WHITE RIBBON RALLY in D.C. – SEPTEMBER 30th 4-6pm

The generous, expansive public option on the lips of Congressional progressives, which would be open to all and compete to lower insurance prices is largely imaginary, while the president’s stingy, divisive and means-tested version is all too real. But what about the third version of the public option? What is the Congressional Progressive Caucus doing to promote it, and to allow states to pursue single payer on their own?

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Some highly profitable and job creating industries simply can’t be reformed. Slavery and child labor cannot not be made humane and reasonable, not with kind and solicitous masters or school and limited hours for the kids. Both these practices were eventually cast aside. Allowing souless, greedy private insurance corporations to collect a toll for standing between patients and doctors may be next.

The president’s health care plan is designed to preserve the parasitic private insurance industry a little while longer. In this context, the public option is a cruel and cynical hoax, an excuse not to abolish the role of private insurance death panels and toll collectors in the nation’s health care system.

[Read the report]

Bringing Together Homeland Security, Intelligence, and Defense

By Tom Barry

Who’s taking care of our national security—our nation’s defense, military operations, homeland security, and intelligence? There’s the Department of Defense, the U.S. Armed Forces, the Department of Homeland Security, and the “intelligence community” of agencies led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But since Sept. 11 national security has been increasingly outsourced.

Now we have what might be termed a national security complex where intelligence, defense, and homeland security are closely linked and integrated—and more and more in the hands of the private sector.

Read more…

Tom Barry is a senior foreign policy analyst with the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. He blogs at: http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/.

For More Information:
Former Bush Security Chiefs Find Terrorism Obsession Can Be Profitable
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6382

“Community Security” Mission Creep at Homeland Security
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6251

Enforcement-First Immigration Politics
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6156

Laura Carlsen, Americas MexicoBlog, 23 September 2009

Jessica Sanchez of Feminists in Resistance, just sent in this account of how the police are even raiding hospitals to capture wounded demonstrators after beating them:

“I just got back from the hsopital where I took my brothers who were arrested by the police after the march and savagely beaten, while the police screamed that this way they would learn not to go around in marches and that Mel couldn’t save them from a beating. One of my brothers (21 years old) has bruised lungs from the beating and the other has two broken hands… They also detained several compañeras from Feminists in Resistance who were later released because they were carrying their identification as part of the Women’s Human Rights Observatory. What seems incredible to me is that the police are taking people (mostly youths) from the hospital… They are going into the hospitals every two hours, to see who they’ll take out. WE CAN’T ALLOW THIS! The Red Cross hasn’t done anything, but there are nurses and members of the resistance inside the hospital who helped us a lot.”

We have received reports of persecution by police on motorcycles, hunting down protesters like animals. An eight-year old boy became the latest casualty—not coincidentally, all on the side of the people against the coup—when he died yesterday of tear gas asphyxiation.

Related:
Carlos in DC: Crisis Worsening in Honduras as Protesters are Repressed by Coup Police and Military Forces: The U.S. Government Must Take a Stand Urgently

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration will not allow the Goldstone report recommendations on Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war to reach the International Criminal Court.

A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to “quickly” bring the report — commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone — to its “natural conclusion” within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.

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