Join the Syracuse Peace Council in a protest of the drones coming to Syracuse. Sunday, November 15.

Don't miss the excitement Saturday (11/7) from 2-9 PM for the Indymedia 10th Anniversary Film Festival at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, featuring music by Haale!

Don't miss the exciting series of events at The Sanctuary for Independent Media beginning Saturday, September 26 and continuing through December, featuring The Yes Men, Kathy Kelly, Haale and much, much more! Visit www.MediaSanctuary.org for the complete Spring 2009 schedule.

Express your support for parole for
Native American leader and political prisoner
Leonard Peltier! Hearing scheduled for July 27
Your letter must be received before July 14. The FBI has persecuted Peltier ever since a 1975 FBI armed raid on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in which two of their agents were killed. The FBI raid was the culmination of three years of a murderous U.S. government war on the residents of Pine Ridge, in which over 60 traditional members and American Indian Movement activists were murdered.

As Congress negotiates health care reform, Democratic leaders have put the interests of insurance companies ahead of the needs of American citizens. If Americans want an affordable, quality health care system that enables consumers to choose whom they receive health care services from, private for-profit insurance companies must be eliminated. The proposals being advanced by the White House and Congressional Democratic leaders will leave tens of millions without health insurance or care; will mandate expensive and inadequate health insurance to many more (so medical bankruptcies will continue to proliferate); and will actually increase the amount of money spent for health care. If implemented, these shortcomings will undercut future support for real reform.

A palpable sense of triumph accompanied the passage last week of a first-of-its-kind global warming bill in the US House of Representatives. Rep. Henry Waxman of California, one of the bill's two main sponsors, called it a "decisive and historic action," and President Obama described the bill as "a bold and necessary step." Yet The bill falls far short of international standards in mandating a meaningful level of reductions in global warming pollution, and seeks to implement decades of emissions cuts through the market-based device known as "cap-and-trade." It also contains a number of Trojan Horse provisions that could ultimately forestall, rather than encourage, genuine climate progress.

On behalf of the Media Alliance, the NY Civil Liberties Union is suing the City of Troy and Public Works Commissioner Robert Mirch for shutting down a local arts and media center on purported code violations in March 2008 after a controversial art exhibit opened there.
The lawsuit maintains that Mirch used his official powers to have the building closed, violating the Media Alliance’s First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, and its due process and equal protection rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments.

A hundred single payer universal health care advocates rallied in the rain at the state Capitol as part of a national week of action to make healthcare a human right in America. (www.healthcare-now.org. We are fed up with the health insurance we have, fed up with health insurance we can't afford, fed up with the insurance that doesn't cover the care we need and completely fed up with the fact that the top insurance company executive took home $24 million in 2008. Also national releases from Health Care-Now and Green Party of US.

Back in December the Obama-Biden transition team organized thousands of “Health Care Community Discussions.” The President-elect (with Tom Daschle) issued a call for “health care reform that comes from the ground up.” As the community meetings occurred, PNHP received a flood of reports from participants that single payer was the unanimous recommendation from hundreds of gatherings. The transition team report blamed the popularity of single payer on “encouragement by advocacy groups,” characterized the proposal as “radical change” and devoted about one solitary page in a 122-page document, enough to dismiss single payer proposal and its advocates. So much for health reform that comes from the ground up.

One of the most comprehensive pieces of energy and climate legislation ever drafted by members of the U.S. Congress has finally been introduced by Cong. Waxman and Markey. Unfortunately, their "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 stinks. Their bill stinks. 1) It won't protect the poor from price-hikes as the price of carbon is slowly internalized into our energy bills, but will protect polluting industries by allowing them free pollution permits; 2) It opens the door to fraud and shell games instead of real climate action by setting up a huge carbon derivatives market; 3) It makes a mockery of our common understanding of "renewable energy," favoring dirty smokestacks, including garbage incineration, over truly clean, renewable energy.

Doctors and other advocates of truly universal healthcare for all (the same health care for "the people living in the park, and the people living on Park Avenue") were arrested on Tuesday, May 5th, for demanding that the Single-Payer option have a seat at the table of the "No We Can't" administration's Senate Finance Committee health care reform hearing. There were 15 seats at the table secured solely for lobbyists seeking to protect and preserve a really sick Profit-Care system, being the corporate government's carefully selected expert "Health Care Reform" panel... not even one expert allowed at that table to represent We, The People's choice... Single-Payer.

Evidence is mounting that the source of the swine ful is a huge Smithfield pig farm in Mexico where the first victims live. In 1985, Smithfield Farms received what was, at the time, the most expensive fine in history – $12.6 million – for violating the US Clean Water Act at its pig facilities near the Pagan River in Smithfield, Virginia, a tributary that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The company, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dumped hog waste into the river. After NAFTA passed, they moved their operation to Mexico. Clouds of flies emanate from the rusty lagoons where the Carroll Ranches business tosses the fecal wastes of its pig farms, and the open-air contamination is already generating an epidemic of respiratory infections in the town of La Gloria. Five-year-old Edgar Hernández, a La Gloria child who contracted the first case of identified “swine flu” in February, has been dubbed by the international media as “patient zero."