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January, 2010
Volume 35, Issue 1  MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS |
ARTICLES
Federal War Spending Exceeds Health, Education, Welfare, And Safety Budgets For 50 States By Sherwood Ross The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans. Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C., says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008. read entire article "Contractors" Represent 69% of US Combatants In Afghanistan Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now-and that number is quickly rising. By Jeremy Scahill December 18, 2009 "RebelReports" A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense's total workforce, "the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history." That's not in one war zone-that's the Pentagon in its entirety. read entire article Copenhagen: Historic Failure That Will Live in Infamy By Joss Garman Independent UK The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion. read entire article Coastal Post Going Or Coming? Don Deane Publisher-Editor The 34-year publishing run of the Coastal Post has been a grand experience for this editor-publisher and founder. First printing on mimeographed stencils, in 1975, then copy-machines and finally an offset press-the paper began as the smallest, most-local of the community publications in Marin. Over the next three decades our coverage stretched into West Marin, the County, the Internet and finally focusing on worldwide political inequities, human catastrophes and unnatural environmental cataclysms. read entire article Africa: Dying, Drying, And Disappearing By Paul Virgo Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is les than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years. __ Climate change and overuse have put one of Africa's mightiest lakes in mortal danger, and the livelihoods of the 30 million people who depend on its waters is hanging by a thread as a result. read entire article One Sided Nuclear Reality In The Middle East By Karen Nakamura Neo-conservatives in Israel are hypocritically stoking the flames of public option to make sure the world stays focused on Iran's nuclear program. Simultaneously, the Israelis refuse to allow the world to examine their own atomic stockpiles. read entire article Canada To Pull Troops Out of Afghanistan by 2011 Amid deepening rift over the handling of the NATO war in Afghanistan, Premier Stephen Harper has reaffirmed that Canadian troops would leave the war-ravaged county in 2011 read entire article Disaster for Billion-Dollar Alaskan Fishery Unsustainable Catch Limits for Pollock Fishery Threaten Alaskan Ecosystems Responding to an announcement from the North Pacific Fishery Management Service on the 2010 catch limit of 813,000 million metric tons for the pollock fishery today, George Pletnikoff, Greenpeace senior oceans campaigner in Anchorage, offered the following statement: ANCHORAGE, Alaska--"If the pollock fishery is a model of anything, it's a model of unsustainability. Instead of responding to government reports that the pollock population has sunk to an all-time low this year, the Council is charting a course to destruction for the very ecosystems that have sustained whales, seals and entire communities for generations. read entire article Israelis Bid To Buy Al-Jazeera from Qatar Posted: 10/09 From: Mathaba.net An Israeli media tycoon has offered to buy the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera satellite television network from the government of Qatar Haim Saban, has submitted an offer to the Qatari government in a bid to purchase half of the Doha -based Al-Jazeera satellite network. read entire article Obama Warns Jintao: US Not Able To Stop Israeli Attack On Iran U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz. read entire article Doctor's Report: The Wounds of Gaza By Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr. Swee Ang Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences, share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack. read entire article Deadly Changes For AIDS Funding By Karen Nakamura Caught in the present unpalatable credit squeeze, California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his veto power on June 28, 2009 and threatened to cut $85 million from the California Office of HIV/AIDS funding. Because of this, effective Feb. 28, the respected Hospice by the Bay has been forced to close its successful 20-year AIDS program. read entire article Going Green Means Having Fewer Kids By Emily Badger Miller-McCune.com There are already just too many people on the planet. What are we supposed to do about it? Andrew Revkin, an environmental reporter for The New York Times and author of the paper's Dot Earth blog, warns that the math is pretty depressing. read entire article Condoms May Exacerbate Spread Of HIV/AIDS By Clemente Ferrer "I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem," said Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to Cameroon. read entire article Obama Year One: Betrayal and Failure By Stephen Lendman Promising change after eight George Bush and Republican dominated years, Barack Obama won the most sweeping non-incumbent victory in over 50 years along with congressional Democrats gaining large House and Senate majorities. In addition, at 56.8%, voter turnout was the highest since Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the Vietnam war and his "Southern" and "law and order" strategies beat Hubert Humphrey and independent George Wallace in 1968. read entire article They're Hungary And They're Coming By Karen Nakamura Most of us saw the scary ad by HungryPests.org produced by the US Department of Agriculture USDA) showing the little girl skipping through an orchard as fruit decays in her wake. That is until she transforms into a swarm of Killer Insects. "They're Hungry and They're Coming!" It's as creepy as any Halloween "slasher flick". Then there's the problem of terrifying children whose parents have spent hours showing how beautiful and beneficial the little creatures are. read entire article US Workers Starved Into Military Service By Sandy LeonVest Published by CommonDreams.org It was only a matter of time before the nation's skyrocketing unemployment translated into new recruits for the most powerful military force in the world. With the official US unemployment rate at 10 percent and climbing (that's more than 15 million people struggling to put food on the table) and nearly double that number if you include part-time wage-earners who need full-time jobs, never mind all of those 'discouraged workers,' it's little wonder that so many of the nation's jobless are flocking into its military recruitment offices. read entire article 800,000 Americans Busted Annually For Pot By Sherwood Ross Seven million Americans have been arrested since 1995 on marijuana charges and 41,000 of them are rotting in federal and State prisons---but the public is starting to rebel against "the preposterous war on pot," two political scientists say. Thousands of other pot users and sellers are confined in local jails as well. read entire article New Medical Marijuana Policy Issued By Feds By Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday. Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws. read entire article Assault on Oakland's Homeless Population Continues By Lynda Carson Oakland - It's cold and wet. Dawn breaks, and the screams of a howling cat in the distance sounds like a child abandoned in the frigid cold of the night, begging for attention. A raggedy looking homeless man recently near the entranceway of a Lucky store in Oakland, is chased off by security a few evenings ago, barely a moment after I had the pleasure of giving him a dollar, to buy something to eat. read entire article The Raw (And Ugly) Truth About The War On Drugs By Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Source: NaturalNews Drugs are bad. Drugs destroy peoples' lives. Didn't you know that marijuana turns regular everyday people into zombie pot smokers? That's why we have a war on drugs in America: to protect our children from potheads. Drugs are bad. Especially marijuana. I learned this the other day when I visited an elementary school as a guest speaker. The schoolchildren were well trained in describing the dangers of drugs. On command, they would spout out any number of statements describing them. read entire article The AuCoin Report News Briefs from the Great Outdoors Will Asian Carp overwhelm the Great Lakes? Invasive Asian carp are probably in the Great Lakes already, authorities say, but only a few and not enough to cause problems. However, to try to prevent more from entering Lake Michigan the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is electro-stunning native fish and temporarily removing them from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Then they'll poison the water and kill the carp, if any. If carp populations increase in Lake Michigan from the existing population they are ready to go to the next step, poison, using tiny "biobullet" pills that will kill only carp. read entire article How the Feds Imprison the Innocent By Paul Craig Roberts Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to open the champagne. Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, has announced a second printing of the second edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and the noted civil libertarian and defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate, has just published a book covering many of the same legal cases and vetting our conclusion that in the United States every American is in grave danger from unscrupulous prosecutors who target the innocent. read entire article Abbas and the Goldstone Report- Our Shame Is Complete By Ramzy Baroud The Goldstone report is the most comprehensive, and transparent investigation as of yet into what happened in Gaza during the 23-day war. A new war might be awaiting besieged Gaza. Time is running out, notes Ramzy Baroud. Our Shame is Complete. read entire article Zionist Dominance in the Obama Presidency Rebel News Be not deceived by Barack Hussein Obama's middle name or by the fact that he spent several childhood years in Indonesia. His political career is a product of a Westside Chicago Ashkenazi network with roots that trace directly back to organized crime of the 1920s. read entire article NEWS FROM THE GARLIC President Announces Invasion After Peace Speech By Frank Scott After giving one of his weekly stirring speeches on peace, which bring tears to the eyes of admirers, detractors and those suffering Mental Antagonism Disorder (MAD) the president called for a massive military attack on the third world nation Oblivia. read entire article Ex-CIA Chief James Woolsey Handed Down Gag Order to 9/11 Firefighters "We don't want to end up with an Emperor instead of a duly-elected Mayor, Governor, or President, and silence instead of justice." By Jerry Mazza Infowars, This tale begins during and shortly after 9/11/2001, when a writer named Randy Lavello published a story at Prison Planet, Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact. Among the many tales in this article, a number of which were picked up in Mike Rivero's web site, what really happened, is a conversation between Lavello and Lieutenant Fireman and former Auxiliary Police Officer, Paul Isaac Jr. It's a head-spinner. read entire article The Toilet Than Can Help Solve Our Water and Energy Problems By Gar Smith, Earth Island Journal Upwards of 3 million people die annually from diarrhea, dysentery, and parasitic diseases -- all for the want of clean water. Meanwhile, each year in the water-rich United States, 2.1 billion gallons of the world's most precious liquid are used, not to water thirsty crops or slake parched throats, but to flush human waste from home toilets to municipal sewers. While harvesting rainwater and recycling graywater are fine strategies, it's time to get to the seat of the problem. We need a Toilet Revolution. read entire article Brand New Bottle: Same Old Wine By Frank Scott We begin 2010 with a national debt over twelve trillion dollars and rising. That's roughly 40 thousand dollars per taxpayer. Should we continue financing the phony war on terror, which began in Afghanistan, moved to Iraq, returned to Afghanistan, is spreading to Pakistan and has lasted longer than World War Two? Or should we end the real terror war on taxpayers in the USA? read entire article Washington's Terrorism And The Cost Of Operation Hunker Down By Edward W. Miller, MD "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see ourselves as others see us. It wad fra monie a blunder free us And foolish notion." -Robert Burns (1759-96) read entire article Moo Town News "Through The Looking Glass" By Judy Borello When I look ahead to 2010, I can't help but feel like I've fallen into some surreal rabbit hole, where everything has become convoluted and logic is way out of whack. Some of the ridiculous situations that we've allowed the federal, state and local governments to get us into, driven primarily by strong-armed environmental lobbyists, have upended people's lives and landscapes with so much inequity and nonsense that it's unbearable! Here are just a few examples: read entire article A Shameful Reality By Jeanette Pontacq In the 1960s, I graduated from George Washington High School in San Francisco. My education was free to my working class parents. As a female, my male high school 'counselor' suggested to me that the best future for me was as a secretary to some 'guy.' I admit that I was not the most aware student before arriving at City College on Ocean Avenue. At City, almost cost-free, I started to see the possibilities in learning. read entire article Our Global Ponzi Economy By Lester R. Brown Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself. A Ponzi scheme investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain the high rates of return paid out to previous investors. When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses-just as Bernard Madoff's $65-billion investment fund did in December 2008. read entire article Why The Republicans Were Right To Reject "Healthcare Reform" For All The Wrong Reasons By Stephen Simac Like rocks in a roadway the Republicans stood firm against "socialized medicine, at least if it's not for seniors, the military and themselves. The Public Option promised by House Speaker Pelosi to shore up the liberal base was drowned in the bathtub as the Senate and Congressional bills coalesce into some rough beast. read entire article Letters to the Editor read |
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EDITOR-PUBLISHER: Don Deane NEWS STAFF: Steve Simac, Karen Nakamura, Terri Alvilla. CONTRIBUTORS: Alex Horvath COLUMNISTS: Judy Borello, Larry Kelly, Ed Miller, J. Pontacq, Frank Scott, Norman Solomon OFFICE MANAGER: Pam Carey ART DIRECTOR: Stacey Henderson DISTRIBUTION: Craig Slater The Coastal Post is a newspaper of general circulation published on or about the 1st of every month in Marin County, CA. With a monthly readership of about 30,000 and crculation of over 9,000, the newspaper is free in communities throughout Marin and on the World Wide WEB. Subsrciptions are payable in advance, six months $15, one year $24 by sending a check to P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA 94924. PHONE (415) 868-1600 FAX (415) 868-0502. http://wwww.coastalpost.com EMAIL: editor@coastalpost.com
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