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Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.
We added "2020" to the title.
I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.
I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.
Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).
For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....
My highest accomplishments thus far are
1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.
2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.
These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!
This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.
In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev
www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/
OpEd News Member for 965 week(s) and 2 day(s)
611 Articles, 1105 Quick Links, 3868 Comments, 14 Diaries, 0 Polls
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Medvedev threatens Armageddon nuclear attack on DC and London if Russia has to give back any Ukraine territory SHARE
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council and former Russian president and prime minister, threatened that the US and its allies would pay ultimate price if Russia is forced to retreat.
“Attempts to restore Russia’s 1991 borders will lead only to one thing — a global war with Western countries with the use of our entire strategic arsenal against Kyiv, Berlin, London, and Washington. And against all other beautiful historic places that have long been included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram, according to the Kyiv Independent.
In May 2022, Medvedev said that if the West supplied Ukraine with weapons, the move would increase “the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia. It’s better to return everything before it’s too late.Or we will return it ourselves with maximum losses for the enemy."
West Virginia Attorney General Implores VP Harris to Invoke 25th Amendment to Remove Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. SHARE
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey urged Kamala Harris to invoke Amendment 25 because Biden "has experienced a profound cognitive decline. listing examples of Biden's "mental struggles." He referenced a poll about voters' concerns about Biden's "mental and physical ability to continue as president" and Special Counsel Robert [not Ben Hur from the book by New Mexico Governor, Lew Wallace, a Lincoln appointee] Hur's report on Biden's handling of classified documents, in which Hur noted "diminished faculties" as reason for not charging him. Biden, at 81, is the oldest-serving president.
Harris, former California attorney general and U.S. Senator, said Hur's report was "gratuitous" and "politically motivated." She also said two days before Hur's report was released Thursday that "I am ready to serve (for a few months!). There's no question about that."
South African President Ramaphosa reaffirms South Africa's support for Palestine at the Hague's newer court SHARE
Hague Court soon will address butchery of Palestine by Israel. Netanyahu shouldn't have sent IDF into Al Aqsa shooting and dragging off old people with plastic garbage back twists around their wrists, which was PROVOCATION for October 7.
SOLUTION: Calculate number of 2 sides killed, subtract smaller number from larger number, assess value of 1 human life. That will be what Israel must pay the new Nation of Palestine, same solution by M.K. Gandhi to fund Pakistan Treasury, which had 19% of India's population so Pakistan got 19% of rupees in the New Delhi Treasury.
A simple correct solution, which caused Digamber Badge and Naturam Godse to conspire to kill Gandhi at the Birla Mansion on Albuquerque Road in New Delhi. How and why there can be in Gwalior a Temple honoring Naturam Godse is beyond me!
UN needs a new Secretary General, Lana Nusseibeh from United Arab Emirates!
Newly elected Finland President Stubb sees "no point" in meeting with Putin; Refugees from Syria to Somalia turned away SHARE
“It’s self-evident that it’s difficult to have any kind of political dialogue with Putin as long as Russia is waging an aggressive war against Ukraine, so I don’t see any kind of communication with Putin or with the Russian political leadership in the near future.”
Finland extended the closure of its border with Russia for another month amid concerns that the Kremlin undermines security by sending thousands of migrants over the frontier. See also Erika Solomon's NY Times article. On a Frozen Border: Russia turning asylum seekers (from Syria to Somalia) into a political pressure point Finland closed all 8 crossing points
USA'S Afghanistan Death Squads That Kill Children SHARE
“For a very short time,” Bilal said, it sounded like “there were many guns.” Boys’ screams came next, followed by two loud explosions. “One shook the whole building,” said Bilal. “We didn’t hear anything after this. Everyone was silent.”
When the sun rose hours later, Bilal and about a dozen other students remained crouching in silence, some still trembling with fear. Nearby, in two of the school’s other rooms and in the basement, 12 more boys, their bodies mauled by bullets, lay crumpled on the floor.
James Fallows on how Biden Could Clean up the Mess, from the January/February 2021 Atlantic Magazine SHARE
The specific steps he should take are not about payback, whatever some will say. They are not even about Donald Trump as an individual. They are about the never-ending mission of forming a more perfect union.
Biden likes to say, of the American-carnage era, “We’re better than that.” In practice, we haven’t been. In theory, we could be. Biden has a chance to tell a different story—a story about our potential—with the first words he utters after taking the oath of office.
Mimi Stewart Will be a Great President Pro Tempore of New Mexico Senate: "A Liberal Champion for Many Years" SHARE
Surviving tragedies, especially those endured at an early age, sometimes defines the existential groundwork, an emerging pre-requisite and precursor, for a special stratum of leaders, those who have the deepest compassion and the truest deepest intelligence. Stewart has been a New Mexico legislator for 26 years, giving particular focus to education initiatives, passing over 100 bills that have made a difference in New Mexico
CENSORSHIP IN OUR CANCEL CULTURE: The suppression of free speech gains momentum as drug companies panic SHARE
The propaganda machine has warped into a united Ministry of Truth that suppresses all dissent from the official party line. This censorship seems rudely out of place in an internet age where near-universal and instant access to information is taken as a given." Scott has helped our efforts to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, and through the UN Ambassadors to get aspartame rescinded in other nations.
BRAVO! U.N. Backs Down on Partnership With Chinese Telecommunications Giant for 75th Anniversary SHARE
UN backtracked on a pact with Chinese telecommunications giant Tencent Holdings to provide videoconferencing for the international organization’s 75th anniversary, following backlash from U.S. officials and lawmakers as well as human rights groups. UN sparked firestorms by enlisting Chinese social media giant to serve as platform for online discussions on UN's future. US human rights advocates pressed UN to rescind, as tarnishing UN’s reputation as champion of free expression. Privacy advocates pointed out Tencent abetted China’s surveillance state and censorship. Beijing exerted control over information on coronavirus during the outbreak. Tencent’s WeChat scrubbed keywords in December, as Financial Times reported, hindering both Chinese citizens’ and foreign countries’ access to information on the outbreak early on. The Times reported on the United Nations’ relationship with Tencent.
Another one down! Minnesota Pork Plant Shuts Down After Outbreak Among Workers SHARE
The Worthington, MN, facility will wind down operations over two days to ensure existing product in the facility can be used to support food supply, JBS said Monday. The move comes after seven workers tested positive for the virus and officials from the Minnesota Department of Health said Friday the number will likely rise. No date was given for a reopening. The closure means more that a 10% of U.S. hog slaughtering capacity is down.
JBS SA, the world’s top meat company, will shutter its pork processing facility in Minnesota following an outbreak of coronavirus, adding to concerns that slaughterhouse logjams will tighten meat supplies for consumers.
Corona, N.M. (pop. 167) learns to adjust in the age of coronavirus; Lincoln County has 1 case SHARE
After leaving Las Cruces and driving to Tularosa, I headed north through the sagebrush, juniper, creosote and what might have been skunkbush sumac, Mexican poppies or yellow-flower purslane. Mayor San Seely: “I’m always proud of the people in Corona; everybody’s not so much following the mandates from the governor. Everybody’s really been looking out for each other. Social distancing is kind of the norm for us." Corona has 4 businesses, all weathering the change as well as could be expected, but the café seemed to be suffering: breakfast and lunchtimes bustle with traffic, old-timers telling stories for hours over endless cups of coffee, villagers stopping in for enchiladas on their lunch break. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, business has been down 80%.
'Refer to me as sir': Miami cop handcuffs Black doctor who tests homeless for COVID-19 SHARE
Oh, great! Russian TV will show this all over Africa!
A Black Florida doctor who has been testing homeless people for COVID-19 was stopped outside his home and handcuffed Friday for—get this—unloading old boxes from his van for curbside pickup, he told the Miami Herald. Dr. Armen Henderson, who was earlier featured in the Herald for his heroic work to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, told the newspaper that by the cop’s account, police had been getting complaints of people illegally dumping garbage in a Miami neighborhood. So a sergeant patrolling the area stopped Henderson and asked him for his identification, and when he didn’t provide it and turned to his van, the cop handcuffed him, Henderson told the Herald.
“He said ‘you should refer to me as sir, or sergeant when talking to me,’” Henderson told the Herald. “I never said I was a doctor. But I didn’t cuss. He just grabbed my arms and cuffed me.”
The Mafia is poised to exploit coronavirus, and not just in Italy SHARE
Anti-mafia officials have told CNN that Mafia clans are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, providing necessities in poor neighborhoods, offering credit to businesses on the verge of bankruptcy and planning to siphon off billions of euro in stimulus funds. The most powerful branch of the Mafia is thought to control 80% of the European cocaine market. Journalist Roberto Saviano, author of "Gomorrah: Italy's other Mafia" (expose of the Naples Camorra mafia), told CNN that "the traffickers took advantage of the lack of oversight of law enforcement in the ports, in the airports. Who was checking any more?" he asked.
Franco Gabrielli, head of the Italian police, said that Mafia organizations are enmeshed in parts of the economy "that have not been blocked by the restrictions of Covid-19: the agriculture-food chain, the supply of medicines and medical equipment, road transport."
Studies about COVID-19 in China now need approval of government officials before getting published SHARE
An anonymous Chinese researcher says that the Chinese don’t care about facts, and will continue to divert attention away from the general understanding that the virus came from China.
“I think it is a coordinated effort from (the) Chinese government to control (the) narrative, and paint it as if the outbreak did not originate in China. And I don’t think they will really tolerate any objective study to investigate the origination of this disease.”
Everything is checked before going to the next stage.
“I think the importance is that the international scientific community must realize that any journal or manuscripts from (a) Chinese research institution has kind of been double-checked by the government.”
“It is important for them to know there are extra steps between independent scientific research and final publication,” says the researcher.
France's president says US, UK, and China back a world truce; thinks Putin will 'definitely agree' SHARE
Speaking on French radio, Macron said he had secured the agreement of several of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to back a call by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire. Macron said that China, the US and the UK were on board and he was optimistic about Russia.
CNN has contacted the Chinese mission to the UN and the US State Department for comment. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday: "Most likely, work is underway -- at the expert level, our diplomats are working on this before we can join it. As soon as this work is completed and [passes] approval with other partners, relevant statements will be made."
NRA sues New York governor Cuomo over closure of gun stores SHARE
Cuomo's 3/20 order including firearms retailers as non-essential is a “pointless and arbitrary attack on the constitutional rights of NY citizens." NYC has 1,300 + of 5,700 deaths. Officials are “going out of their way to protect liquor stores and release criminals onto the streets, while ignoring the public’s outcry over the suspension of 2nd Amendment rights." NRA sued San Jose for ordering gun stores to close. NJ Gov. Murphy lifted a temporary ban on gun sales in the state after NRA filed suit and LA backed off an earlier ban. NY AG Letitia James, a Democrat, said she’d defend the state’s decision, at odds with Trump, according to the complaint. DHS' "critical infrastructure": “Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges." NRA says law enforcement may not be sufficient to protect citizens.
Pandemic Patience: What we can learn from a POW and a Roman slave-turned-philosopher SHARE
After being shot down, Navy Pilot Stockdale parachuted down to North Vietnam whispering to himself, “5 years down there, leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus," a 1st century crippled Roman-slave-turned-Stoic-philosopher who taught that we have separate files in our mind — 1 file for “things that are within his power” and a 2nd file for “things that are beyond his power,” which things will doom him to “fear and anxiety” if he worries about them, Stockdale said in a speech in 1993. This is the key of Stoicism, the philosophy associated with Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca — and the life force that kept Stockdale alive and sane as POW.
Our happiness lies in focusing on what we can control and taking the rest as it comes, said Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor at the City College of New York, author of “How To Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life.”
Liberal judge Jill Karofsky defeats conservative justice Daniel Kelly in closely watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race SHARE
Judge Jill Karofsky won the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, narrowing the conservative majority, an election conducted in the midst of a global pandemic.
Karofsky’s victory marked the first time in 12 years that a Wisconsin Supreme Court challenger beat an incumbent — and the 2nd time in more than half a century. Her win over Justice Daniel Kelly will shift conservative control of the court from 5-2 to 4-3. Karofsky thanked her family and supporters and decried the decision to hold the election during the coronavirus outbreak.
"Look, we shouldn’t have had the election on Tuesday," she said. "It was an untenable decision (on whether to vote), but the people of the state of Wisconsin rose up. Anyone who wasn’t brought to tears when they were looking at those people in Milwaukee voting on Tuesday, and voting in Green Bay on Tuesday, just doesn't have a heart."
Bernie Sanders officially endorses Joe Biden for president SHARE
"Today, I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse," Sanders said Monday after joining Biden on a campaign livestream to discuss the coronavirus pandemic.
"I think people are going to be surprised. We are apart on some issues, but we are awfully close on others," Biden told Sanders. "I'm going to need you. Not just to win the campaign but to govern."
Meatpacking Giant Closes South Dakota Pork Plant 'Indefinitely' After 238 Employees Test Positive SHARE
Smithfield Foods has closed its Sioux Falls, South Dakota pork processing facility in response to coronavirus cases identified among the site's 3,700 employees. Smithfield said the plant would halt its services "indefinitely." The decision followed a letter issued to Smithfield's president and CEO Ken Sullivan on Saturday, in which South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Sioux Falls Mayor Paul Ten Haken asked him to suspend operations at the plant for 14 days. 238 of the state's 626 confirmed coronavirus cases had been diagnosed among its employees. "This is your moment to take swift action for your people, the community of Sioux Falls and the State of South Dakota," Noem and Ten Taken wrote in Saturday's letter, additionally requesting that Smithfield continue to provide its employees with full compensation and benefits during the suggested 14-day closure period.
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