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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable
06.29 Thinking about Climate
06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN
06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare
06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
06.22 Thinking about Recoveries
06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo
06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care
06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform
06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage
06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right
06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity
06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail
06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership
06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"
06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins
06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program
06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black
06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?
06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?
06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory
06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"
07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure
06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq
06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release
06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War
06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future
06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
06.14 Fear Rules
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America
06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean
06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New
06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'
06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil
06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran
06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections
06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters
06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead
COMMENTARY:
Ralph Nader Speaks in Baltimore: “Americans Need Moral Courage!”
Ralph Nader at the U. of Baltimore
Nader’s message emphasized that Americans need a good dose of “moral courage” to take on the corporate controllers of this country. A vast majority of the people, he said, need to get over “their own sense of helplessness and powerlessness.” He railed against the fact that power in this country is exercised “by the few” over the many. The reason for that, he explained, is that “self-government isn’t just a slogan. People need to be in charge, but in order to do that, they need to show up!”
Nader has led the way on so many different fronts, he’s hard to categorize. Trained in the law, he has for decades championed the consumer and the fragile environment against the perpetual excesses of Corporate America. His book, Unsafe at any Speed, propelled his name into the public’s consciousness. Despite setbacks, he wrote that the essence of a citizen’s movement “is persistence.” Born in Winsted, Connecticut in 1934 to Lebanese immigrant parents, Nader graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and with distinction from the Harvard School of Law. From Public Citizen to the Pension Rights Center, the many organizations he has helped to form and energize continue to be in the forefront of the struggle for social and economic justice.
Nader asked: “Why do people vote against their own interests? The clear example of that, is the people who voted for George W. Bush.” He ripped into Bush for funding the Missile Defense Program (MDP) to the tune of $9.5 billion a year, while allowing AMTRAK “to crumble.” He labeled the MDP “a boondoggle that will never work. It is too easily decoyed.” Because of the huge deficits established by the present regime, Nader called Bush “a taxer of grandchildren,” since they are the ones who will have to pay the debts, assuming there is still an economy around to allow them to do so.
Nader concluded, “The big secret in a democracy is that the people have the power. If they would realize it, exercise it, organize it and focus it, with a fraction of the their free time.” If the people want a living wage, universal health care, their public works restored to a decent level, to stop the tax cuts for the rich, to have clean water to drink and clean air to breath, he said, “They need to get involved in the political process...get motivated.” If they don’t, he warned, they will get “more criminal wars, fabricated wars...bringing home our dead soldiers, sick soldiers, traumatized soldiers." In order to turn the present situation around, he said, “The people need to believe in themselves, believe that they have the power...and then to take action.”
Kevin Zeese, who recently won endorsements for his bid for the U.S. Senate from Maryland’s growing Green and Libertarian parties, also spoke at the event. He is strongly anti-Iraq War and pro-environment, and opposes any U.S. attack on Iran. He criticized one of his opponents, Rep. Ben Cardin (D-MD), for telling the electorate that he’s for peace in Iraq, while he’s “voting for the war” in the U.S. Congress. Cardin, he added, is also against any “exit strategy.” Zeese said the U.S.'s “lopsided” relationship with Israel means that “the U.S. taxpayer is complicit in what is going on there,” and that the Israeli-Palestine question “can’t be ignored any longer. It needs to be debated. It’s the root cause of our own security problems and the root cause of terrorism against the U.S.”
Also speaking at the spirited affair was the Green Party’s nominee for governor of Maryland, Ed Boyd, a U.S. Navy veteran. Boyd charged, “Marylanders are being ‘Enroned’ by the corporations.” One of the main problems confronting the state’s voters, he said, is that the local utility, Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE), is planning to hike its rates a staggering 72% this July, a move he strongly opposes. He is demanding that the incumbent GOP governor, Robert Ehrlich and one of his Democratic challengers--Baltimore’s Mayor Martin O’Malley--return the substantial campaign contributions they have received from BGE’s parent company, Constellation Energy. Ehrlich, who also grabbed a $16,000 contribution in 2002 from the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, took in $54,000 from CE; while O’Malley, who poses as a foe of Big Business, reined in $45,000.
As part of the event, R.B. Jones, a Baltimore-based journalist and poet, read three of his anti-Iraq War poems. Musical entertainment at the rally was provided by Bilal Salaam, a lively jambe drummer and rapper.
To see a video of R.B. Jones reading his anti-Iraqi war poems, visit here.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on June 21, 2006.
