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International News Title: THE RESTLESS CONSUMER - This is a message from the People of America - the socialist Americans for all Republicans Fri, 15 Dec 2006 03:24:16 UTC Best Protest Videos and at and now a message message to the republican from the socialist left I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand. Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you. Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives: Dear Conservatives and Republicans, I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you: 1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us. 2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift. 3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you. 4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie. 5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too. 6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. 7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you. 8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived. 9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours. 10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too. 11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world. 12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition. I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world. Re: Where Do We Go From Here? Replies to Where Do We Go From Here? asked by Kenton R. Adler Dear LWW, In response to: "But we do it on the fast track like Neil did with Living With War. We play a big concert, we play live on the radio.... Neil, any suggestions?? Say, 'jump' and I'll say, "how high". I'll play anywhere, anywhen and do anything to facilitate the progress of this grass roots movement...." Here's my two cents worth: I dont know how easy it is for other folks to get on the entertainment dinosaur business fast track these days... However, I do have an idea which I think could be good fun. With the blessings of the Living With War site I would be willing to put together a modest show in the Los Angeles area featuring some of the artists/songwriters posted on this site. Nothing big nothing fancy. If LWW is willing, the night could be called: "Songs of Protest: an evening with the songwriters featured at Neil Young's Living With War Today website" ...or somthing to that effect.I think I may be able to garner us a little press attention for the show as well. I've always believed that its not about 'waiting for the right person with the right idea at the right time to come along and make some thing happen'. Its about being that person and waking up to the making of those moments. As Patti Smith once said "People have the power". LWW? Does this sound like something you would be open to? If so, songwriters that are interested can email me at cindyleeberryhill@hotmail.com Thanks and thank you for supporting the cause and our music, cindy lee berryhill THE RESTLESS CONSUMER AMERICANS ARE SHOPPING WHILE IRAQ BURNS by Bob Herbert, New York Times The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City - where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs - and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight. A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. "All I can tell you," said a Wal-Mart employee, "is that they were fired up and ready to spend money." There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it. Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman's proposal - it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. - but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war. With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: "I definitely don't know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don't even think about the war. They're more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday's test." His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. "No, definitely not," he said. "None of my friends even really care about what's going on in Iraq." This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown. According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure. In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: "The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or 'honor killings.' Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives." Journalists in Iraq are being "assassinated with utmost impunity," the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months. Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference - no longer than a few seconds - in a television news account of the latest political ditherings. Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed. The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support. They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop. View: quicktime / windowsmedia View / Free Download: quicktime / windowsmedia View / Free Download: quicktime / windowsmedia #1 Atlanta GA #2 St Louis MO #3 Fresno CA #4 Irvine CA No reading is perfect and it may be that Atlanta, the only concert measured that was inside a building, may have benefited from the enclosed area acoustics. No other cities had booing that was loud enough to register on the Boo-ometer. In Atlanta, the boos were still not as loud as the cheers. From The Neil Young Archives, Volume 3: Long Walk Home Neil Young & Crazy Horse 1986 Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia The president says that itis time to legalize secret prisons around the world, run by our CIA. Traditional American values say that is not right. But we do need to be vigilant. We the people have an opportunity to stand up to the terror around us, and also to the undoing of the national fabric. We have the power and the right to preserve our way of life for generations to come. Will we let congress back the legalization of terror torture camps around the world? If this country is in such grave danger that we need all these illegal things that the president has done to be legalized retroactively, if our very way of life is threatened by ifascisti terrorists in Iraq, if we need to defeat them there to stop them from coming here, then why does the president not call for the draft to be reinstated? Would that not be the logical solution for the situation the president says we are in? Our military generals tell us we are under-manned and stretched to the limit. However, even talk of a draft now would ensure that our Republican incumbents would lose the elections. This begs one more question. Does this mean soldiers who are returning to Iraq for the third and fourth time might have been replaced by fresh troops had it not been for the political fallout of the draft? Are our troops in harms way for three and four tours in Iraq for political reasons? We all want to fight terrorism. Why do the same 150 thousand troops have to do it over and over again? It is a long walk home. Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia View/Download: quicktime / windowsmedia I asked a man on the street what he thought about the war in IRAQ. He said "Won't need no shadow man runnin' the government. Won't need no stinkin' war." He looked at me, checking me out. "Won't need no haircut! Won't need no shoe shine after the garden is gone! What will people say after the garden is gone? What will people do after the garden?" He just kept lookin' at me like I was crazy askin' about the war. He had bigger things on his mind. He looked like he was a hippie at one time. I don't really know what it was about him that made me think that, but he sure had an intense way about him. He wasn't finished with me. He had been walking away but he turned and looked right at me. "Won't need no strongman walkin' through the night to live a weak man's day!" What the hell was he talking about? "Won't need no purple haze. Won't need no sunshine after the garden is gone!" That was it. He was definitely a hippie who had taken acid in the 60s. I pondered this. Did this mean he knew more or less than I did? Was his opinion tainted by taking drugs in the 60s? Had he been an environmentalist before it was cool? I remembered George Bush senior saying that Al Gore was crazy. Something about "chicken little." Look at them now, Al Gore is right and Bush was and still is wrong on global warming. Al Gore was worried about saving the planet and Bush was worried about saving cash. I was getting pissed. The man on the street just stood there looking at me going through my thought process. "What will people know after the garden is gone?" he asked. "What will people do after the garden?" View/Download: quicktime / windowsmedia Crosby, Nash and Youngis iFreedom of Speech Touri buses pulled in to Bio-Town this afternoon and fueled up. They were met by hundreds of people from the town and surrounding areas. Bio Town has about 500 people and 176 bio powered vehicles, according to a local source. The enthusiasm here is astounding. The town is all about green fuel. Some residents see it as a way to make a change toward independence from foreign oil. Others see it as a new way to make money in a staggering farm economy. The local USA restaurant is a gathering place in town where folks talk about Bio-fuel and the future of this farming community. One local enterprise is called The Good Oil Company. The townis BP station is being converted to Good Oil and will open soon. A local Hog farm is selling waste to be refined into fuel. After the waste is processed, the leftover is pure nitrates that are added back to the soil, and the rest goes toward a methane based fuel. This is a community to watch. Good people trying to make a change. Itis starting right here in Bio-Town. Iill be following the group to Chicago tomorrow in my Bio-Diesel powered pick-up. The conversion is easy. There is no conversion! Just put Bio in your tank. More Scoop. Living With War has entered its 5th month on the charts, with sales increasing enough to hold off the next NY release from Reprise Records. to the entire album free Click here for reviews debate. It is time to take stock. Is the anti-war campaign hurting America? Maybe we should have more respect for the presidency. Shut-up already.... Or is the new silent majority against the IRAQ war? If they are against it, are they supporting it through silence? I was in Tribeca with my family for a Chinese meal. It was a nice place and I loved being with my kids. The dinner conversation was about young people living and working in Tribeca. They are so busy working they don't read the papers or watch the news. So they don't know much about the war in Iraq. I picked out a fortune cookie. The message was "silence is also speech." Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia From The Neil Young Archives, Volume 3: Around The World Neil Young & Crazy Horse 1986 Look here: quicktime / windowsmedia northern lights I've been sitting on the dock late into the summer night waiting for some celestial movement from the Northern Lights - looking for a sign. It's a Canadian thing. But Aurora Borealis is laying low and I get the meaning - I read the signs. We gotta get still, take a deep breath and think this Lebanon situation out. There's an opportunity here and we better not waste it - not again. This is not the time to turn our backs on the United Nations. The call has gone out to UN member nations in support of a Peacekeeping Force to maintain the tenuous truce between Israel and Lebanon. The French stepped up, so did Italy along with Brunei, Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia. The Germans have promised naval support. The US declined but that's always the case. American military ego is far too fragile to even consider allowing US Troops to operate under any command other that its own. Britain said "sorry". Then Canada declined too and that's an embarrassment. We built this country on peace. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen "George W" Harper does a terrific imitation of his hero the US President. He nailed it last week by falling asleep at the wheel. While Canada was being called to contribute to world peace, Stevie - as the real G Dubya likes to call him, was in the Arctic expounding on Canada's northern sovereignty. He appears to be clearing the way for the construction of a previously unavailable supply route for Arctic oil. A route made possible by global warming the bosom buddy of the oil industry. Yep, now that the ice is melting we're gonna be able to get in there and make some very rich Texans very much richer. Harper plays big in Calgary - our version of Houston - a bastion of rational thought for sure. Harper also missed the 16th International Aids Conference in Toronto. Not his crowd I guess. Bill Clinton was there, Bill Gates made it, most of the world was watching but Harper didn't see the importance. He spent his time up in the Arctic crushing hope and driving the Northern Lights into hiding. Instead of taking a stand on peace Stephen Harper unveiled a plan to put more Canadian troops onto the deadly ground of Afghanistan where the death toll is mounting daily. Under the new plan 30% per cent of those lured in by the recruiting ads will be enrolled in basic training within a week. 35% more will start within a month and the rest will be subjected to more intense psychological screening. Don't want any loose screws in Canada's military you know. The good news here is that Canada's youth is staying away from the recruiting offices in droves. Record numbers of young Canucks are not signing up for the all expenses paid trip into the hell that Afghanistan has become. France, Italy and the rest all see it. We don't. It's that simple. We just can't read the signs. So here's the abridged version for our alleged leaders: Let's re-think this. The war we're waging is going nowhere. When the bad guys can bring world commerce to its knees by simply threatening to blow up planes, as in last week's commercial airline fiasco, we need a new plan. Maybe it's time to wage a little love. Support the United Nations! more elwood Look Here Video: quicktime / windowsmedia I used to watch "Highway Patrol" whittlin' with my knife, but the thought never struck me I'd be black and white for life. I was raised on law and order in a community of strife, became a restless boarder, and I never took a wife. I went lookin' for Osama aboard Air Force One, but I never did find him and the C.I.A. said "Son, you'll never be a hero, your flyin' days are done. It's time for you to go home now. Stop sniffin' that smokin' gun." I was travellin' with my family in the Mideast late one night. In the hotel all was quiet, the kids were out like little lights. Then the street was filled with jeeps! There was an explosion to the right! They chanted "Death to America" I was feelin' like a fight. So I ran downstairs and out into the street. Someone kicked me in the belly, someone else kissed my feet. I was Rambo in the disco, I was shootin' to the beat. When they burned me in effigy my vacation was complete. Neil Young on The Colbert Report 8/17/06 View Clip: quicktime / windowsmedia CNN Showbiz Tonight Interview 4/18/06 View Clip a picture from the tour Click here for a Tour Map. Click here for reviews debate. So.. In 1970, there I was at the airport in Vancouver, waiting with the rest of the band to get back into the United StatesOe waiting to go to San Francisco. We'd just done a wonderful show and I was anxious to get back home.. At the Immigration desk the man was watching me with a look in his eye that meant troubleOe..Every one else was let through with a minimum of fussOe then came my turn. Now I don't know if Canadian Immigration people have a thing about Englishmen but this guy wasn't about to let me in without a great deal of scrutiny. What I'd done to deserve this especial' treatment I don't know but it was taking a long, long time to process meOe The silly thing was I was being asked for my autograph constantly by people who knew who I was yet the guy, who was watching all this was still giving me a hard time. In 1970 I was, and still am, a hippy and I looked the part. Maybe this was why I was being treated differently.. Frankly this infuriated me. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't take rejection well.. quite frankly I was not at all happy about thisOe I was watching the rest of the guys walking down the corridor and I wasn't with themOe When something affects me like this I have to do something about it and the way I do it is to write.. We are and have always been a country populated by immigrants. They, without question, helped to build and make this country what it is today. On the plane my fury changed into words and by the time I was home this song was almost finished... I wrote it in the fly leaf of the book I was reading, a Robert Heinlein book, The Silver Locusts. I have it to this day to remind me of that momentOe. The moment that Immigration Man was created. Video: quicktime / windowsmedia Shortly after the tragic attack on the City of NewYork on 9/11/01, the song Let's Roll was written and recorded. It was a tribute to the heroic passenger/citizens onboard who gave everything to stop hi-jacked flight 93 from attacking a prime target in the Washington area. The song was picked up by radio and played often. Some interpreted the song as a war cry. Some saw it for what it was: an attempt to chronicle the story of Flight 93 from the perspective of a passenger talking to his wife on a cell phone, and then moving down the aisle to stop the terrorists from accomplishing their goal. When the "Living With War" collection of protest songs was released, some writers reviewing the new record mentioned "Let's Roll" as a statement supporting Bush's war on terror and the war in IRAQ. Exclusively For LWWToday: Time Line Analyzer Unveiled by Sam Pullenold, LWW Today History before, during, and after Living With War can be tracked using the unique Time Line Analyzer from LWWToday's Research Laboratory. Waveform monitors display events from Print, Radio, TV News, and LWW itself, along with a display of combined information. Use the arrows to change the dates displayed. Touch a bump in a waveform to reveal details of that day's events. Click here to use the Time Line Analyzer. A Special LWWToday Questionaire: Looking For A Leader Articulate, constructive responses to the following questions will be posted here as they come in. Use the email link below to share your thoughts on these topics: 1. Why are we living with war today? 2. Who is the enemy? 3. Why did our enemy attack us? 4. Where is the enemy? 5. Should we have a dialogue with the enemy? Send your answers to: leaders@lwwtoday.com Please give us your name and location. Thanks. from Dan Theoret, Canada: 1. Why are we living with war today? I just wanted to respond to this question of why we are living with war everyday from the perspective of a twenty year old Canadian. I am finding it incredibly hard to understand this question because everything that I read, listen to, watch, or experience presents me with conflicting ideas and ideologies. I have obviously only been listening to Neil for a few years now because of my age, but I have pretty much listened to his whole discography and everything that he says seems to conflict with what the mainstream media is trying to tell me. continues... POETRY FROM THE FRONT The ghosts of American soldiers wander the streets of Balad by night, unsure of their way home, exhausted, the desert wind blowing trash down the narrow alleys as a voice sounds from the minaret, a soulful call reminding them how alone they are, how lost. And the Iraqi dead, they watch in silence from the rooftops as date palms line the shore in silhouette, leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows. With a master's degree in poetry from the University of Oregon, Army Sgt. Brian Turner - who now teaches English in Fresno - wrote frequent verse during his 11 months in Iraq.
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