KATHY KELLY, kathy at vcnv.org, @voiceinwild
CNN.com published a piece today by Noam Chomsky: “Paris attacks show hypocrisy of West’s outrage,” which refers to “Barack Obama’s global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby” as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.”
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly was recently sentenced to three months in prison for protesting against such drone killings. She has been told to “self-report” by the court on Jan. 23.
Recently in Afghanistan, Kelly is currently in Chicago. Her most recent piece is “Inside the Uniform, Under the Hood, Longing for Change,” in which she writes: “The cartoonized versions of foreign policy handed to U.S. people, designating heroes and villains, create a dangerously under-educated public unable to engage in democratic decision-making.” She also recently wrote the piece “Drones and Discrimination: Kick the Habit.”
DAVID LINDORFF, dlindorff at mindspring.com
The Washington Post reports: “Obama rediscovers a progressive agenda for the State of the Union.”
Lindorff is founding editor of the online alternative newspaper ThisCantBeHappening!
He just wrote in “Taking a Meaningless Progressive Stand in Congress“: “The Democrats are showing their true colors now that they have lost control of both houses of Congress.
“Suddenly, with the assurance that they don’t have to worry about being taken seriously, the ‘party of the people’ has come forward with a proposal to levy a 0.1 percent tax on short-term stock trades, particularly on high speed trading.
“Don’t get me wrong. A stock-trade tax is a great, and long-overdue idea. In fact, such a tax, which could raise some $800 billion in revenue over a decade, should probably be bigger than just 0.1 percent, and targeted more directly at high speed trading. …
“The point is that this trading tax is something that progressives have been calling for now for years, if not longer, but while they were in a position to actually make it happen, Democrats in Congress were silent about it.”
