Admit it: You, Mr. Barrack Obama, a capitalist, are proposing a continuation of imperialist policies in Africa, your father’s home land. You are selling Africa, the mother of all of us, to the highest bidder!

Short update on the case of the AETA4 in California, and ways that folks can support them:

On July 13th, defense attorneys for Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo (the AETA 4) presented oral arguments on their motion to dismiss the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The defense demanded that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) be struck down as unconstitutional before Judge Ronald Whyte of the United States District Court, Northern District of California in San Jose.

The AETA is being used for the first time since its passage by Congress in 2006 to do exactly what civil rights advocates feared it would do - criminalize activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The oral arguments presented on July 13th were not about the allegations as directly applied to the AETA 4, but rather that the whole case should be dismissed now because the AETA itself is unconstitutional. The courtroom was packed, and many people were there in support of the AETA 4. The following are very rough and incomplete notes of the oral arguments:

 http://www.aeta4.org

Small crowds gathered on Thursday, July 23, in Denver, Colorado, at the offices of Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) to rally for health care reform of some kind, namely between President Barack Obama’s plan enshrined in America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, H.R. 3200, now being debated in Congress, and a universal single payer system.

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REACTION and SERIOUS CONCERNS regarding UFPJ Action Alert of 7/9/09 asking that people join the “United 4 Iran ” Global Day of Action on July 25: Is UFPJ confident that the leaders and proponents of this action are not being financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and other “pro-democracy” fronts awash with some of the $400 million that the U.S. Congress has provided to the NED, the CIA, the USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) and others for the explicit purpose of subversion, acts of sabotage, financing, equipping and training upper echelon Iranian-Americans who are ready to serve the U.S. foreign policy objectives of infiltrating and penetrating the security spheres of the Iranian nation…? Thierry Meyssan claims to know how the CIA did it.

The Governor and the California General Assembly approved wage reductions for in-home assistance to elderly and disabled as part of an overall budget reduction proposal earlier this year. On June 23rd, activists from "The People's Day of Reckoning" protested those cuts as well as the governor's accusations that state funded In-Home Support Services is "rife with fraud." Seventeen people, many in wheelchairs, were arrested. On July 15th, members of that coalition were joined by labor activists, educators, and students at a larger protest at the same location.

There's never been much question that Sotomayor would succeed in the end, so any drama in the hearings has been "ginned up."

On July 13th, defense attorneys for Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo (the AETA 4) presented oral arguments on their motion to dismiss the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The AETA 4 are being represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), and other well-respected civil rights attorneys, including Tony Serra. The defense demanded that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) be struck down as unconstitutional before Judge Ronald Whyte of the United States District Court, Northern District of California in San Jose.

The AETA is being used for the first time since its passage by Congress in 2006 to do exactly what civil rights advocates feared it would do - criminalize activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The oral arguments presented on July 13th were not about the allegations as directly applied to the AETA 4, but rather that the whole case should be dismissed now because AETA itself is unconstitutional.

No doubt, there will be photos of Clinton surrounded by little Haitian children. There’s Clinton with his hand on the shoulder of a poor Haitian woman. The photo will freeze a caring-looking Clinton. But he’ll have the interests of the ruling class and the U.S. corporations in his heart.

RELATED: Democracy Restored, by Noam Chomsky, analyzing Bill Clinton's anti-democratic policy towards Haiti in the early 1990s following the first coup against Aristide

SOUTH EL MONTE — Residents of area communities and supporters of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area strongly criticized and rejected a controversial $30 million regional watershed visitor center proposed for the county Natural Area during a public meeting held Wednesday at South El Monte High School to discuss the project and its recently released draft environmental impact report. No member of the community spoke in favor of the proposal during the meeting.

The project, the San Gabriel River Discovery Center, would dramatically increase the human footprint within the only wildlife sanctuary on the San Gabriel River, located between the Montebello and Puente Hills. It would replace the existing 2,000-square-foot nature center with a building nearly 10 times bigger, and it would destroy important wildlife habitat within a county Significant Ecological Area to build a 150-car parking lot and other manmade features. Full Story: No community support for $30M Discovery Center at EIR meeting by Jim Odling

Monday, June 29, 2009 LOS ANGELES - Small groups of demonstrators gathered at the Honduran consulate on Wilshire Avenue to express their displeasure with the coup d'état against the democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya.

Lunes, el 29 de junio, 2009 LOS ÁNGELES - Pequeños grupos de manifestantes llegaron al consulado hondureño en la Avenida Wilshire para denunciar el golpe de estado contra el presidente Manuel Zelaya, quien fue elegido a través de un proceso democrático. Mas con fotos by Rockero

America, a peaceful country, is fighting a just cause but with a fresh, new approach! On June 4, 2009, President Barack Obama spoke about this fresh, new approach.

Did anyone mention how the U.S. and Western corporate media in general contributed images and narratives of Muslim “terrorists” and Muslim “extremists” intended to lead Americans and the world to see Islam, the religion and its practitioners as hostile to Americans and Westerners? Did anyone mention that is practice of dehumanizing the victims of power is violence in itself?

RELATED: Some thoughts on the left, from the left II Benton Harbor believes in fighting back

[Note: As of 11:15am, Caracas time, President Zelaya is speaking live on Telesur from San Jose, Costa Rica. He has verified the soldiers entered his residence in the early morning hours, firing guns and threatening to kill him and his family if he resisted the coup. He was forced to go with the soldiers who took him to the air base and flew him to Costa Rica. He has requested the U.S. Government make a public statement condemning the coup, otherwise, it will indicate their compliance.] Caracas, Venezuela - The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read “Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d’etat underway in Honduras, spread the word.” It’s a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversary is today’s scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.

There seems to be a great divergence of opinion among liberals and leftists about what is really happening in Iran. There are those who think Iran is in somewhat of a vacuum and is only trying to have a democratic election against theocracy and a repressive attitude to women's rights. Other leftists think because the Bush administration in the past had contemplated military action and also covert actions by the CIA against Iran that these facts, among others, argue for an attempted coup taking place, especially given the enormous number of successful and unsuccessful CIA coups which have occurred in the past 60 years. I have an excellent book entitled Killing Hope-US military and CIA interventions since World War 2 by William Blum. I would say that the only countries or continents not to have at least CIA spies in them would be places like Greenland or Antarctica that have little interest for multinational corporations because they are covered with huge ice sheets. Of course, this could change with global warming. You might be served a burger and fries by an Eskimo at the grand opening of McDonalds in Greenland.

It’s not like the US intervenes in elections in the Middle East. This week the US Department of State asked Twitter to suspend its expected service shutdown, explicitly in reference to the crisis in Iran. This in itself is evidence of an attempt to influence events in Iran’s domestic crisis, even though the US Department of State has no presence in Iran.

The Judge **jay bybee watch continues today at high noon. We will again stand in front of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at 700 SW 6th Ave. known here in Portland as the Pioneer Courthouse. We stand our watch to wait for the indictment/impeachment/disbarment of a man of horrors. This man wrote the justification for torture; he was in bush/cheney's State Department and was yoo's boss.

Video Report Back: HERE

Text of letter to Medford city council members from Medford Citizens for Responsible Development (MCRD) urging them to comply with the most recent LUBA ruling ordering the city to require a traffic study, and not seek to have the ruling overturned by the Oregon Court of Appeals. Provides links to further sources of information on this issue at the end of the message.

Tonight, Rad Rich and I got free tickets to the Pelosi event and even the reception. We walked past the jeering crowd of tea-party people and my friends from the peace movement to attend the green-room reception for Nancy Pelosi and I got to talk to her for two minutes.

I introduced myself as Nick from Friends of Brad Will and told her who Brad was and she said she was sorry about his death. I told her that we were concerned about human rights abuses taking place in places where we have free trade agreements like Peru and the deaths there last week. She replied that she was waiting for Obama's cue on that.[read full article with photos]

When we got downtown, we were surprised to see a very large crowd of protesters in front of the Wortham Center and it took us a minute to realize (as we biked closer) that they were overwhelmingly right wing protesters. Our friends from PAA, and folks from the RCP and ISO had gathered on the corner by the Angelika theater and had signs condemning Pelosi's silence about torture, and demanding an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

HPD had set up barricades which forced attendees of the event to walk through a metal gauntlet at least 200 feet to reach the door which had shouting people on both sides yelling at you as you walked in. I heard chants of "Shame on you" "boooing" and "Dont come back". I was told by other peace activists that they had been chanting "Traitor" at attendees. [Read full article with audio]

As the controversy about whether or not the State and Federal governments would allow unconventional gas drilling in upstate rural areas heats up, dozens of environmental activists rallied outside of City Hall on Wednesday in an animated protest to urge Councilmember Gennaro - the Council's Environmental Protection Committee Chair - to follow through on his declared opposition to gas drilling statewide. Meanwhile, Congressman Hinchey on the federal level introduced similar gas drilling friendly legislation that would leave the state's food and water supplies vulnerable to devastation.

Related coverage from NYC IMC: Stop All Toxic Gas Drilling in NYS || From Truthdig by Chris Hedges: ‘Clean’ Energy and Poisoned Water

Over time, government ownership has declined as the business system has sought to occupy all space in which profits can be made. Thus, as the military budget has grown, in-house arms production has largely disappeared, displaced by the "contract state." The triumph of neo-liberalism and the parallel intensified class war has been associated with further "privatization," which has not only opened up more avenues for private profits, but also weakened the state as a potential agent of ordinary citizens.

This Tuesday CineBang presents an evening of underground film and discussion with Franklin "The Stimulator" López of subMedia.tv. Join the subMedia posse – survival of the smartest starts now! Producer, videographer and creative genius Franklin Lopez exposes crucial current trends with video montages that mix culture jamming, news, satire, music and action to scratch the social justice itch.

Hopium is a crash course on the countercultures, protest movements, and underground forces set to collide in the post-Bush world. Hopium delivers 90 minutes of short films, mashups, and clips from Frank's series It's the End of the World and We Know It and I Feel Fine, the world's most subversive news show. The evening culminates with highlights from the forthcoming END:CIV, and the documentary hit GROUND NOISE & STATIC, a video report from the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 2008.
From the Calendar: Hopium: Confronting Fascism in the Obama Era a film by Franklin López

[Political analysis by Chris Burnett. host of "Indymedia On Air” - Mondays, 3pm, KPFK 90.7 FM] - Shepard's choice to become an instrumental part in creating brand Obama, given his street level marketing style, often illegal, provided a legitimacy that was certainly needed by the Obama campaign. Seeing Obama on every street corner in soviet-style branding (read "pro worker, average guy, savior") was shocking precisely because of what Hedges describes as spectacle on the one hand, and the illusion of street cred provided by Shepard's style on the other.

I thought I was seeing Mao and Che everywhere, as though this was some populist uprising against the ruling class, against a cynically corrupt political class. Far from it. It *was* the ruling class inverting and misdirecting our anger in order to advance a corporatist political party and agenda. Genius. Horrendous. No doubt, it had a profound affect on all of our psyches. But "HOPE" should have read "HYPE" and "PROGRESS" should have read "REGRESS". It was the epitome of bumper sticker politics: immediate gratification, feel good symbolism; very consistent with our hyperactive, but shallow corporate culture. Full article: Shepard Fairey’s Obama by Chris Burnett

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We have heard that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty will announce his 'unallotment' cuts entirely on one day in the next few weeks, in a plan to manipulate perceptions by attempting to contain the bad news into one news cycle. With little publicity, this day will arrive suddenly, it is hoped, denying his opponents a basis to organize against.

The bad news will begin on this day — good people will die, in particular because of Pawlenty's planned cut to Local Government Aid of at least $400,000,000, possibly much more. The beginning of Fiscal Year 2010 is July 1st, 2009. Before then, Pawlenty will cut off funding to everything in a way that will assuredly pander to national GOP primary voters. Our state and its still-strong social welfare net (as well as previously "equalized" statewide local government funding) will be the test lab for a sinister, hardcore GOP austerity agenda that may serve as the foundation of an authoritarian-rightwing populist electoral message in future years. The Shock Doctrine will get practiced against the cities and towns, first of all, by ripping apart the "Minnesota Miracle" funding streams that financed strong statewide local education (and services) since the 1970s.

Higher education tuition rates and health services will also get damaged, worsening the quality of life for the middle class (let alone other classes). Hennepin County Medical Center and Regions Hospital, to begin with, will start slashing services because of the GAMC Fiscal Year 2011 veto (which technically starts next July 1st). 

It's not a game, but for Pawlenty it always is. When the local governments have to hike property taxes or abandon everything, the statewide media will refuse to connect Pawlenty to it. More depressing to see are political reporters concur that the public perception that Pawlenty hiked the taxes "won't stick." They won't push any context.

That's what's coming up. It seems like Pawlenty's great day of state terrorism should be really unpleasant in order to cut the coverup down to size. It'd be a great day for a general strike, or just a time to stop and reflect on what authoritarian prairie fascism looks like. It's your preview of class warfare for the 2012 election.

Two California health worker unions staged a protest in downtown Los Angeles this Friday to call attention to the cuts that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering in response to last Tuesdays' special election defeats. California now faces a possible $24 billion budget deficit for 2010.

The governor's cutbacks could include ending the state's main welfare program and eliminating health coverage for the 1.5 million poor children who benefit from the CalWorks and Healthy families programs. Two million people in general would lose their health care coverage. Programs for the disabled like IHSS (In Home Supportive Services) are under fire. Read More & Pics | Related: Fresno Is Ground Zero in Labor Struggle

Bipartisanship... On the table… Y'know, gang, I'm actually from around here, and all this Capitol Hill Sunday Morning doubletalking bullshit still makes my brain hurt. Still, an informed citizen is a well-armed citizen; so, after many, many Sunday mornings of slogging through hours of Meet The Press and Hardball and The Rachel Maddow Show so you don't have to, I've put together this quick guide to the phrases and words you hear the most in Washington.

On the evening of April 15, three activists were handing out literature and holding signs protesting war spending in front of the IRS building on East Ave. in Downtown Rochester. One of the demonstrators climbed a tree and held a sign that read "Cut War Spending."

With little to no negotiation skills, the first two officers to arrive at the scene threatened to taser Emily from the tree and place her under mental health arrest if she didn't comply with their orders to get down. Shortly thereafter, they called in six others police cars and two firetrucks to the scene. Three police officers used a firetruck ladder to get to Emily in the tree. One officer pepper sprayed her in the eyes at point blank range and forcefully removed her from the tree.

Before the Emily was removed and arrested, Mary, who was holding an anti-war tax sign under the tree that Emily was sitting in, was arrested for trespassing. Ben and Jake were arrested after chanting, behind police lines, "No Justice, No Peace! Fuck the Police!" Ted was arrested after asking the officers what the charges were against Ben and Jake.

Video: Arrests on Tax Day

Photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

Additional Information: 5 Arrested in front of East Ave. Tax Building (w/ Video Link) | Protest War Spending Today | Personal account of police brutality here in Rochester | Lies! Lies! Lies! Wackenhut Security Guard Caught Lying on Film while Accosting Rochester Indymedia Videographer