Jan. 12, 2008

DES MOINES, Iowa — Fed up with the far right’s 30-year legacy of fear, division and hate, the American people are using the 2008 elections as a movement for change.

NASHUA, N.H. — As voters came out in record numbers for a presidential primary here, Jan. 8, the great majority could agree on one thing: the need for a new direction for the country, away from the Bush/Cheney policies.

Nigeria: Russians compete for natural gas
Turkey: Women win strike
China: Legislation benefits workers
Italy: Marchers denounce U.S. base
Venezuela: Chavez issues amnesty

A new firestorm is raging over the Bush administration’s use of torture in its “war on terror,” ignited by CIA Director Michael Hayden’s admission that the spy agency destroyed videotapes of its interrogation of two detainees.

As early presidential primary results highlight voters’ demands for change, a drive is taking shape to further weaken Republican power in Congress.

The government’s employment report for December confirmed that even the mediocre job gains reported in October and November were too good to last. According to the Labor Department’s establishment survey, only 18,000 jobs were created in December. That brings the average since September down to 84,000 per month.

Tensions have eased somewhat in the East African nation of Kenya following an intense, and at times violent, conflict between the governing and opposition political parties over the past two weeks.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan last month has a direct relationship to the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the subject of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the Hollywood “comedy” in which a corrupt congressman and a wily CIA man win “the Cold War” against the “evil Soviet empire” in Afghanistan.

Wow! 2008 has started with a bang that has taken our breath away. After the long, cold winter of our discontent, with the most extreme, reactionary agenda taking over the levers of government, spring is within sight. And with spring comes hope.

New Year’s greeting
Torture
Robeson season
After Iowa
$100 a barrel
Apology