"Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running, so our children can fly."
-- Ed Welch, quoting a text message from a friend, on NPR's All Things Considered 10/28/08

None of us have gotten where we are on our own. Some of those who have lifted us up are now household names; some names may be known only around your kitchen table, or written only in your heart.

The year-end holidays are traditionally a time of coming together, for forgiveness and sharing, but they also provide an opportunity to reflect, give thanks and honor the people who have made a difference in our lives. This holiday season, please take a moment and consider honoring by name someone who has inspired you to "fly" by making a tax-deductible donation of $35 to Brave New Foundation. In this video, the Brave New Foundation team shares which people and issues have inspired us.

The scandals for KBR just keep coming.  The former Halliburton subsidiary responsible for the sexual assault of Jamie Leigh Jones and the accidental electrocution of a U.S. soldier is now subject of a class-action lawsuit for exposing employees to "unsafe water, food, and hazardous fumes" at the largest U.S. installation in Iraq. 

According to the Army Times, Joshua Eller, a former technician with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, said that while he was stationed at Balad Air Force Base in 2006, he experienced skin lesions that spread and became worse, along with debilitating blisters on his feet, vomiting, cramping, diarrhea, and severe abdominal pain.

As former KBR Water Purification Specialist Ben Carter described in this clip from Iraq for Sale and in his Congressional testimony, KBR failed to provide adequate water safety, resulting in toxic drinking and bathing water.  This war profiteer also failed to manage a medical incinerator properly, instead disposing medical waste and human remains in an open air burn pit.  Eller claims that at one point, he saw a wild dog running around the base with a human arm in its mouth that KBR had dumped into the pit.  And the grizzly kicker, the suit accuses KBR of using mortuary trucks that "still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice" later served to U.S. troops. 

It's high time we hold KBR and Halliburton accountable.  Hopefully, Congress will pass Rep. Jan Schakowsky's bill to phase out private military contractors altogether over the next five years.  Until then, I fear these scandals stemming from KBR's blatant disregard for the welfare of our soldiers in Iraq will continue.  

Wal-Mart Watch is attributing the death of Jdimytai Damour, trampled last Friday at a Long Island Wal-Mart, to the company's utter failure to provide adequate working conditions for its employees.  In a statement released Tuesday, Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director David Nassar said:

"Unfortunately, this disregard is not an isolated situation, but an everyday occurrence. In fact, we receive disturbing workplace accounts from Wal-Mart workers every day and post them on our walmartspeakout.com website. Over the last three and a half years we have exposed the company’s poor treatment of its workers and tried our best to get Wal-Mart to hear the message that the company was putting its workers at risk."

How many Jdimytai Damours will it take before Wal-Mart provides safe working conditions?  How many Wal-Mart workers have to suffer before Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott stops declaring, "We like driving the car and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us," and starts supporting his employees' right to unionize?

Perhaps it will take a highly publicized lawsuit.  Damour's family is suing Wal-Mart, claiming the mega-retailer did not provide enough security to handle the Black Friday crowd and used advertising techniques specifically designed to "create an environment of frenzy and mayhem."  Wal-Mart issued a statement that read, "We consider Mr. Damour part of the Wal-Mart family."  So, not only is this how Wal-Mart treats employees, it's also how they treat "family members."

For more on the ugliness of Wal-Mart and our consumer culture, check out Meet the Bloggers tomorrow with Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping.

Haven’t we learned our lesson?

On the front page of Monday’s New York Times appears this article on Afghanistan. Michael R. Gordon leads off with this falsehood in the 2nd paragraph:

Military experts agree that more troops are required to carry out an effective counterinsurgency campaign, but they also caution that the reinforcements are unlikely to lead to the sort of rapid turnaround that the so-called troop surge in Iraq produced after its start in 2007.

Military experts agree? They do? Who are these “military experts?” Because I can find a few who most certainly do not agree.

Rory Stewart, who’s award winning book on Afghanistan was a New York Times bestseller, said this a few weeks ago on the Times’ editoral page:

A sudden surge of foreign troops and cash will be unhelpful and unsustainable. It would take 20 successful years to match Pakistan’s economy, educational levels, government or judiciary — and Pakistan is still not stable. Nor, for that matter, are northeastern or northwestern India, despite that nation’s great economic and political successes.

We will not be able to eliminate the Taliban from the rural areas of Afghanistan’s south, so we will have to work with Afghans to contain the insurgency instead. All this is unpleasant for Western politicians who dream of solving the fundamental problems and getting out. They will soon be tempted to give up.

It is in our interests for Afghanistan to be more stable in part because it contributes to the stability of the region, and in particular Pakistan. Well-focused, long-term assistance in which we appear a genuine partner, not a frustrated colonial master, could help Afghans achieve this goal. We will be able to create, afford and sustain such a relationship only if we put it in a broader strategic context and limit its scope.

Some of my fellow Kossacks got their knickers in a twist the other day over the news that David Gregory's set to become the new host of NBC's Meet the Press. Why the outrage? Well for one thing, they can never forgive Gregory for dancing with the devil, aka "MC" Rove. Plus, as one unkind Kossack noted, "I think he looks like he's from Planet Of The Apes" (admittedly, the photos offered as evidence made a compelling case).

Why not Chuck Todd? Better still, Rachel Maddow, patron saint of progressive wonks?

Look, I worship the luminous Rachel just as much as the next lefty blogger, but when are you guys gonna wake up and start sleeping in on Sunday? Why waste another precious hour of your life watching all those inside-the-Beltway bozos compete to see who can offer the most ossified observations, the stalest sound bites? (I make an exception for Donna Brazile, for whom God created the DVR.)

Get with the program -- Friday is the new Sunday. You've got Left, Right, & Center on KCRW, and now there's Meet The Bloggers, live every Friday at 1 pm Eastern. Meet The Bloggers is an online video show from Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation, dedicated to providing a forum for "unconventional political opinion and analysis." It's got the talking heads you actually want to hear from, the folks just beyond the scope of our myopic old media.

Amnesty International USA just launched its Protect the Human campaign to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  They've got a fantastic site up where you can view Amnesty's films and photos, learn about human rights issues, read up on the UDHR, tell your story using an interactive Google map, and take action on these issues.

Check out the Protect the Human campaign now, and then sign the open letter calling on President-elect Obama to close Gitmo and ban unconstitutional military commissions. 

"Yes."  That was Obama transition spokesman Dan Pfeiffer's short-but-sweet answer Tuesday night when asked whether President-elect Obama continues to place a high priority on passing the Employee Free Choice Act.  

Yes!

How did we get to the point where workers in our country will finally have a chance to unionize without fear of intimidation or reprisals; where they will be able to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions?  Part of it is due to the efforts of Brave New Foundation and American Rights at Work, whose joint "Your New Job" campaign was just named one of The Best Online Campaigns of 2008 by M+R Strategic Services. 

Thanks to your efforts, over 180,000 people viewed this video -- one of the most watched on YouTube in the nonprofit and activism category during September -- and thousands signed the petition.  You helped ensure that the Employee Free Choice Act will not be thwarted by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, anti-union conservatives, or the FOX News pundits who have been echoing their talking points.  You helped turn this act into a legislative priority.

Maybe part of the reason Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes "despise" bigoted FOX bully Bill O'Reilly is because O'Reilly dwells in the land of delusion.  As Think Progress notes, O'Reilly declared on his radio show yesterday that "there's certainly no proof" of any mistreatment at Guantanamo.  That, of course, flies in the face of evidence from the Red Cross, which documented "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of detainees.  Then there were the FBI files that detailed torture tactics, not to mention the fact that the U.S. even acknowledged the torture that went on at Gitmo. 

Never one for objectivity, O'Reilly purposely limited his knowledge of Gitmo to his two tours of the facility that offered an even more limited view of what actually occurred there.  Why?   Because O'Reilly is desperate to defend the Bush administration and its disastrous policies to the bitter end, especially if it means attacking Obama's plans for Gitmo in the process.  

Put a stop to O'Reilly's nonsense.  Sign the open letter to close Gitmo and end unconstitutional military commissions.  

This week, the Obama transition team took a major first step toward a more open government by allowing bloggers and others to use the content on change.gov freely.  

Now, a campaign called An Open Transition, spearheaded by Lawrence Lessig, is offering three principles for the Obama administration to use in order to achieve complete openness. 

1. No Legal Barrier to Sharing
2. No Technological Barrier to Sharing 
3. Free competition

Lessig believes these three ideas were central to Obama's presidential campaign, and therefore ought to guide his transition into the White House as well.

It's the taboo subject you're not supposed to talk about - Barack Obama's safety in light of the rise of white supremacists in America. ANP investigates in Memphis, Tennessee, where our cameras infiltrate the Stormfront.org Euro Conference. We probe the minds of the Anti-Defamation League, the Racist Skinhead Project and David Duke to assess legitimate threats to the next U.S. presidency.

Deborah Johns, a "Blue Star" mom and a ferocious Iraq war proponent has been a frequent guest on Your World w/Neil Cavuto for years. She made her most recent appearance last Friday as a representative of "Our Country Deserves Better" (also known as OurCountryPAC.org), the PAC that recently released an ad thanking Sarah Palin for being Sarah Palin. (Here are some of their other commercials, and here's the ad -- Johns is the blond woman in the blue top.)

During her Friday appearance, Cavuto said,

I always feel -- this is an unpleasant thing to raise, but you are so forceful and focused on it -- you lost a son in Iraq. And now we have a new president coming in who wants to get us out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Um, he hasn't tipped his hand as to when that might be but he's got what his aides are calling an aggressive timetable. How do you feel about that?

Johns went on to talk about "the need to support our troops"; the "victories" in Fallujah and the "free markets" that are working in Iraq. She didn't say a thing -- nothing -- about her son, who is alive and well and back home!

The recent Black Friday tragedies at Wal-Mart in New York and Toys "R" Us in California may finally help break the spell of mindless consumerism and rampant commercialism. We're taking up that cause this week on Meet the Bloggers with Rev. Billy and Savitra D of the Church of Stop Shopping and the documentary What Would Jesus Buy?  They will join host Cenk Uygur and blogger Latoya Peterson (NewDream.org) to discuss ways of avoiding sweatshop purchases, staying out of the malls and the big box stores, and how to put more meaning into the holidays without putting more stuff under the tree.

Alarmingly, 90% of what's purchased this holiday will end up in a landfill within six months.  And with Americans carrying more than $2.59 trillion in consumer debt, it's time we started celebrating a happy, cruelty-free, sustainable holiday.  Check out the material below and join us this Friday on Meet the Bloggers to let the celebration begin.

• Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping
  
• What Would Jesus Buy? 
• The Average Household Spent $1,760 on Clothes in 2007 -- Here's One Way to Cut Back -- Stan Cox, CounterPunch
• Wal-Mart Shoppers Trample and Kill Jdimytai Damour, Keep Shopping -- Baratunde Thurston, Jack & Jill Politics
  
• Center for a New American Dream
• Credit Card Nation
• Co-op America Responsible Shopping

As great as it is to hear Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) talk about how "torture is going to be a major issue" in the early months of the Obama administration, there is still a question as to whether Obama will go after those in the Bush administration who authorized torture in the first place.

Don't miss this Washington Post Op-Ed from a former Special Ops interrogator who worked in Iraq, which claimed that the abuses at Gitmo at Abu Ghraib became the top reason for foreign fighters to join the insurgency.  In that regard, the Bush administration's torture policy directly led to the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers -- as many, the article claims, as the number of U.S. citizens who died on 9/11.  Not that there ever was a connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq, but that comparison really puts the consequences of Bush's human rights violations into perspective.  

You can help close Gitmo by signing the open letter here.

Right now in Afghanistan we're witnessing the worst violence since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.  Over 4,000 people have been killed this year alone, nearly a third of which were civilians.  The Taliban grows stronger by the day, gaining local support with each misguided U.S. bombing that adds to the Afghani civilian death toll and each time NATO sets foot in the Kashmir region in pursuit of militants.  Clearly, the current strategy in Afghanistan -- eerily similar to the tactics the Bush administration has employed in Iraq for the last couple of years -- is not working.  Hopefully, President-elect Obama recognizes the vast differences between these two countries, which Noah Feldman highlighted in yesterday's NY Times.  And hopefully, Obama will not simply commit more troops to the region in an Iraq-style surge. 

Yes, Obama just announced Robert Gates will stay on as Defense Secretary.  Gates is well known as a hawkish Iraq war loyalist and a cheerleader of the failed strategy in Afghanistan.  His nomination for this position sparked a great deal of protest among liberals, particularly in the blogosphere.  But as British journalist Patrick Seale noted today, it was actually Gates who told al Jazeera back in October that the U.S. would be willing to negotiate with the Taliban in order to achieve peace. 

A dark cloud hung over this Thanksgiving week. The protracted horrors of Mumbai dominated the headlines. Getting less attention was the growing pain here at home, as food banks and charitable organizations across the country reported having to turn away thousands in need of a meal. A ray of hope amidst the gloom could be found watching CNN's Heroes, honoring everyday people accomplishing extraordinary things in their communities and beyond.

How great to salute them in the same way we do Oscar winners (and reward them with much-needed cash). We'll need millions of heroes like those spotlighted on the show to deal with the lean years ahead. There isn't a stimulus package big enough to address the crisis without Americans making service an essential part of our lives.

I’m used to reading about the high price of U.S. consumerism in the form of environmental devastation or economic inequality, but those ideas remain rather abstract and are measured in charts, graphs and lengthy academic articles. Last Friday, however, we saw the price paid in the much more intimate, familiar and tragic terms of a human life: Jdimytai Damour.

From New York’s Newsday newspaper:

A stampede of shoppers in a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Friday morning left one worker dead and at least three patrons injured after an impatient crowd broke down the store doors and trampled the seasonal employee, Nassau police said.

Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens, was pushed to the ground by the 2,000-plus crowd just before 5 a.m. as management was preparing to open the store, which is located across from the main Green Acres Mall building. Hundreds stepped over, around and on the 34-year-old worker as they rushed into the store.

Being Haitian, Damour’s family has probably seen its share of tragedy expressed through violent mobs, but how do you explain to this man’s parents that their son died because a reasonably healthy and well-fed (by global standards) Long Island mob just couldn’t wait to get its hands on a $69 Samsung digital camera?

The murder of Damour is a failure of values at the largest and smallest scales of society.

Last week, I wrote about how FOX and the GOP have been pushing lies about the Employee Free Choice Act.  Media Matters has dug deeper to reveal many recent instances in which FOX anchors have echoed conservative talking points about Employee Free Choice without presenting the facts.  This is an ugly pattern, which you can see plainly from this video from a few months ago featuring FOX's Neil Cavuto and Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus.  Watch as Cavuto defers to and then praises Marcus as an "expert" on Employee Free Choice.  This is the same Marcus who called Employee Free Choice "the demise of a civilization," and that retailers who don't contribute money to political opponents of this act "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs."

Chief among the myths FOX has been perpetuating is that this act would do away with the current secret ballot system of forming a union, which is downright false.  What Employee Free Choice would actually do is give workers the additional option of unionizing if a majority sign up to do so.  As you can see from the Media Matters report, however, the attacks on Employee Free Choice go beyond the secret ballot.  It's appalling to watch FOX demonize unions and the working class in this way, just as they trashed community organizers during the election.  If you've come across any examples of FOX or their guests going after Employee Free Choice, let me know so we can call them out.  

This week on NOW on PBS, economist Robert Kuttner states what should be (but unfortunately isn't) conventional wisdom: that it's more important to get this economy going again than it is to manage the federal budget deficit downwards.

As Kuttner points out, our national debt is currently around 40% of GDP, less than a third of 125% of GDP after World War II -- and the economy did pretty well after WWII. To address today's economic crisis, Kuttner recommends a huge stimulus plan to rebuild our antiquated infrastructure and to jumpstart our new energy economy, even if that means increasing our national debt to 60% or more of GDP.

The full video of David Broncaccio's interview of Robert Kuttner is available on NOW's website.

Barack Obama says closing down the detainee camp in Guantanamo Bay will be a top priority of his new administration. David Cole, author of Justice at War: The Men and Ideas That Shaped America's War on Terror, discusses the challenges he'll face.

For more, check out Close Gitmo.

Forget the audacity of hope. Call it the audacity of anger, rage and fear.  FOX News wants to drag us back into the darkness. Notice all the explosions, people crying, fires, and the countdown at the end -- culminating in yet another explosion. Oh, and the only politicians you see are Democrats.

No wonder FOX News has been shut out at Obama press conferences.