket is a chance for people to vote not only against something, but for something. The campaign is thrilled to be giving people a way to send a strong protest message, find new kindred souls, and strengthen our organizing together for the future we want.”Over the past three years, charges Durham, “The Democratic and Republican parties have done nothing but cooperate in forcing workers and the poor to pay the costs of the Great Recession caused by the banks and Wall Street. President Obama may play to the crowd by criticizing the ‘bad apple’ corporations, as he did in his State of the Union address. But the facts show that the program of corporate coddling, which creates austerity for the masses, is completely bipartisan.”
Vice presidential candidate López, 43, explains the campaign’s goals: “We are encouraging people to register a protest against both the unjust economic system and the rigged electoral process that keeps it in place. And we want to generate discussion and action around solutions for people’s immediate survival and for changing the system for good. We know it can be done! But it means creating a grass-roots, multiracial move- ment – one that prioritizes the issues of people who are hurting most, for example immigrants, single mothers and their children, and Black teens trying to enter a dismal job market. We have great momentum from last year’s spirit of rebellion to build on.”
The FSP campaign platform calls for taxing corporate wealth, ending all U.S. military involvement abroad, and creating full employment through a massive public jobs program and reducing the standard workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay. The campaign also stands for bringing back and expanding social services, restoring civil liberties, and a host of other measures designed to eliminate poverty and discrimination and raise workers’ standard of living.
Durham and López are respected activists with a wealth of experience gained fighting for reforms like these while popularizing socialist ideas and the need for radical change. Durham, organizer of FSP’s New York City branch based in Harlem, is a gay rights pioneer with a strong union back- ground. A student and analyst of international affairs, he has traveled extensively in Latin America. López is an immigrant rights champion and the organizer for Seattle Radical Women. As organizer, she has helped lead a feminist campaign of women and men against budget cuts in Washington state for the last three years.
According to campaign manager Doug Barnes, the socialist feminist FSP is taking the unconventional route of a write-in campaign because corporate funding of the two major parties and restrictive ballot access laws stack the deck against minor parties so severely. These hurdles, he notes, are compounded by mainstream media dismissal of alternative candidates, resulting in presidential debates that almost entirely avoid topics like the social costs of war or increasing repression against political dissenters.
In one state, California, where the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) electoral alliance already has ballot status, Durham will compete to be PFP’s presidential candidate.
The Durham/López campaign launches this week with a candidate Web video, position statements, Facebook at www.facebook.com/VoteSocialism2012, Twitter @VoteSocialism, and featured articles in the Freedom Socialist newspaper. With the help of volunteers, the FSP will be spreading the news and ideas of the campaign widely. The Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee is planning for college and other speaking engagements, Skype presentations, fundraisers, and more activities around the country.
Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee
4710 University Way NE, Ste. 100
Seattle, WA 98105
206-985-4621
VoteSocialism@gmail.com
Good write up in the Times Free Press:
In a brief interview after the meeting, Strong said Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District race is within reach for a party that hasn’t tasted victory since 1992. Strong said the newly drawn congressional district, which includes parts or all of six fresh counties, could benefit Democratic hopefuls Mary Headrick, a physician from Union County, and Chattanooga businessman Bill Taylor, both of whom attended the meeting.
“We’re feeling good,” said Strong, an assistant district attorney for Hamilton County. “The new district gives the Republican [candidates] no better name recognition than our own people.”
Democrats say Tennessee’s 3rd District congressional race winnable | timesfreepress.com.
People who are prolific travelers need to acquire additional new pages for pass port from time to time. This is often a better option compared to the hassle you may go through while applying for a new passport to serve the same purpose. It is a process than can be much easier than getting a new passport which is why you should consider getting new pages added to your traveling document if you are eligible.
Four Pages or Less
One of the prerequisites for getting these leaves added to your book is that the visa must have less than four pages remaining prior to the application. If your document does not satisfy this requirement, there is no way your application can be honored.
What You Need
To quick start the application process, you must have with you an application fee and your valid passport. Having all these in order, you need to fill out a special form for this purpose and mail the application together with the vital documents to the address that is indicated on the form.
Traceable Mail
Remember, these are very vital documents and therefore choosing a shipment company that is valid and reliable is very crucial. The courier service you choose must be in a position to safeguard your documents until they reach the intended hands.
At or Near Expiration
Although some people will apply for page addition when the document is still valid, you can also do so when it expires. This involves submitting a request for additional pages when applying for a new document after the one you have expires. This option is for those who travel extensively causing them to realize the need for page addition even before the new document is delivered.
Written Request Required
In order to be successful following this option, you have to submit a written request detailing your objective of getting these pages added to your document. For those who are sure of their eligibility, you can save time by filling out the DS-82 forms and mailing them to the proper address. Those who are not eligible and want to save time can still go to the website and download the DS-11 forms that they can fill out and take to the passport offices in person.
Track Documents
Just like with the case of a valid U.S. passport renewal , you must use a traceable mailing option while sending your request. This will protect you from major problems in case there is an error with the delivery. It is also wise to stick with secure mailing options as this will protect the content documents from unauthorized people.