( – promoted by odum)

And heating oil is estimated to rise 35% this winter:

* it’s NOT supply and demand:  Business Week (4/1/08, 4/28/08) report that US gasoline inventories are at their highest levels since the 1990’s with the world supply 2.5% percent higher than May 2007.  

World demand is projected to rise by just 2% over the next six months, compelling even the Saudis, (6/10/08) to say prices are unjustifiably high,

* (May 2nd, Bloomberg) reports heavy crude is stored on tankers because onshore storage tanks are full,                                            

and our government is:

* allowing oil refinery production to be cut,

Barbara

Here in Vermont, we are fortunate to have national representatives that have the interests of ordinary citizens at heart. (This is not something to take lightly; standards of democracy have devolved so that we all accept that public officials care more about their own fortunes than the people they are duty-bound to serve.) My big complaint, however, is that our reps brush off the matter of impeachment. I’d like to challenge them on the three most-cited reasons not to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney:

Another reason the run-out-the-clock excuse doesn’t work: We are at the “11^th Hour” in terms of facing climate change. The world cannot afford seventeen more months of inactivity on the U.S.’s part.

One of the most cogent arguments for impeachment I’ve heard comes from a friend of mine. “I hate to think of what not impeaching the president and vice president says to young people,” she said incredulously. “It would be like saying, we know someone robbed a bank but we’re not going to arrest him because it’s not convenient.”

1) We’ve got less than a year-and-a-half of Bush’s presidency, so let’s focus on the future. The implied argument is: what damage can Bush do in 500 days? And the answer, alas, is a lot. Right now, the administration and its think-tank lackeys are spoiling for a war with Iran. Bush knows that the people don’t want war with Iran, so his inner circle is devising ways to sell it; public opinion is merely an impediment to Bush’s goals, not a reason to rethink them. However, impeachment proceedings would constrain Bush/Cheney’s capacity to launch into a war that everyone knows would be a bloody disaster.

Another reason the run-out-the-clock excuse doesn’t work: We are at the “11^th Hour” in terms of facing climate change. The world cannot afford seventeen more months of inactivity on the U.S.’s part.

One of the most cogent arguments for impeachment I’ve heard comes from a friend of mine. “I hate to think of what not impeaching the president and vice president says to young people,” she said incredulously. “It would be like saying, we know someone robbed a bank but we’re not going to arrest him because it’s not convenient.”

(Amen! – promoted by JulieWaters)

We passed the following resolution at our County Committee meeting Monday evening and will ask the Bennington County Republican Committee to join us in co-signing and sending to Governor Douglas.
 

  RESOLUTION

WHEREAS we believe that all children should have access to comprehensive, age-appropriate, quality health care, and

WHEREAS at least one-third of Vermonters rely on SCHIP funding to sustain programs such as Doctor Dynasaur insurance for children and teen-agers up to age 18, and pregnant women, and

WHEREAS President Bush has incorrectly described the SCHIP bill as providing coverage for families earning up to $80,000 a year, and

WHEREAS the U.S. Senate has passed 68 to 31 a $35 billion bill over five years, sustained by a tobacco tax, the president is refusing to allow any new tax for the SCHIP program, and

WHEREAS the current allocation of $5 billion a year in federal funds will not allow states to maintain their current programs,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Bennington County citizens, Republicans and Democrats alike, call upon Governor Douglas to communicate with President Bush and insist that he not veto the SCHIP bill, reminding the president to keep his promise to expand SCHIP he made during his 2004 campaign.

  September 24, 2007

( – promoted by odum)

Help Support the Iraq Veterans Against the War in their GI Resistance Campaign!

Thanks to the generosity of many people of peace, the fundraising for the IVAW summer bus tour of military bases is well underway. But in order to hit our goal ($3,000 presented to former Marine Sgt Liam Madden from Bellows Falls on Sunday June 10th) ? we need your help!

and, below the fold:

You can donate to this important cause in two ways:
1. Send a check, tax deductible, made out to Iraq Veterans Against the War, to me at: Central Vermont Peace and Justice, PO Box 845, Rutland, VT 05701. We will gather this money and present it to Liam on June 10th at a fundraiser we are holding in Rutland. Please put the greatest amount you can afford in the mail TODAY.

2. Attend the FUNDRAISER on Sunday June 10th at the UU Church of Rutland, from 7:00 ? 8:30pm. Liam Madden will be there to speak about the bus tour and the work that IVAW is doing. At this event, we will be asking people to open their hearts (and checkbooks) and GENEROUSLY SUPPORT this GI Resistance campaign. There will be IVAW buttons and shirts on sale, we will have simple finger food, some music, and maybe another speaker. But the purpose of this event is to raise as much money as possible for the IVAW bus tour.

WHY SHOULD YOU FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THIS CAMPAIGN?
So many of us work hard every single to day to end the war and support peace and justice causes locally and around the globe. Asking any of us to ?do one more thing? is sometimes overwhelming. So WHY am I asking you to financially support the Iraq Vets campaign to encourage active duty servicemen and women to put down their arms and refuse to fight?

Because in the words of Iraq War Resister Lt. Ehren Watada
?How do you support the troops but not the war? By supporting those who can truly stop it; let them know that resistance to participate in an illegal war is not futile and not without a future.?

That is what this campaign is all about. You and I can financially support the Iraq Veterans to take their message of GI resistance to military bases up and down the east coast and let servicemen and women know that we people of peace will stand with them as they lay down their arms and refuse to fight.

Please do what you can to support this campaign.

Thanks,

Barbara

The following binding resolutions will be on the agenda of the Bennington County Democratic Committee on Monday, February 26th.  The first was passed by the North Carolina Democratic Party and taken, with the permission of the State Chair, Jerry Meek.  We, the grassroots, need to cut to the chase to save lives, whether they be our troops, Iraqis, Iranians or Vermonters.  We expect the State Committee to follow in their next meeting. We stand together or we stand alone.

Feel free to use either or both at any meetings.

Resolution:  No escalation of troops into Iraq while bringing the troops home in 2007

  WHEREAS, there is remarkable bipartisan agreement from the majority of American people that the Bush Administration’s current occupation strategy of the last three years is not succeeding and cannot ever succeed and further military efforts along these lines are politically unacceptable to the American people, as shown by the 2006 election results;

WHEREAS, the Iraqi people have the inalienable right to full economic, political, and social self-determination and to full control of all Iraqi oil, land, and other resources, and that the only legitimate American policy goal in Iraq is that the Iraqis achieve self-governance;

WHEREAS, there is no tolerance among the Iraqi people for any continuation of U.S. occupation of Iraq, and, as recently revealed by General Abizaid, not even any tolerance by the current Iraqi government nor our own top military commanders for an allegedly temporary increase of substantial American forces to be deployed in Iraq;

WHEREAS, the Bennington County Democratic Committee, in its deep gratitude and unalterable support for the dedication and bravery of our service men and women and their families, cannot stand idly by while even one more of our service men or women is killed or maimed by prolonging the senseless occupation policy of the Bush Administration.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that:

The Bennington County Democratic Committee calls upon the US Congressional Leadership to immediately vote for any and all resolutions consistent with an overall purpose of ending the occupation of Iraq, and starting the orderly redeployment and withdrawal of troops by the summer of 2007.

We further urge the Congress to maintain its resolve not to fund any permanent US bases in Iraq.

We support resolutions such as (1) the Murtha Plan and (2) H.R. 4232 (to be renumbered in the 110th Congress), a resolution introduced by Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern and co-sponsored by nineteen (19) members of the US House of Representatives to oppose any funding not consonant with the foregoing.

==================================================
Resolution:  Deny Vt. Yankee a 20 year license

Members of the Bennington County Democratic Committee, concerned about the safety of Vermont communities under the presence of the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor in Vernon, Vermont, ask our Governor and our legislators to deny a 20 year extension of Entergy’s license and to work with utility companies to develop safe, renewal sources of energy and make every effort to free us from our dependency on nuclear power.

I think I’m gonna be sick!  Since Bush has already promised to leave his debacle to the next President to solve, I think this is an equally irresponsible remark from Hillary. We need someone who will push legislation through to bring our troops home now.  We need someone to hit the ground running on 1.20.09 with a list in hand of issues that need immediate attention, with advisors that are expert in their field and with a Congress who will work together.  This is nothing but pablum for the masses. 

  NewsMax.com Wires
  Monday, Jan. 29, 2007
http://www.newsmax.c…

DAVENPORT, Iowa — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be “the height of irresponsibility” to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

“This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy,” the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

“We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office” in January 2009, the former first lady said.

The White House condemned Clinton’s comments as a partisan attack that undermines U.S. soldiers.

About 130,000 American troops are in Iraq and Bush has announced he was sending 21,500 more as part of his new war strategy.
Clinton held a town hall-style forum attended by about 300 activists, giving a brief speech before taking questions for nearly an hour. Pressed to defend her vote to authorize force in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Clinton responded by stepping up her criticism of Bush.

“I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor,” Clinton said. “I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.”

Bush describes Iraq as the central front in the global fight against terrorism that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “The war on terror will be a problem for the next president. Presidents after me will be confronting … an enemy that would like to strike the United States again,” he recently told USA Today.

One questioner asked Clinton if her track record showed she could stand up to “evil men” around the world.

“The question is, we face a lot of dangers in the world and, in the gentleman’s words, we face a lot of evil men and what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men,” Clinton said. She paused to gaze while the audience interrupted with about 30 seconds of laughter and applause.

Meeting later with reporters, she was pressed repeatedly to explain what she meant. She insisted it was a simple joke.

“I thought I was funny,” Clinton said. “You guys keep telling me to lighten up, be funny. I get a little funny and now I’m being psychoanalyzed.”

She told reporters that evil men included al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who remains at large. “Isn’t it about time we get serious about that?” she said.

During the town hall meeting, she tried to make clear that she thinks she would be a chief executive with enough fortitude to confront any danger facing the country.

“I believe that a lot in my background and a lot in my public life shows the character and toughness that is required to be president,” Clinton said. “It also shows that I want to get back to bringing the world around to support us again.”

The meeting was scheduled for a downtown restaurant but was switched to a pavilion at a nearby park when it became clear that hundreds of people planned to attend.

At virtually all her stops in this early nominating state, she ran into questions about her Iraq vote. She says Bush misled Congress and she now wants a cap on the number of troops, as well as beginning a “phased redeployment” of troops from Iraq.

The White House said it was disappointing that Clinton was responding to Bush’s new war strategy “with a partisan attack that sends the wrong message to our troops, our enemies and the Iraqi people who are working to make this plan succeed.”

“The height of irresponsibility,” spokesman Rob Saliterman said, “would be to cap our troop numbers at an arbitrary figure and to cut off their funding.”

Clinton does not support cutting funding for American troops, but does favor that step for Iraqi forces if the Baghdad government fails to meet certain conditions.

Clinton defended the role that Congress has played, saying newly empowered Democrats are beginning to build pressure on Bush to act, but the public needs to be patient.

“We are at the beginning of a process,” Clinton said. “It’s a frustrating process, our system is sometimes frustrating.”

In making the case for her candidacy, Clinton cites her years as first lady, when Bill Clinton was president for two terms, and two winning campaigns for the Senate.

“I believe that my qualification and my life experience equip me to hit the ground running in January of 2009,” Clinton said. “I have a unique perspective having been in the White House for eight years and understanding the challenge that comes from trying to govern our great country.”

Clinton said he will run hard in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses, an early contest her husband skipped when he sought the nomination in 1992. That year, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin was in the race and Democratic rivals opted not to challenge him in his home state.

“My participation in the Iowa caucuses is the only thing in politics that I will do that Bill has not done,” she said.

© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Citizens Awareness Network (CAN) and the Buddhist order of Nipponzan Myohoji will coordinate a walk throughout Vermont to support safe sustainable energy and abolish nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Potluck dinners will be followed by discussions of the dangers of Vermont Yankee.
The Vermont State Legislature MUST VOTE NO for the 20-year license extension of the thirty-five year old brittle and corroded Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor in Vernon, Vermont.

(continue) WALKING FOR A NEW SPRING:

Reverend Gyoway Kato of Leverett Peace Pagoda will lead this walk as part of the Mayors
for Peace Project’s month-long walk against nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

It will begin in Putney, Vermont, proceed down Rte. 5 to a vigil at ENTERGY headquarters
on Old Ferry Road in North Brattleboro, and then continue through downtown Brattleboro.

FOR INFO: CAN@nukebusters.org or Deb Katz at 413-339-5781. Both walks will have support vehicles for anyone needing assistance.  Both walks are alcohol free and drug free.

March 24 to April 1, 2007

SCHEDULE:
MARCH 24, Greenfield, MA
MARCH 25, Brattleboro
MARCH 26, Bennington
MARCH 27, Rutland
MARCH 28, Middlebury- public fast 10 a.m.-4 p.m. observing the anniversary of the Three- Mile- Island accident in 1979
MARCH 29, Montpelier – public fasting on state house lawn to oppose 20 year relicensing of Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor
MARCH 30, Johnson State College
MARCH 31, Burlington /University of Vermont
APRIL 1, Burlington – closing ceremony on waterfront.  All are welcome to join!
For further contact: Vermont Yankee Decommissioning
Alliance (VYDA) at 802-476-3154 or
Deb@nukebusters.org or Deb Katz at 413-339-5781.

The old adage is true: busy people get things done. Your help is needed to encourage people to walk, to host a potluck afterwards as well as  finding beds for the out-of towners for the towns listed.  Link up with Hattie Nestal of CAN at hattieshalom@verizon.net and please send the message to your networks.  We’re looking for more college involvement (from those not listed,) including walkers and speaking engagements.  We should also invite all our legislators to attend the potluck(s) and update us on Act 160.  Thanks,  Barbara

The New York Times and CBS reported this weekend, “According to U.S. military figures, 198 American and British soldiers have been killed, and more than 600 wounded by advanced explosive devices MANUFACTURED IN IRAN and smuggled in through the southern marshes and along the Tigris River.”

but the UK’s Independent wrote on Sunday “…soldiers, who were targeted by insurgents as they traveled through [Iraq], died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams. The bombs were developed by the IRA using technology passed on by the security services in a botched ‘sting’ operation more than a decade ago. THIS CONTRADICTS THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S CLAIM THAT iRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD IS HELPING SHIA INSURGENTS TO MAKE THE DEVICES.
http://kurtnimmo.com…

There’s more (if you have the stomach for it)
 

“The Independent on Sunday can also reveal that the bombs and the firing devices used to kill the soldiers, as well as two private security guards, were initially created by the UK security services as part of a counter-terrorism strategy at the height of the troubles in the early 1990s. According to security sources, the technology for the bombs used in the attacks, which were developed using technology from photographic flash units, was employed by the IRA some 15 years ago after Irish terrorists were given advice by British agents.”

“IN FACT, THE DEVICES WERE MADE IN AMERICA. ‘In late 1993 and early 1994, I went to America with officers from MI5, the FRU and RUC special branch. They had already sourced the transmitters and receivers in New York following liaison with their counterparts in the FBI,’ Kevin Fulton, who infiltrated the IRA in the Newry area while being handled by the Force Research Unit, told [Ireland’s] Sunday Tribune in June, 2002. Fulton’s trip was confirmed by the FBI, according to Matthew Teague, writing for the Atlantic. The Independent on Sunday ‘has also spoken to a republican who was a senior IRA member in the early 1990s. He confirmed that Mr. Fulton had introduced the IRA to the new technology and that the IRA shared this with ‘like-minded organizations abroad.'”

Is there any doubt we’re at war with Iran now, with more facts ‘cooked’ by Bush and lapdog Tony Blair again?  According to Friday’s Washington Post,  “last month, U.S. forces seized two senior Iranians — Brig. Gen. Mohsen Chirazi and Col. Abu Amad Davari — in the first round of raids. Chirazi is the No. 3 official in the al-Quds Brigade and the highest ranking Iranian ever held by the United States”.

Yesterday’s raids were both in Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. One was carried out at 3 a.m. on the Iranian Liaison Office, which is used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a local headquarters, U.S. officials said. Kurdish officials said U.S. troops came in helicopters. They disarmed the security guards, broke through the gate, entered the building and detained six men, Iranian officials told the Iranian news agency. One was later released.  Another raid was at the Irbil airport, where U.S. forces tried to detain people until Kurdish troops intervened — and almost ended up in a confrontation with U.S. troops, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. “A massacre was avoided at the last minute,” he said. A U.S. official confirmed that the incident nearly resulted in U.S. and Kurdish allies firing at one another”.

If these aren’t acts of war, I don’t know what is. Add to this more warships off the coast of Iran, and we are doomed.

Call Leahy, Sanders and Welch first thing Monday morning to stop this insanity!  No more blood for oil!

Barbara

http://news.independ…
Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America
Published: 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold – that crack of the neck at the end of a rope – than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a “great day” for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed – by the Iraqi “government”, but on behalf of the Americans – on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers – what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don’t gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn’t invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead – and thousands of Western troops are dead – because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent – we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib – and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam’s weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our “bunker buster” bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our “victory” – our “mission accomplished” – who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam’s death sentence, his family – his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam’s daughter and their other relatives – had given up hope.

“Whatever could be done has been done – we can only wait for time to take its course,” one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own “martyrdom”: he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance – that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer’s face – showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us – and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam’s executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib – only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own – and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator’s soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman – now a messianic columnist for The New York Times – who perfectly caught Saddam’s character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, “part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck”. And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam’s cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman’s lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they – and millions of other Muslims – will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. “Handed over to the Iraqi authorities,” he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down – correctly – as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this – that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a “martyr” to the will of the new “Crusaders”.

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam’s return by his execution, the West’s enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there’s a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

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