May, 18 2012, 09:15am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Charles Idelson, 415-559-8991, Donna Smith, 773-617-4493, or Carl Ginsburg, 917-405-1060
Nurses, Global, U.S. Activists Converge on Chicago in Call To G-8 Leaders for Tax on Wall Street to Heal Economy
Day of Action with Colorful Rally, Joined by Musician Tom Morello, with Plan to Heal U.S. and Global Economies, International Panel on the Fight Against Austerity
CHICAGO
The nation's largest organization of nurses, National Nurses United, is sponsoring a day of action May 18 on the eve of the G-8 and NATO summits to promote a plan to help heal the U.S. and global economies and highlight the fight against austerity measures harming families around the world.
Rally at Daley Plaza (Dearborn at Randolph) with Tom Morello - 12 noon
Highlighting the day will be a colorful and festive rally at Daley Plaza featuring a comedic skit, and a special performance by eminent musician Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman.
At the rally Robin Hood and the nurses will scour the trees for the AWOL G-8 world leaders, who decided to run off and hide in the woods of rural Maryland rather than face a disgruntled public in Chicago as originally announced, to determine what they are doing to help average families, not just the banks and Wall Street high rollers, in the midst of a continuing economic gloom.
Robin Hood is there to call attention to the main theme of the rally - the proposal for a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments that can raise up to $350 billion every year to help mitigate the economic crisis created by the banks, with the revenue available for jobs, healthcare, education, and other basic needs and services.
Among the scheduled speakers is Tom Hayden and NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.
More than 100 U.S. and international environmental, health, labor, faith, anti-poverty, and other organizations have endorsed the May 18 action in Chicago and its call for the Robin Hood tax.
The proposed tax, as little as 50 cents on every $100 of trades would operate like a sales tax most Americans pay on a wide variety of goods and services. The key difference is this tax targets the banks and financial institutions, not ordinary consumers, whose reckless gambling with people's homes and pensions are largely responsible for the recession that still affects people's lives every day.
"This is a tax for the people, not on the people," says NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN. "A better world is possible and now we know how to pay for it."
Further, sponsors say, the Wall Street trading tax, also known as a financial transaction tax, would help reduce some of the reckless speculation, most of which is automated with thousands of trades happening every second, which creates both market volatility and contributes to rising food and gas prices.
NNU's rally and other actions are part of a global week of action for the Robin Hood tax, with activists holding actions throughout Europe, on Mount Fuji in Japan, in several African nations, and other countries, as well as in Chicago. The week is timed to coincide with the G-8 summit, and a May 23 meeting of European leaders where a European FTT is on the agenda. More than 40 countries already have some form of FTT, which is already raising billions of dollars a year for those nations.
Panel from Seven Nations Highlight the Global Fight against Austerity - 8 a.m. - Sheraton Chicago Hotel, 301 East North Water Street, Ballroom (Level 4)
The day of action opens with an international panel of speakers of guests from seven nations speaking about the global challenge by workers and communities against bank-imposed austerity measures. The event, being held in the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers Ballroom, 301 East North Water Street, Chicago, is open to the press at 8 a.m.
It will include speakers from the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Guatemala, Canada and the U.S.
Panelists are Mi Jung Han, RN, Vice President, Korean Health and Medical Workers Union (South Korea), David Hillman, Coordinator, Stamp Out Poverty (UK), Jorn Kalinski, Director of Lobbying and Campaigns, Oxfam Germany (Germany), Rosa Pavanelli, President, Funzione Pubblica CGIL (Italy) [in English, Public Function] and Vice President, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), Linda Silas, RN, President, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (Canada), Brenda Cristina Morales, RN, Regional Coordinator, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Salud de Guatemala (SNTSG) [in English, National Health Workers Union of Guatemala] (Guatemala), and NNU Co-President Karen Higgins (U.S.)
Anna Deavere Smith--of Nurse Jackie-- to Perform in Chicago on Nation's Healthcare Crisis - - Sheraton Chicago Hotel, 301 East North Water Street, Ballroom (Level 4)
Capping the day's events, critically acclaimed actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, who portrays a nurse on the Emmy award winning Showtime dark comedy Nurse Jackie, will perform Tell Us Where It Hurts, America's Nurses are Listening, a theatrical piece written derived from real-life stories of nurses and their patients gathered by NNU.
The special performance begins at 7:30 p.m. for the nurses, with limited seating on advance reservations available for the media. It will also be held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers Ballroom, 301 East North Water Street, Chicago.
"I'm not a real nurse, I play one on TV," Ms. Smith said. "But as fans of the program know, we deal with real-life issues facing many Americans--hospital closures and cuts due to a corporate healthcare system whose bottom line is profits, not quality care. This hurts families with no health insurance and illness brought on by a faltering economy. It's a welcome creative challenge to tap into these experiences from the lives of nurses."
National Nurses United, with close to 185,000 members in every state, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in US history.
(240) 235-2000LATEST NEWS
Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," said one advocate.
Apr 17, 2024
While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
"The privacy violations that flow from law enforcement entities circumventing the Fourth Amendment undermine civil liberties, free expression, and our ability to control what happens to our data," said Free Press Action policy counsel Jenna Ruddock. "These impacts affect everyone who uses digital platforms that extract our personal information any time we open a browser or visit social media and other websites—even when we go to events like demonstrations and other places with our phones revealing our locations."
"We're grateful that the House passed these vital and popular protections," she added. "The bill would prevent flagrant abuses of our privacy by government authorities in league with unscrupulous third-party data brokers. Making this legislation into law with Senate passage too would be a decisive and long-overdue action against government misuse of this clandestine business sector that traffics in our personal data for profit."
Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
"As FANFSA and the 702 reauthorization move to the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber need to take a stand for the rights of people in the United States," she argued. "That means passing FANFSA and reforming Section 702 authority—and prioritizing everyone's First and Fourth Amendment rights."
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
"The passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale underscores the extent to which reining in abusive warrantless surveillance is a bipartisan issue," Scott said. "We urge the Senate to take up this measure and close the data broker loophole."
Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
Hamadanchy added that "we hope this vote puts a fire under the Senate to protect their constituents and rein in the government's warrantless surveillance of Americans, once and for all."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a critic of the pending 702 bill and FANFSA's lead sponsor in the upper chamber, called the the House's Wednesday vote "a huge win for privacy" and said that "now it's time for the Senate to follow suit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Cables Show Biden Pressuring Nations to Oppose Palestine's UN Membership
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," said one former Lebanese diplomat.
Apr 17, 2024
As the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on Palestine's bid to become a full U.N. member, the Biden administration—which claims to support Palestinian statehood—is lobbying UNSC nations in an effort to wrangle enough "no" votes so that the United States can avoid resorting to a veto.
Leaked cables obtained by The Intercept show U.S. pressure on Security Council members including Malta—which currently presides over the body—and Ecuador.
While claiming that President Joe Biden backs "Palestinian aspirations for statehood," one of the cables asserts that "it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors."
"We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of 'Palestine' as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks," the document advises.
The U.S. argument essentially is that the U.N. should not create an independent Palestinian state by fiat—even though that's precisely how the world body voted in 1947 to establish the modern state of Israel.
The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
Along with the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom are permanent members of the UNSC, so they also have veto power.
Ahead of Thursday's planned vote, Spain has been doing its own lobbying in Europe to build greater support for Palestinian statehood. At a joint Tuesday press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is "when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine."
Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
Currently, 139 of the U.N.'s 193 member states recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has also claimed to support a so-called "two-state solution"—has alternately boasted about thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Critics pointed to the leaked cables as more proof of U.S. duplicity and double standards on the Israel-Palestine issue.
"This is the evidence that President Biden's talk about a two-state solution is nothing but idle talk," Massoud Maalouf, a former Lebanese ambassador to Canada, Chile, and Poland, said on social media.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Database Exposes 'Illicit Network Undermining Democracy Around the World'
Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
Apr 17, 2024
"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
"The twin insurrections at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and BrasÃlia's Three Powers Plaza in 2023 left no doubt about the international coordination of reactionary forces," PI argued. "Yet far too little is known about the entities of this network, their sources of financing, and their institutional allies operating inside our political systems."
Ultimately, PI aims to "support democratic systems to become more resilient to their insidious tactics."
From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
A cursory search of the database's contents shows users can:
- Learn about Israel's NSO, Rayzone, and Team Jorge, and how a team of Tel Aviv tech entrepreneurs fuel unrest in Latin America;
- Meet the Grey Wolves, Turkey's roving death squad with links to President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and the ethno-nationalists in his governing coalition; and
- Explore the global network of the Falun Gong, its Trump-connected media outlet The Epoch Times, and its traveling dance troupe known as Shen Yun.
Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
PI invites the public to contribute to the database.
"Together, we will not only name, shame, and expose the forces of the far right—but also dismantle their network of complicity," the group said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular