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Reject Bush’s Cuts to Public Broadcasting

Reject Bush’s Cuts to Public Broadcasting

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Take Action: Tell Congress: Reject Bush’s Cuts to Public Broadcasting

Once again, President Bush is trying to cripple the public broadcasting system by slashing its funding.

I just signed a petition to Congress to reject these proposed cuts, and I hope you will too.

Mr. Rogers would be proud of you.

In 1969, Richard Nixon attempted to cut PBS funding by 50%. A senate hearing chaired by “hatchetman” Senator John Pastori couldn’t push it through as long as there was someone like Fred Rogers to speak for at least some of the reasons that public broadcasting is important.



No Cover-up! Hold Contactors Responsible

No Cover-up! Hold Contactors Responsible

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So what’s been happening with Halliburton? Ugly, ugly stuff, even against their own…

Gang Rape Cover-Up by US, Halliburton/KBR

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job. “Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Justice department accused of delaying Iraq rape inquiry, U.K. Guardian, December 13, 2007.

A US senator came forward today on behalf of the second woman in a week to allege rape by private contractors in Iraq, worsening a controversy that has already sparked a congressional hearing.

Democratic senator Bill Nelson questioned whether the justice department had dragged its feet in the cases of an anonymous woman from Tampa, Florida, and Jamie Lynn Jones, a Texas woman who disclosed her rape charge to ABC news this week.

Both women say they were sexually assaulted by employees of KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, in Iraq in 2005.

Nelson wrote to attorney general Michael Mukasey to confirm reports that the US navy criminal investigative service (NCIS) had investigated the rape charge and told the justice department of its findings.

He asked Mukasey whether more women have raised rape charges against private contractors and whether the government has responded.

“Both of these incidents occurred approximately two years ago, yet no one has been charged in either case,” Nelson wrote.

From Moveon.org:

Jamie Leigh Jones was working in Iraq for a subsidiary of Halliburton when she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by several coworkers. For the last two years, she’s been asking the US government to hold the perpetrators accountable, but the men who raped her may never be brought to justice because Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq aren’t subject to US or Iraqi laws.

I just signed MoveOne’s petition urging Congress to investigate the rape of Jamie Leigh Jones, hold those involved accountable, and bring US contractors under the jurisdiction of US law.

Will you join me?

Related:

“Halliburton hit in rape lawsuit,” New York Daily News, December 11, 2007

“Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR,” ABC News, December 10, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3977702


Jamie’s Journal, The Jamie Leigh Foundation

“Female ex-employees sue KBR, Halliburton—report,” Reuters, June 29, 2007

“Blackwater Probe Narrows Focus to Guards,” Associated Press, December 8, 2007

Don’t Kill Last 300 Whales for Navy Training

Don’t Kill Last 300 Whales for Navy Training

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Tell the U.S. Navy to Protect Right Whales from Deadly Sonar!

Only 300 North Atlantic right whales are believed to exist — and unfortunately their migratory route goes right through the area where the U.S. Navy plans to unleash lethal mid-frequency sonar off North Carolina’s coast.

Ear-splitting military sonar is needlessly killing whales and other marine mammals throughout the world’s oceans. Yet the U.S. Navy wants to put a training range for lethal mid-frequency sonar right next to a key migratory route for endangered right whales off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

Please urge the Navy to find a place and a time for training that is less likely to harm some of the most magnificent creatures on Earth.

(NRDC Action Fund, see statement by James Taylor)

Take Torture off the Table

Take Torture off the Table

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It’s wrong. It’s anti-American. It doesn’t even work.


Tell Congress to Take Torture off the Table

Congress needs to send a clear message to the Bush administration: cruel interrogation techniques – including mock execution, forced nakedness and induced hypothermia – are morally wrong and have to stop.

Important legislation that sets one humane standard for ALL government agencies has been passed by the House, but has stalled. Keep the pressure on! Tell Congress to swiftly bring U.S. interrogation policy into line with the laws and values of our country.

(Human Rights First)

Stop Big Media Now

Stop Big Media Now

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Banking on your short attention span, big media is giving it another shot. Stop Big Media is trying to get the word out.

Tell Congress not to dismantle media ownership rules!

Kevin Martin, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been keeping a secret from the American people. He wants to push through plans to remove decades-old media ownership protections. And he’s trying to do it without public scrutiny.

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) have introduced groundbreaking bipartisan legislation that would hold the FCC accountable and put the people ahead of Big Media.

Letters like this — millions of them — stopped media consolidation in 2003. Sign the letter and tell everyone you know.

Do it now. Here is the letter default – you can edit.

I am writing to urge you to support S 2332, the “The Media Ownership Act of 2007.” This legislation will ensure that the Federal Communications Commission addresses the dismal state of female and minority ownership before changing any rules to unleash more media concentration.

Nearly 99 percent of the public comments received by the FCC oppose changing the nation’s media ownership rules to allow a handful of large conglomerates to swallow up more local media outlets. Congress rejected the same changes to the rules in 2003. Yet the FCC is still pushing a plan to overhaul the rules by the end of the year.

This legislation would mandate that the FCC give the public 90 days’ notice before holding a vote on new rules to ensure a full public accounting of the impact of media consolidation before changing the ownership limits. These steps are necessary to preserve diverse local media that meets the needs of our communities.

Diversity is the cornerstone of a democratic media system. Yet research by Free Press found that that while minorities make up 33 percent of the U.S. population, they own less than 8 percent of radio stations and 3 percent of TV stations.

This legislation would create an independent task force to address the crisis in minority media ownership.

Our democracy requires the free flow of local information from diverse voices. Please support the “The Media Ownership Act of 2007.”


More actions from Stop Big Media

Support Student Right to Peaceful Protest- Morton West HS

Support Student Right to Peaceful Protest- Morton West HS

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Please consider signing the petition to defend the anti-war students at Morton High School who engaged in a peaceful protest against military recruiting at their school.

This is how the petition reads:

We are writing in defense of the students who now face excessive disciplinary actions at the hands of various Morton West school administrators. Our sympathies lie with the courageous and moral struggle that the students have taken up, and with their parents who still support them. The struggle for a peaceful and just society absent of war should not be met with punishment, but should be supported by the community as a whole, especially from within the educational setting. Furthermore, It is our firm belief that an injury to freedom for students anywhere is an injury to freedom for students everywhere. This is why we urge all Morton West administrators to drop all disciplinary action against the said students, and to remove any indications of said events from their permanent records. We urge you to respect these students right to free expression now and in the future.

Here is the notice I received about it:

Last Thursday, dozens of students at Morton West High School in Berwyn, near Chicago, staged a protest in the school cafeteria against the Iraq war, and specifically against the military recruiters who have set up shop inside the school. The students were threatened and cajoled into moving the protest out of the cafeteria, with the promise that punishment would be minor. But they were suspended for up to ten days, and 37 are now facing expulsion by the superintendent, Ben Nowakowski.

Immediately, parents went to the school to protest the suspensions. 60 people spoke in support of the sit-in last night at a raucous school board meeting. Because people are resisting the punishments, the story has been in the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, and on the local news. Parents report that in meetings with school officials, they have been pressured to get their children to “turn in the ring-leader”.

The father of a suspended student, wrote this about the protest, “The Army recruiters continue to aggressively hunt down every Hispanic male student as they enter the front door of the high school (since the school is 80% Hispanic) to promise them the world and then send them to Iraq or Afghanistan to get killed for Bush’s Oil, but a peaceful protest, in which the students cleaned up after themselves, is bad and worth losing their high school education over.”

This is exactly the time for people around the country – YOU – to weigh in for the Morton HS Students who protested.

Endorse & forward In Defense of the Morton West Antiwar Students Petition to the Morton West School District.

Most importantly, get on the phone Friday and call the superintendent’s office. Tell him there
Should be NO punishment for the students protesting military recruiters who prey on the youth.

Dr. Ben Nowakowski, Superintendent District 201
2423 South Austin, Cicero, IL 60804
bnowakowski@jsmorton.org
(708) 222-5702

Mr. Lucas, Principal Morton West High School
2400 S. Home Avenue Berwyn, IL 60402
jlucas@west.jsmorton.org
708-222-5901

Let me know what response you get and we will keep you posted on what happens.

Sincerely,
Debra Sweet,
The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime

Rob Kall at Op-ed News has put together much more detailed information on this incident, including the threat of expulsion received by some of the students.