Today's Voice

Voice4Change

Changing Hearts and Minds

http://www.voice4change.org

July 12, 2002



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Coming Attractions of the Fall Campaign

Video of Cheney Touting Arthur Andersen Surfaces as Parties Seek Edge on Corporate Crackdown

By Terry M. Neal

washingtonpost.com Chief Political Correspondent

Thursday, July 11, 2002; 12:22 PM



With both major parties parrying for the upper hand in Washington this week in the ever-widening corporate scandal, campaign operatives and consultants are busy preparing ads and talking points. Both are declaring that their response to the scandal will lead them to victory in November elections.

Much is at stake here, given the slight majorities in both chambers. Republicans are holding out hope that their candidates can ride the coattails of a president with a seemingly unshakable 70-percent-plus approval rating. Democrats are praying that one of the more enduring occurrences in electoral politics — the first-term president's party losing seats in Congress in midterm elections-holds.

At a briefing for reporters on Wednesday, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director Howard Wolfson flatly declared that the party had found its magic bullet. The way Wolfson sees it, every single Republican up for election will be on the defensive this November on the issue of corporate responsibility, while "I can't think of a single Democratic candidate who would be vulnerable on this issue."

http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=020712~v4c.asp



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The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier: Balata Camp

-- By Starhawk

Note: On the main Story Page there is link to view this interview in real media format.

"What source can you believe in order to create peace there?" a friend writes when I come back from Palestine. I have no answer, only this story:

June 1, 2002: I am in Balata refugee camp in occupied Palestine, where the Israeli Defense Forces have rounded up four thousand men, leaving the camp to women and children. The men have offered no resistance, no battle.

The camp is deathly quiet. All the shops are shuttered, all the windows closed. Women, children and a few old men hide in their homes.

The quiet is shattered by sporadic bursts of gunfire, bangs and explosions. All day we have been encountering soldiers who all look like my brother or cousins or the sons I never had, so young they are barely more than boys armed with big guns.

From a narrow, metal staircase, Samar, a young woman with a wide, beautiful smile beckons us up.

"Welcome, welcome!" We are given refuge in the three small rooms that house her family: her mother, big bodied and sad, her small nieces and nephews, her brother's wife Hanin, round-faced and pale and six months pregnant.

http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=020712~cfwp.asp



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Markets Dump Bush Stock:

A response to Bush's corporate accountability speech.

By Robert Kuttner

Web Exclusive: 7.9.02

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/07/kuttner-r-07-09.html

Bush's New York speech on corporate accountability was one of the weakest of his presidency. It was long on platitudes, short on structural reforms. The Dow Jones responded to his call for restored confidence in America's financial markets by plunging 189 points.

Ever since he took office, Bush's short run political strategy has been to blur differences with Democrats. He can get away with this, perhaps, on issues like prescription drug coverage, where the details are numbingly complex and few voters are paying attention. But America's corporate meltdown is real, and Bush is way behind the curve.

http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=020712~democrats.asp



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Why We Are Here

Good Afternoon, my name is Toni Vincent and I am a Unitarian Universalist minister and a member of the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

We are here today to continue the monthly informational meetings and interfaith worship services of the ICUJP. We are fierce advocates of justice and peace, both at home and abroad. The vast resources that our country is spending on weapons of war are preventing us from adequately funding programs that would address the unsolved problems that face us daily in Los Angeles; problems that were with us before September 11th and that have continued.

Here at home, we believe that opportunities for quality education, well-paid jobs, prevention-based health care, affordable housing, safe streets and what the Declaration of Independence calls, "the pursuit of happiness," should be available for all of our citizens. We would like to see equal treatment for all Americans, especially by law enforcement agencies.

http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=020712~icujp.asp



Warm Regards,

Voice4Change.org

http://www.voice4change.org