Monthly Archives: January 2024

President Obama on a woman’s right to privacy

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…and a woman’s right to choose. How did I miss this largely symbolic but altogether reassuring statement by the President on protecting women’s health and reproductive freedom? So far he’s batting 1000 with me (I say with my eyes averted from the Pakistan border).

President Obama issued a statement defending Roe v. Wade for protecting "women's health and reproductive freedom."

President Obama issued a statement defending Roe v. Wade for protecting “women’s health and reproductive freedom.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama affirmed his support for a woman’s “right to choose” on Thursday, the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that led to the legalization of abortion, as thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on the National Mall to challenge his position.

Roe v. Wade “not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters,” Obama said in a statement.

The landmark 1973 decision held that a woman’s right to abortion was protected by the right to privacy under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, voiding most state laws against abortion at the time.

Super Eco

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It’s my privilege to be working on a new “green” blog called Super Eco. We just went live this morning! Here’s some info about the effort…

Today marks the official launch of a new Crowd Fusion property: Super Eco. The Super Eco team has been working  for several months building a site dedicated to addressing environmental concerns and presenting environmental information in a way meant to meet readers wherever they happen to be in the process of exploring a more environmentally conscious life.

In addition to coverage of environmental news, the site offers environmental feature articles, environmental how tos, detailed profile pages of products, companies, and people mentioned in the news, and a rich and growing glossary of ecological, environmental, and scientific terms to help you discover more.  To give you an idea of the type of content you can expect from this site, take a look at some of these features:

Here’s an example of some of our news posts:

We also have helpful people pages, like this one for  Barack Obama. If you add news/ to the end of that URL you can view all the Super Eco news stories that mention Barack Obama. Add rss/ to the end of this news page’s URL and you can subscribe to an RSS feed of just the Super Eco news that is Barack Obama-related. A full list of all of Super Eco’s feeds can be found here and we have a “how to” telling you how to go about subscribing to our feeds. Also, if you love all things tech make sure you check out Super Eco’s Green Tech topic section (you can subscribe to that section’s RSS via this feed). Finally, Super Eco realizes it’s joining a rich ecosystem of sites dedicated to environmental issues and the team wants to communicate, participate, and be social with all of them and with all of you, so feel free to follow Super Eco on Twitter or join the Super Eco Facebook group to let the team know what you’d like to see in the future.

Praise song for the day:

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A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
By Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.” We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Bush Inauguration – 2024

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Riot Cop, originally uploaded by nickcalyx.

What’s changed?

love that casts an ever widening pool of light

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I held onto the tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of the dogs. Beth called and the dam broke. What an opportunity we have today. Today we can embark on the journey. Today marks the end of eight hectic years of powerlessness and defeat. Today is a new beginning. The hard work lies in front of us. It’s past the time for change. I feel like today we can start to change the planet, to restore community, to bring peace, to give mother nature a break and heal the damage we’ve done to the life around us.

Today there is so much to say, so much to do. I have an Obama tee shirt around here someplace. I’m going to put it on and get to work.

Pacific Telecommunications Council

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Judi Clark is live blogging the PTC09 event at manymedia.com, and tweeting it with a #ptc09 tag.

Her notes from Vint Cerf’s presentation here.

Lame duck reality check…

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Bush continues to embarass himself and the nation with his thoughtless award of the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” to Colombia’s Uribe:

COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK STATEMENT ON AWARD OF PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM TO ALVARO URIBE VELEZ

President George W. Bush is today presenting the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom to Alvaro Uribe Velez, the President of Colombia. We think this award is extremely inappropriate, and the selection of President Uribe debases the value of the award. During Alvaro Uribe’s Presidency the scope of paramilitary activities and of Colombian Army abuses has expanded greatly. Numerous members of Mr. Uribe’s party in Congress have been tied to the illegal paramilitaries, and his Presidential palace received a paramilitary murdered named Job and paramilitary representatives linked to the drug trade. The paramilitary activities, encouraged by members of Mr. Uribe’s party and by military officers collaborating with the paramilitaries, have displaced millions of peasants, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Colombians from their homelands, making Colombia the leading country in the world with over 4 million displaced persons, nearly 10% of the country’s population.

President Uribe has characterized the human rights community as guerrilla apologists, a patent lie. Meanwhile, with corruption rampant in his government, Mr. Uribe arranged a bribe of a Congresswoman to vote for his re-election, without which he would not have had the votes needed for re-election. His anti-drug policy of crop spraying with Roundup Ultra has, meanwhile, decimated many peasants’ food crops while hardly denting coca production. And labor leaders continue to be murdered in numbers greater than anywhere else in the world.

If there is to be an award of the Medal of Freedom to Colombia it should go, not to the President who has done so much to wreck his country, but to the communities who have organized in peaceful resistance to the Uribe policies— such as the sister communities which Colombia Support Network chapters have been privileged to work with, such as the Peace Community of San Josesito de Apartado, the Movimiento Campesina de Cajibio, the Embera-Chami community in the Putumayo, the Movimiento Ciudadano de Tiquisio, the Constituent Assembly of Mogotes, and the Alto Naya community. These grass-roots community organizations, which have suffered greatly from paramilitary and military violence, it has been our privilege to promote and support.

Colombia Support Network

January 12, 2024

RECOMMENDED ACTION :

Send this statement to your Members of Congress . Please go to our website and see CSN’s Action Center: www.colombiasupport.net

Send this to : www.change.gov and to Obama’s transition team

Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI  53701-1505
phone:  (608) 257-8753
fax:  (608) 255-6621
e-mail:  csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net