Related
Chavez Landslide Tops All In US History
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HOLIDAY ISSUE Dec.20 - Jan. 2
True Solidarity in a Cold World: Hugo Chavez is ‘Black’ Santa Claus for U.S. Poor
by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
“Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth, because of my curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it’s African.” – Hugo Chavez, Democracy Now, September 20, 2005
For tens of thousands of needy Americans this holiday season, “Saint Nick” arrived in the person of a former paratrooper with straight-from-the-barrio Afro-Indian features, commanding fleets of trucks bearing millions of gallons of heating oil heavily discounted for the poor. Through his year-round policy of international solidarity – which is quite different than seasonal generosity – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the most frequently and fairly elected head of state in the history of the Americas, has revealed the identity of the real Global Grinch: George Bush and the multinational oil companies and fat cats he serves.
It’s a lesson even reality-starved North Americans should comprehend, and one that should find particular resonance among African Americans. Had he been born in Georgia, rather than in the backwater interior of a Spanish-speaking country, Hugo Chavez would certainly have been considered a Black man. The white elites of Venezuela seem to feel the same way – Chavez is routinely referred to as a “monkey” in his homeland’s oligarchic media. Indeed, Chavez’s status as the most popular politician in Latin America has resulted in a kind of perverse North-South hemispheric solidarity among white elites, who collectively tremble at every stirring of Black-brown political power.
--MORE--
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Gaza: a prison again
chAfter the worst years in memory, charities try to offer hope where there is deep despair
By Donald Mcintyre
The IndependentGAZA STRIP (Dec 16, 2006)
Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.
In Gaza City's deserted gold souk, people are not even coming to sell their jewellery any more.
"We just sit and drink tea," said Yasser Moteer, 35, who runs a jewellery stall. "It's worse than any time in the 20 years I've been here. It's crazy."
The gold-selling started soon after the international and Israeli boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority started to plunge Gaza's economy into collapse last March. But having long ceased to buy here, the poor have nothing left to sell.
Certainly, the 1.3 million people of this ancient coastal strip of territory, a mere 360 square kilometres, can never have experienced as intense a swing of hope to despair as they have in little more than 12 months.
Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw Israel's settlers and troops in August 2005, for all the criticism that it was unilateral and circumscribed in both its genesis and its implementation, made many Palestinians here, almost despite themselves, hope for a better future.
It was not just the sudden freedom to travel from north to south without the endless delays at the hated Abu Houli checkpoint, or that children in the southern town of Khan Younis could run west through what were now the ruins of the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim and plunge into a Mediterranean they had only ever dreamt about, or that families could again cross the southern border at Rafah and reunite with their relatives in Egypt.
It was the sense that for the first time in five dark, stifling and dangerous years, Gaza could breathe -- psychologically and, just maybe, economically.
As 2006 nears its close, it is easy to see how cruelly those hopes have been mocked by what has happened this year.
Since Hamas and other Gaza militants seized the Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, and killed two of his comrades in late June, shells, drones and machine-gun fire from Israeli forces have killed some 400 Palestinians, including civilians -- women and children among them -- in a conflict overshadowed to a large extent by the war in Lebanon.
For five long months, electricity was cut to eight hours a day, damaging water supplies, after a surgically accurate bombing condemned by Israelis as well as foreign human rights groups as collective punishment in breach of humanitarian law.
Reaching a peak in July, the use of sonic booms, often deliberately timed as children were going to school, created misery and fear. As if that was not enough, a far lower but significant number of civilians, also including children, have been killed or wounded in the sporadic fighting between Fatah and Hamas, the two dominant factions in Palestinian politics, or in battles between extended families.
For the immediate survivors of the Israeli shells that killed 17 members of the Athamneh family as they tried to flee their home in Beit Hanoun as it was attacked, the bereavement is, if anything, harder to bear now that just over a month has elapsed since it happened.
In late afternoon sunshine recently, in the eerily peaceful alley where the carnage was perpetrated, Hayat Athamneh, 56, a strong woman who lost three adult sons, all fathers themselves, sat with their still devastated and injured brother Amjad, 31, and his wife, who lost their own son Mahmoud, 10.
"Now I feel it," said Hayat, covering her eyes as they fill with tears.
"It wasn't so bad at the beginning. There were a lot of people around. Now there is nobody."
As she reeled off the list of Palestinian and foreign dignitaries who had visited the site, her daughter-in-law Tahani, 35, said: "They all came. But nothing happened." Tahani talks about the three surviving Athamneh family members, two of them children, who lost limbs in the attack.
"We have to worry about the one who lost arms and legs now and will see the others who haven't. We have to look after them and then worry about where we are going to live."
Her brother-in-law Majdi Athamneh, who lost his 12-year-old son Saad, says that the extended-family members are afraid to go back to their shelled house because of the structural damage, but what's more, they no longer think they should live together as they had for so many years.
"When so many members of one family were killed, it is better to make sure it doesn't happen again and live apart," he said to nods from his relatives.
Eight kilometres away in Gaza City, Adeeb Zarhouk, 44, is a man used to hard work. He used to support his wife Majda and their seven children during the 20 years he was employed in Israel as a freelance metalworker and electrician, and the five years he has worked for an Israeli company in the now flattened Erez industrial zone on the northern edge of Gaza.
But this morning he apologizes for being asleep when we call.
Each day, he hopes for a request to install a satellite TV dish or do another odd job. "But the phone hasn't rung for weeks," he says. "Nobody has any money to do these things."
Zarhouk is part of the 64 per cent increase in "deep poverty" among Palestinian refugees in the last year He is naturally cheerful but, as his wife prepares a three-shekel (80-cent) family breakfast of beans, falafel and a few tomatoes, he says: "When I'm at home by myself, I start crying. When your son asks you for half a shekel and you don't have it ... ."
Zarhouk gets up to wash the tears from his eyes. Then he says that although as a refugee he earned almost $240 a month on a three-month United Nations Relief and Works Agency job program, he now owes $540 in rent and that the family eats meat only when his 20-year-old son gets an irregular $350 handout in lieu of his salary as a Palestinian Authority policeman.
Who does Zarhouk, who voted Fatah in the last election, blame? "I blame democracy," he says with a flash of sarcasm. "The whole world wanted us to have democracy and said how fair our election had been. The problem is they didn't like our results."
The world's boycott of the PA since those elections ended salaries for the PA employees on whose spending Gaza's economy disproportionately depends. The highly professional but desperately under-equipped health service is suffering.
In her bed at Shifa hospital, Intisar al Saqqa is waiting for the drug Taxoter which doctors say she needs to treat breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and her liver.
"Every week, they say it will come on Monday," says her mother, Hadra, 62. "But it doesn't. Inshallah, it will come soon." Her daughter says, "I don't blame anybody."
The agreement Condoleezza Rice persuaded Israel to sign a year ago to the free the passage of goods and people into and out of Gaza has not been implemented, as a UN report pointed out. The UN's Office of Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Gaza's access to the outside world is "extremely limited" and that commercial trade is "negligible."
That is diplomatese for saying Gaza is a prison again. Israel refuses to take the blame, saying the boycott and closures result directly from security anxieties and from the refusal of Hamas to modify its stances on recognition and violence, and refusing -- so far -- to release the Israeli corporal.
Now, with talks between Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas past collapse, there is little hope, and plenty to do for the non-governmental organizations and charities trying to keep Gaza alive.
By Donald Mcintyre
The IndependentGAZA STRIP (Dec 16, 2006)
Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.
In Gaza City's deserted gold souk, people are not even coming to sell their jewellery any more.
"We just sit and drink tea," said Yasser Moteer, 35, who runs a jewellery stall. "It's worse than any time in the 20 years I've been here. It's crazy."
The gold-selling started soon after the international and Israeli boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority started to plunge Gaza's economy into collapse last March. But having long ceased to buy here, the poor have nothing left to sell.
Certainly, the 1.3 million people of this ancient coastal strip of territory, a mere 360 square kilometres, can never have experienced as intense a swing of hope to despair as they have in little more than 12 months.
Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw Israel's settlers and troops in August 2005, for all the criticism that it was unilateral and circumscribed in both its genesis and its implementation, made many Palestinians here, almost despite themselves, hope for a better future.
It was not just the sudden freedom to travel from north to south without the endless delays at the hated Abu Houli checkpoint, or that children in the southern town of Khan Younis could run west through what were now the ruins of the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim and plunge into a Mediterranean they had only ever dreamt about, or that families could again cross the southern border at Rafah and reunite with their relatives in Egypt.
It was the sense that for the first time in five dark, stifling and dangerous years, Gaza could breathe -- psychologically and, just maybe, economically.
As 2006 nears its close, it is easy to see how cruelly those hopes have been mocked by what has happened this year.
Since Hamas and other Gaza militants seized the Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, and killed two of his comrades in late June, shells, drones and machine-gun fire from Israeli forces have killed some 400 Palestinians, including civilians -- women and children among them -- in a conflict overshadowed to a large extent by the war in Lebanon.
For five long months, electricity was cut to eight hours a day, damaging water supplies, after a surgically accurate bombing condemned by Israelis as well as foreign human rights groups as collective punishment in breach of humanitarian law.
Reaching a peak in July, the use of sonic booms, often deliberately timed as children were going to school, created misery and fear. As if that was not enough, a far lower but significant number of civilians, also including children, have been killed or wounded in the sporadic fighting between Fatah and Hamas, the two dominant factions in Palestinian politics, or in battles between extended families.
For the immediate survivors of the Israeli shells that killed 17 members of the Athamneh family as they tried to flee their home in Beit Hanoun as it was attacked, the bereavement is, if anything, harder to bear now that just over a month has elapsed since it happened.
In late afternoon sunshine recently, in the eerily peaceful alley where the carnage was perpetrated, Hayat Athamneh, 56, a strong woman who lost three adult sons, all fathers themselves, sat with their still devastated and injured brother Amjad, 31, and his wife, who lost their own son Mahmoud, 10.
"Now I feel it," said Hayat, covering her eyes as they fill with tears.
"It wasn't so bad at the beginning. There were a lot of people around. Now there is nobody."
As she reeled off the list of Palestinian and foreign dignitaries who had visited the site, her daughter-in-law Tahani, 35, said: "They all came. But nothing happened." Tahani talks about the three surviving Athamneh family members, two of them children, who lost limbs in the attack.
"We have to worry about the one who lost arms and legs now and will see the others who haven't. We have to look after them and then worry about where we are going to live."
Her brother-in-law Majdi Athamneh, who lost his 12-year-old son Saad, says that the extended-family members are afraid to go back to their shelled house because of the structural damage, but what's more, they no longer think they should live together as they had for so many years.
"When so many members of one family were killed, it is better to make sure it doesn't happen again and live apart," he said to nods from his relatives.
Eight kilometres away in Gaza City, Adeeb Zarhouk, 44, is a man used to hard work. He used to support his wife Majda and their seven children during the 20 years he was employed in Israel as a freelance metalworker and electrician, and the five years he has worked for an Israeli company in the now flattened Erez industrial zone on the northern edge of Gaza.
But this morning he apologizes for being asleep when we call.
Each day, he hopes for a request to install a satellite TV dish or do another odd job. "But the phone hasn't rung for weeks," he says. "Nobody has any money to do these things."
Zarhouk is part of the 64 per cent increase in "deep poverty" among Palestinian refugees in the last year He is naturally cheerful but, as his wife prepares a three-shekel (80-cent) family breakfast of beans, falafel and a few tomatoes, he says: "When I'm at home by myself, I start crying. When your son asks you for half a shekel and you don't have it ... ."
Zarhouk gets up to wash the tears from his eyes. Then he says that although as a refugee he earned almost $240 a month on a three-month United Nations Relief and Works Agency job program, he now owes $540 in rent and that the family eats meat only when his 20-year-old son gets an irregular $350 handout in lieu of his salary as a Palestinian Authority policeman.
Who does Zarhouk, who voted Fatah in the last election, blame? "I blame democracy," he says with a flash of sarcasm. "The whole world wanted us to have democracy and said how fair our election had been. The problem is they didn't like our results."
The world's boycott of the PA since those elections ended salaries for the PA employees on whose spending Gaza's economy disproportionately depends. The highly professional but desperately under-equipped health service is suffering.
In her bed at Shifa hospital, Intisar al Saqqa is waiting for the drug Taxoter which doctors say she needs to treat breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and her liver.
"Every week, they say it will come on Monday," says her mother, Hadra, 62. "But it doesn't. Inshallah, it will come soon." Her daughter says, "I don't blame anybody."
The agreement Condoleezza Rice persuaded Israel to sign a year ago to the free the passage of goods and people into and out of Gaza has not been implemented, as a UN report pointed out. The UN's Office of Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Gaza's access to the outside world is "extremely limited" and that commercial trade is "negligible."
That is diplomatese for saying Gaza is a prison again. Israel refuses to take the blame, saying the boycott and closures result directly from security anxieties and from the refusal of Hamas to modify its stances on recognition and violence, and refusing -- so far -- to release the Israeli corporal.
Now, with talks between Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas past collapse, there is little hope, and plenty to do for the non-governmental organizations and charities trying to keep Gaza alive.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Strangling the messenger
The right's efforts to undermine the freedom of the American press have been largely successful.
Judith Miller and Josh Wolf make for unlikely comrades.
Miller is a veteran journalist with a 28-year career at the New York Times behind her. Wolf is a 24-year-old freelancer and video blogger.
Miller is accused by her detractors - unfairly, in my view - of having carried the Bush administration's water through overly credulous reporting in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Wolf describes himself as an anarchist. His blog appears beneath the slogan "The Revolution Will Be Televised."
The incongruous duo have emerged in recent months as symbols of press freedom in the US - or, perhaps more accurately, as symbols of the degree to which that freedom is being circumscribed.
Miller served 85 days in jail last year because she would not reveal her source on a story she never wrote. The bizarre saga involved prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald hounding Miller to testify before a grand jury as part of an investigation into the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Miller's stint in jail came to an end when she finally received a strong assurance from her source - Vice-President Dick Cheney's then-chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby - that she could testify.
Miller and Fitzgerald have been tangling again this year, in an unrelated case. Fitzgerald is this time investigating how journalists got to know that two Islamic charities were going to be targets of government investigation and asset freezes in 2001. A court has ruled that he has the right to inspect 11 days of phone records belonging to Miller and her erstwhile colleague Philip Shenon. Late last month, the Supreme Court refused to stay that decision.
Wolf languishes in jail in California. He filmed an anarchist protest in San Francisco last summer. As part of an investigation into whether certain crimes, including arson, were committed, Wolf was subpoenaed and asked to surrender his material. He refused. He was jailed for contempt of court on August 1. Save for a brief period during which he was granted bail, he has remained there ever since.
A third case is also vexing American journalists. Two reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada have been ordered jailed for contempt, pending appeal. The men's work helped uncover the extent of steroid abuse in baseball. In the course of that work, they received leaked grand jury testimony. They are now facing prison terms of up to 18 months because they will not reveal the identity of the leaker.
The public, of course, seems largely unconcerned by all of this. Polls consistently show plummeting regard for the mainstream media. To be fair, some of this is undoubtedly the media's fault - scandals like that involving New York Times fabricator Jayson Blair have undermined the quality press's credibility, while tabloid excesses on both sides of the Atlantic continue unabated.
Added to that, some sections of the American media have exhibited a strange, and ultimately self-defeating, double-standard, on the subject of leaks. Liberal columnists at the New York Times and elsewhere have gone out of their way to defend leaks critical of the White House but called for all sorts of sanctions against those who leak information that helps the administration's cause. This does little other than muddy the argument for press freedom.
None of this, however, should obscure the fact that the current administration has gone to unusual lengths to frustrate, intimidate and defame those sections of the American media that it considers troublesome. And it has been greatly helped in this effort by the broader conservative movement.
Earlier this year, the New York Times published a story regarding the administration's monitoring of international banking transactions in an effort to disrupt terrorist financing. Although few people were truly surprised by the news, the furore that followed was intense. The president himself branded disclosure of the project "disgraceful". Dick Cheney said that "Some in the press, in particular the New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult." Republican Congressman Peter King accused the Times of "treasonous" behaviour.
The labelling of disclosures that are inconvenient for those in power as unpatriotic, traitorous or subversive is one of the oldest tricks in the handbook of authoritarian leadership.
Predictably enough, the White House's proxies among the punditocracy made even more shrill attacks. Most memorably of all, Melanie Morgan, a radio chat show host, said she would have no problem with the Times' executive editor Bill Keller being executed for treason.
Last year, a Pew Research Poll found that 45% of Americans believed little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers. Twenty years before, that figure was only 16%. Another survey last year by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre indicated that while 92% of journalists believed that the government "never" or "rarely" had the right to limit press reporting of a story, only a minority of the public (46%) agreed.
The logical extension of that finding - that more than half the population would happily collude in denying their own right to know what their government is up to - is profoundly depressing. But it is not out of keeping with the times.
In an article defending his decision to publish the banking story, Bill Keller and his then-counterpart at the Los Angeles Times, Dean Baquet, noted the words of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who, in the 1970s, allowed the publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers.
"The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government," Black wrote. "The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."
Such a viewpoint finds little support among the judiciary - or, it seems, among the general population - today. The unpalatable truth is that a concerted attempt by the right to undermine the press has been largely successful. We will live with its dismal consequences for many years to come.
Niall Stanage was born in Belfast in 1974. He lives in New York, where he covers American politics and culture for an Irish national newspaper, The Sunday Business Post.
He writes regularly for The New York Observer and the print edition of The Guardian. He was previously editor-in-chief of Ireland's main current affairs magazine, Magill.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Raided Muslim Charity Sues Bank
Related
Criminalizing Compassion in the War on Terror.
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Raided Muslim Charity Sues Bank
Monday November 27, 2006 2:01 PM
DETROIT (AP) - A Muslim charity raided by federal agents in September has sued a bank, saying it violated the charity's civil rights by planning to close its accounts.
The charity, Life for Relief and Development, also seeks an injunction to stop Comerica Bank from giving other banks any information it might have about the organization. The charity is challenging the constitutionality of a section of the Patriot Act, which allows financial institutions to share information about suspected money laundering or terrorist activity.
Comerica had told the charity that it planned to terminate the accounts Nov. 15, but granted an extension, according to the lawsuit.
Comerica Vice President Kathy Pitton declined to comment on the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court.
FBI agents assigned to a terrorism task force searched Life's offices Sept. 18, seizing computer servers, donor records and other financial documents. They also searched the homes of the charity's chief executive, an ex-employee and two board members.
The FBI would not say what agents were looking for, but charity officials have said it might be related to relief work the group did in Iraq. The international humanitarian organization also is active in Afghanistan.
No charges have been filed. The charity has sought to reassure the Detroit area's Muslim community that it is legal to donate money to the organization, which was founded in 1992 by Iraqi immigrants.
---
On the Net:
Life for Relief and Development: http://www.lifeusa.org
Comerica Bank: http://www.comerica.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6242194,00.html
Criminalizing Compassion in the War on Terror.
---
Raided Muslim Charity Sues Bank
Monday November 27, 2006 2:01 PM
DETROIT (AP) - A Muslim charity raided by federal agents in September has sued a bank, saying it violated the charity's civil rights by planning to close its accounts.
The charity, Life for Relief and Development, also seeks an injunction to stop Comerica Bank from giving other banks any information it might have about the organization. The charity is challenging the constitutionality of a section of the Patriot Act, which allows financial institutions to share information about suspected money laundering or terrorist activity.
Comerica had told the charity that it planned to terminate the accounts Nov. 15, but granted an extension, according to the lawsuit.
Comerica Vice President Kathy Pitton declined to comment on the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court.
FBI agents assigned to a terrorism task force searched Life's offices Sept. 18, seizing computer servers, donor records and other financial documents. They also searched the homes of the charity's chief executive, an ex-employee and two board members.
The FBI would not say what agents were looking for, but charity officials have said it might be related to relief work the group did in Iraq. The international humanitarian organization also is active in Afghanistan.
No charges have been filed. The charity has sought to reassure the Detroit area's Muslim community that it is legal to donate money to the organization, which was founded in 1992 by Iraqi immigrants.
---
On the Net:
Life for Relief and Development: http://www.lifeusa.org
Comerica Bank: http://www.comerica.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6242194,00.html
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
John Bolton v. Lee Kinchen: A Tale of Two Charities
by Steven D
Wed Nov 22nd, 2006 at 09:26:54 AM EST
In one, your money will go to a truly worthy cause:
The short version is that Lee has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, which is part of her disease, and that this tumor is pressing down on 8 of the 15 major nerve branches in her brain, as well as causing blockages and constriction of most of her major blood vessels in her brain.
Since Lee has been fucked out of SSI/SSDI, Medicare and Medicaid by the illiterate state-level bureaucrats who think that they know what a "disability" is, and her job at Fred's Super Discount Store isn't even enough for that child to pay RENT on, she needs your help.
She needs a LOT of help.
If she waits for the one remaining major hospital in the Louisiana state hospital (charity) system, she won't get a surgical date until March or April. Even though she is still working her skinny little ass off, she has already had her legs collapse out from under her, and has had the physical requirements of her job curtailed by her manager, Susan.
In the other one, not so much:
If Congress is absolutely determined to reject the best UN ambassador the world has seen in about a quarter of a century — John Bolton — then the only alternative if President Bush wants to keep him is another recess appointment. For that, Bolton would have to work without pay. It’s enough to make a person want to suggest that if you really care about trying to do some good in the world via the UN, stop sending your kids out to collect for UNICEF, and start sending them out to collect donations to keep John Bolton in office. Bolton, from everything I have seen, is far more honest and competent on every level than UNICEF, any of the other UN agencies, or most of the senior staff walking the halls of the UN, let alone many of the UN ambassadors whose limos cruise the streets of New York.
I would normally be against any such private meddling in U.S. foreign policy, or in matters relating to the public institution that is the UN. But the State Department in 2001 blithely accepted a $31 million check from left-leaning Ted Turner to fill a gap in U.S. dues to the UN (and thus free up much larger sums of U.S. taxpayer money to flood Turtle Bay). And the UN itself has been trumpeting its joy over its ever-expanding agenda of “public-private partnerships.” These set-ups are all very bad ideas, and someone needs to be asking why on earth both the U.S. and the UN should be franchising out public policy matters (and financing) to private players with their own agendas. But without John Bolton there, no one at the UN is going to be asking about anything very much…we will see the dawn of a new era of even greater UN impunity, moral bankruptcy and financial corruption. Why should only the left wing of U.S. politics have a private hand in UN affairs?
So, in the interest of fighting fire with fire, I wonder if anyone will start a campaign to scrap the UNICEF cans (they are not all about feedling wide-eyed children; they double-billed and padded their budgets in Iraq), and start collecting for Bolton.
If you would like to donate online to the Fund for Lee Kinchen, you can go to this LINK which has a PayPal button to click on, or you can snail mail your check to the following address:
Fund For Leola KinchenBank Of St. FrancisvilleP.O. Drawer 818St. Francisville, LA 70775
If you wish to donate to the "Pay John Bolton's Salary Fund" you're on your own.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/11/22/92654/258
Wed Nov 22nd, 2006 at 09:26:54 AM EST
In one, your money will go to a truly worthy cause:
The short version is that Lee has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, which is part of her disease, and that this tumor is pressing down on 8 of the 15 major nerve branches in her brain, as well as causing blockages and constriction of most of her major blood vessels in her brain.
Since Lee has been fucked out of SSI/SSDI, Medicare and Medicaid by the illiterate state-level bureaucrats who think that they know what a "disability" is, and her job at Fred's Super Discount Store isn't even enough for that child to pay RENT on, she needs your help.
She needs a LOT of help.
If she waits for the one remaining major hospital in the Louisiana state hospital (charity) system, she won't get a surgical date until March or April. Even though she is still working her skinny little ass off, she has already had her legs collapse out from under her, and has had the physical requirements of her job curtailed by her manager, Susan.
In the other one, not so much:
If Congress is absolutely determined to reject the best UN ambassador the world has seen in about a quarter of a century — John Bolton — then the only alternative if President Bush wants to keep him is another recess appointment. For that, Bolton would have to work without pay. It’s enough to make a person want to suggest that if you really care about trying to do some good in the world via the UN, stop sending your kids out to collect for UNICEF, and start sending them out to collect donations to keep John Bolton in office. Bolton, from everything I have seen, is far more honest and competent on every level than UNICEF, any of the other UN agencies, or most of the senior staff walking the halls of the UN, let alone many of the UN ambassadors whose limos cruise the streets of New York.
I would normally be against any such private meddling in U.S. foreign policy, or in matters relating to the public institution that is the UN. But the State Department in 2001 blithely accepted a $31 million check from left-leaning Ted Turner to fill a gap in U.S. dues to the UN (and thus free up much larger sums of U.S. taxpayer money to flood Turtle Bay). And the UN itself has been trumpeting its joy over its ever-expanding agenda of “public-private partnerships.” These set-ups are all very bad ideas, and someone needs to be asking why on earth both the U.S. and the UN should be franchising out public policy matters (and financing) to private players with their own agendas. But without John Bolton there, no one at the UN is going to be asking about anything very much…we will see the dawn of a new era of even greater UN impunity, moral bankruptcy and financial corruption. Why should only the left wing of U.S. politics have a private hand in UN affairs?
So, in the interest of fighting fire with fire, I wonder if anyone will start a campaign to scrap the UNICEF cans (they are not all about feedling wide-eyed children; they double-billed and padded their budgets in Iraq), and start collecting for Bolton.
If you would like to donate online to the Fund for Lee Kinchen, you can go to this LINK which has a PayPal button to click on, or you can snail mail your check to the following address:
Fund For Leola KinchenBank Of St. FrancisvilleP.O. Drawer 818St. Francisville, LA 70775
If you wish to donate to the "Pay John Bolton's Salary Fund" you're on your own.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/11/22/92654/258
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