Friday, June 15, 2007

POLITICS


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GIULIANI ORDERED 70,000 STRIP SEARCHES AS MAYOR

ALTERNET - At the directive of Mayor Giuliani's office, over a ten month
period from 1996 to 1997, the New York City police conducted over 70,000
strip-searches of ordinary citizens for minor offenses including: trying
to board the subway without paying a fare and jaywalking.

If 70,000 strip-searches were conducted by Giuliani's policy squads over
10 months, that meant roughly 233 per day, about 10 per hour or one
every 6 minutes.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/53938/

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GREEN PARTY JOINS IRISH GOVERNMENT

AP - The environmentalist Green Party, radical outsiders in Irish
politics throughout its history, voted to join Ireland's next government
and extend Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's 10-year run in power. Green
leaders won a surprisingly easy ratification for their pact with Ahern's
long-dominant Fianna Fail party following a day-long conference on
Wednesday of party activists. After reading and debating the 90-page
government platform agreed by both parties' negotiators, the Green grass
roots backed the deal in a lopsided 441-to-67 vote.

The landmark deal involved generous concessions by Fianna Fail, which
offered the Greens two Cabinet posts and a raft of promises, including a
carbon tax on polluters and to pursue aggressive targets for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. . .

While a vociferous minority demanded that the Greens retain their
traditional hostility to Fianna Fail, Ireland's party of the
pro-business establishment, leadership figures won the debate by
pointing to the chance to get at least some Green visions turned into
reality.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-13-ireland_N.htm?csp=34

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OBAMA A MEMBER OF THE CHICAGO MACHINE

JOHN KASS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE - Often missing from the Obama puffery is any
acknowledgment that despite the rhetoric, Obama is all but a front man
for Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago Democratic political machine. He has
backed Daley for re-election, with City Hall awash in federal
investigations, and he's got the mayor's media strategist David Axelrod
massaging his message. Obama has supported other machine creatures. . .
I don't know what Washington political writers call it. But back home,
this is what we call transcending politics the Chicago Way.

This week, the Chicago Sun-Times published a story about Obama writing
letters to city and state officials on behalf of Rezko, so Rezko could
receive more than $14 million in taxpayer funds to develop senior
citizen housing. This included $885,000 in development fees for Rezko
and partner Allison Davis, Obama's former boss. The paper didn't include
the fact that Davis is also a buddy of Daley's. The Sun-Times did note
that Obama insisted to the Tribune last year that in all the years he
has known Rezko, "I've never done any favors for him." No favors? When
you transcend politics and walk on water, I guess it all depends on what
your definition of favor is.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/premium/printedition/
Thursday/chi-kass14jun14,1,4079442.story?ctrack=2&cset=true


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OBAMA: THE ANTITHESIS OF BLACK POWER

GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Barack Obama's candidacy for president
reveals critical fissures in the historical African American worldview,
forcing black citizens and activists to make a choice: will we support a
cosmetic change in regime that is no more than skin deep - endorsing the
ruling structure because it has a Black face - or continue on the long
journey to self-determination, true social democracy and peace. Obama,
the political twin of Hillary Clinton and the corporate Democratic
Leadership Council her husband helped found, is determined to liquidate
black politics as an independent force in the United States, having
already proclaimed, "There is no black America."

Barack Obama is the antithesis of black power, a man who promises with
every word he speaks, with every nuance of phrase and body language, and
through his voting record as a U.S. Senator, that he personifies the
definitive end of black organized struggle in the United States - a
unilateral surrender to white racism. This is his appeal to the white
masses: that they will no longer be challenged to confront history, or
to relinquish privilege in the present. . .

Obama is a company man. He knows the language, the subtle and overt
signals, and emits them like a beacon. Ruling circles have gotten the
message, and that is why corporate media have made him a contender, and
corporate billfolds have financed him. The "skinny kid" made his bones
at the Democratic National Convention, in August, 2004, while he was
still an Illinois senatorial candidate - a shoo-in against the hopeless
and deranged black Republican Alan Keyes. . .

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=
view&id=251&Itemid=34


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