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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...

LEE'S SUMMIT CITIZEN REPUDIATES TAXPAYER FUNDED PRESIDENTIAL VISIT
TO LUXURY HOSPITAL AND CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE FUNDING OF MEDICAL TREATMENT
FOR 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS AND RESIDENTS

Lee’s Summit, MO -- 25 January 2007 --

On the dawn of a Presidential visit to St. Luke’s Hospital in Lee’s Summit, one resident is outraged by the political irony. “As a Lee’s Summit resident and a recent patient of St. Luke’s Hospital, I am appalled that President Bush has chosen to use Lee’s Summit and St. Luke’s East as a public relations podium for the health care crisis in America."

"Today Lee’s Summit and Jackson County taxpayers are being required to pay for extensive security surrounding President Bush's visit to Lee's Summit and St. Luke's East Hospital. If the CEO President truly wants to improve America's health care system, eliminating the OBSCENE profit margin of the health care "industry" is the place to start. The President's new health care proposal makes a mockery of the root causes of America's health care crisis and serves only to do further harm to to the shrinking middle class."

"Additionally, I recently had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at the St. Luke's Hospital in Lee's Summit. The patient care was outstanding, but the hospital is by no means representative of public hospitals across America. St. Luke’s East accommodations include having each room designated as a “private room” with two (plasma) televisions and a guest sleeper sofa standard in each private room."

"Furthermore, as a resident and taxpayer of Lee's Summit, Missouri I personally would much prefer that the exorbitant amount of public money spent on security for this political visit had instead been used for a health care issue that more accurately represented the compassion of the majority of Missouri citizens."

"Polls clearly show that the majority of Americans do not support the Iraq occupation. That politicians continue to ignore the will of the people is representative of a system that is broken. Savings from a tiny fraction of the Iraq invasion could be used to take care of our own infrastructure and citizen's basic health care needs."

"At Tuesday's President Bush's "State of the Union Address" there was one noteworthy attendee who represented an honorable class of citizens in urgent and desperate need of health care. Ceasar Borja Jr., was invited to attend President Bush's speech as a reminder of 9/11 workers who were stricken with a host of illnesses after exposure to toxic World Trade Center debris. Unfortunately, his father died just before the SOTU speech."

9/11 Officer Dies as Son Attends SOTU Speech
Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/23/220845.shtml?s=lh

"WASHINGTON -- A former New York policeman died Tuesday night as his 21-year-old son prepared to appear at the State of the Union address to symbolize the desperate health problems of some Sept. 11 workers."
(more)"9/11 is [b]not [/b] over. It didn't end in 2001. It is still affecting my father and numerous other first responders," he said.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

9/11: Toxic Legacy
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/toxiclegacy/index.html

"Within two weeks of 9/11 a disturbing analysis of the dust done by another agency – the U.S. Geological Survey – found it was extremely caustic, some of it as corrosive as oven or drain cleaner. When in contact with the moisture in people's eyes, nose throat or lungs it could burn tissue. The analysis of the dust was immediately given to the EPA, which did not release the data."
(more)
"Hugh Kaufman, a senior analyst at the EPA, says, "If there's a battle between economic interests and the health of firemen and policemen, it's a no brainer. The economic interests trump the health of firemen and policemen every time."

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Large Study of World Trade Center Responders
Finds Persistent Health Problems in Many
60 Percent Still Suffer Respiratory Problems from Exposure to Environment at Site

For Immediate Release from The Mount Sinai Medical Center
September 5, 2006
http://fusion.mssm.edu/media/content.cfm?storynum=29

(what about their right to basic health care coverage, Mr. President?)

Guest in the third hour.

[I put this in my blog, but I thought I'd drop it hear as well.]

Watching this fimed interview of Jeffery St. Clair (http://counterpunch.org/ruspoli01242007.html) was enlightening. What struck me most was how specious his argument was regarding the American left. I wasn't surprised that he dismissed the notion of US complicity in the attacks of September 11th, but was a little bewildered by the repetition of the Counterpunch talking points on the subject. He put forward the notion that interest in theories about 9/11 are not merely a symptom of the left's deep mistrust of the current administration, but are in fact a causative factor behind the left's inability to organize an effective resistance to the current administration. He states unequivocally that this focus on the cause of 9/11 has stopped people from organizing, distracted people from their opposition to the occupation of Iraq, and essentially reflects a retreat.

But he offers nothing in the way of evidence for this assertion, not even anecdotal evidence.

Speaking from my own experience of the anti-war movement in Portland, Oregon (St. Clair's hometown?) I can tell you that I became disaffected from local organizing efforts during the lead up to the war on Iraq and after, not because I became interested in any conspiracy theory behind 9/11, but because the local organizing efforts were unable to clearly establish any definable goals and because the lead organizers were self-agrandizing, power grubbing, gutless wonders. In less vitriolic language, the committees and meetings were peopled by low level establishment types who were comfortable with the status-quo and who were mostly jockeying for position inside the mileu of the so called radical opposition.

Some examples:
A full year before the invasion of Iraq anti-war activists were planning what kind of protest rally would be held when the invasion occured.
After the invasion the leadership decided not to continue holding large rallies in opposition, but to scale back their efforts even as popular support for rallies was growing.
Efforts to set institutional goals for real social change were shut down on the grounds that nobody wanted to discuss our individual ideological differences.

I knew at least a dozen organizers who resigned from the primary anti-war organization in Oregon out of frustration with the internal structure, with the unspoken pro-capitalist ideology, and finally the impotent character of the organization, but I encounter not one person who slowed down or quit their involvement with organizing in order to focus on US complicity in 9/11.

St. Clair explained that the American left is hysterically opposed to the Bush regime partly because they loved Clinton and party because they had been kept on a leash during Clinton's presidency. I recall a different decade, and a different outcome to Clinton's presidency. I recall that the American left became thoroughly disenchanted with the democratic party and electoral politics during Clinton's administration. I remember a decade that built up radical opposition to the corporate state and, in many circles, to the system of monoply capitalism itself.

I remember Seattle. Apparently St. Clair does not.

Regardless of whether or not Jeffrey is correct in his interpretation of what happened on 9/11, his explanation of the failings of the American left are specious, absurd, and finally disingenous.

The Counterpunch gang has taken it upon themselves to call 50% of their own readership nutters and to blame
the disarray inside the American left on mental health problems within the rank and file.

We don't need leaders like this. We really don't.

hes not bigger then sheen

Jimmy Carter, who caused himself a world of hurt by writing truthfully about the “Israeli-Palestinian issue,” that is to say more than a half century of Israeli brutality against Palestinians, was almost dis-invited from a speaking engagement at Brandeis University. You’d think his status as a former president would trump the political correctness of the ADL and the “American Jewish community,” many of them frankly sayanim. Carter made it by the skin of his teeth.

“Despite two months of a highly publicized campus debate over whether Carter would or would not be invited to campus, sparks did not fly at Tuesday’s event,” reports the Jewish Telegraph Agency. Carter used the event to backtrack one of his main claims. “In response to a question criticizing a section of his book that appears to justify the use of terrorism, Carter admitted it was a mistake…. Calling the wording ’stupid,’ Carter said, ‘I apologize to you personally and to everyone here.’ He said he has asked his publishers to change the wording in future editions.”

And what exactly is the egregious wording?

On page 213 of his book, Carter wrote: “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.”

In other words, the Palestinians will stop resisting occupation—condemned as illegal under international law—when the Israelis agree to stop slaughtering Palestinian school kids, plowing under century-old orchards, dividing up historic Arab land into squalid Bantustans, stealing tax money, siphoning off precious water, throwing kids in medieval torture dungeons, and converting Gaza and the West Bank into the largest open-air prison on the planet.

Fingernail pulling apologist Alan Dershowitz wasted little time exploiting Carter’s reticence. “If Carter had written a book more like his comments, I do not believe there would have been so much controversy,” said the Dersh, an indefatigable stalwart for clusterbombing small Arab nations and DIME bombing teenagers. “You heard the Brandeis Jimmy Carter today and he was terrific. I support almost everything he said. But if you listen to the Al Jazeera Jimmy Carter, you’ll hear a very different perspective.”

“In his speech, Carter said he was accustomed to being stigmatized in political campaigns, but he confessed that he has been hurt by some of his critics,” the JTA continues. “This is the first time I’ve ever been called a liar and an anti-Semite and a coward and a plagiarist,” Carter said.

Get used to it, Jimmy. Many of us who dare to criticize Israel have weathered these insults for years. A few of us endure death threats for the crime of speaking our minds. Of course, Carter, as a former president, does not have to worry about death threats, as he is surrounded 24-7 by the Secret Service. It’s a bit dicier for the rest of us, mere commoners.

Of course, all of this may soon be water under the bridge, as Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, introduced H.R. 254, also known as the hate crime bill, earlier this month.

“Criminalizing speech that expresses ‘hate’ or ‘bias’ would require us to outlaw history’s most valuable speech, especially the political and religious speech that threatens social stasis and ignites progress,” writes Harmony Grant. “Americans are so used to our mudslinging, no-holds-barred political discourse that we find it hard to envision the way freedom of speech could disappear. But the freedom we enjoy is extremely rare in history, and quickly lost. Free expression for intellectuals is the first thing to go when tyrants rise to power…. Hate law advocates including the ADL argue that hateful speech incites violence, and appeal to the government’s interest in reducing violent crime.”

Even Jimmy Carter is beginning to realize that telling the truth about Israel’s brutality against the Palestinians is considered “hateful speech” with consequences.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=727

check it out

/////////////////////
911dvds@gmail.com - $1 DVDs shipped - email for info

The Federal Reserve System is the real problem behind our country, even worse than nine eleven. It is a private enterprise that charges us interest to print and issue our money supply. The Government is more than capable of doing that task without the interest charge. Research it if you will.

http://video.google.com/ videopla...730277175242198

www.themoneymasters.com

www.freedomtofascism.com

Peace.

Some Rage...

— George W. Bush - State Of The Union Address - January 29th, 2002