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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim
03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!
03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
03.03 It's Snow News
03.03 The Woeful Washington Post
Ref. : The Daily Howler
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"
03.09 Thinking About Countings
03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda
03.16 America's Secret Prisons
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem
03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid
03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda
02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks
03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
03.05 Is the Recovery Real?
03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You
03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"
03.01 Thinking About Fees
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
03.03 Muslim Disunity
03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist
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.
