As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail.

She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.

Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, “So this is America?” Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.

Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

“It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech,” stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.

Mr. McGovern now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

photo by arcspace.com

My husband went to the library today. The Robertson Branch, in Los Angeles. The doors were locked.

Two books were waiting for him. When he got there, a line of people were waiting. It was 12:30pm, today (Friday).

The budget you see. The hours have been cut. I know there are some areas of the city when the library is closed all day in the middle of the week.

So, why can’t California do what Oregon just did — raise the taxes on the wealthy — instead of closing our libraries, and laying off our teachers, and cutting services for the blind, and instead of saying that some of us aren’t worth the price?

What is your life worth? In currency. Do you measure it that way?

According to the Organic Consumers Association, there is a new movement by conventional food producers to flood the market with products labeled “Natural,” and price them as if they were organic. Consumers will be tricked into thinking they are buying organic products, and paying organic prices, for conventionally produced goods.

“Natural” products are routinely produced using pesticides, chemical fertilizer, hormones, genetic engineering, and sewage sludge. Goods marked “certified organic” and “USDA Organic” are not.

Retailers like Whole Foods Market, and wholesalers like United Natural Foods Inc., continue to push “natural” products at a premium price, while, in effect slowing down the growth of organics with their near market monopoly.

The Horizon brand of organic milk is going to start selling “natural” milk—conventionally produced milk, at premium  prices. The aim is to lure people away from “USDA Organic” milk, but still charge close to organic prices.

Dean Foods, which controls the Horizon brand, made a similar move when they purchased Silk Soy Milk. Silk now uses conventional soy beans, but sells Silk Soy Milk at the same price it was when the soy beans were certified organic. The technique is sheer profiteering.

The statement ignores a Congressional mandate to pressure World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards. These standards would require funded institutions to use methods to “fairly represent the value of internationally recognized workers’ rights.”

And it rejected a provision for Treasury Department to file a report on how to eliminate overlapping activities of the World Bank and IMF.

President Obama, who in the past criticized President Bush for his use of signing statements, said that he rejected these two provisions of the war spending bill because they interfere with foreign policy.

This is his sixth signing statement. By definition, signing statements change the law being signed.

The Christian Science Monitor might be the last real newspaper in the country. A quote from Jerry Larson in an opinion piece about what’s wrong with newspapers:

“The best papers set the agenda in their news and opinion, offering not the tepid voice of the referee seen in the recent Obama-Cheney torture “debate,” but a strong voice of moral leadership. It was the courage of a few Southern newspaper editors, for example, that helped end segregation. They took a stand. They didn’t, in the name of “balance,” give integrationists and segregationists an equal voice.”

Newspapers refuse to take a stand on the environment as well.

A recent article in the LA Times about the destructive practice of blowing the tops off mountains for a little coal, the Times quoted “critics” of the practice as “claiming” this type of mining is destructive.

Blasting off a mountain top is destructive. It is not an opinion of the opposition. How namby-pamby can you get?

This kind of “reporting” sends readers to other sources for the real story. Stop blaming the internet!