Thursday, November 29, 2012

Fast-food workers protest for a living wage in New York City

This is only the beginning. We are no longer going to accept being given poor pay with no benefits. First there was the Walmart boycott now this. We ain't going to take it any longer. And we demand a raise in the minimum wage. Are you listening Obama?

Workers from a number of fast food chains around New York City held walkouts and demonstrations calling for a living wage Thursday morning.

According to The Atlantic, the protests, part of the Fast Food Forward campaign, were organized by groups like New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and community organizations in a push to get them to form a union.

The impetus for the campaign, said NYCC organizing director Jonathan Westin, was his group’s discovering that most employees at companies like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken couldn’t cover basic necessities like transit fare or food, or even to be able to make their rent making the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, forcing them to rely on public assistance.
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Senate backs quicker withdrawal from Afghanistan

How ironic is this. It's President Obama that wants to keep troops in Afghanistan for a longer time than the "war mongering" Republicans. And this who the anti-war left continues to support. What these fools don't understand is that those troops in Afghanistan a mere pawns. There aren't enough American soldiers in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from coming to power. This means our troops are there just to die before they are taken out. The U.S. government is not committed to winning. So why are we there for 1 more year?:

Reflecting a war-weary nation, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday for an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting.

The strong bipartisan vote of 62-33 sends a clear message to President Barack Obama and the military as they engage in high-stakes talks about the pace of drawing down the 66,000 U.S. troops there, with a White House announcement expected within weeks.

Although the vote was on a nonbinding amendment to a defense policy bill, its significance could not be discounted amid the current discussions.

Thirteen Republicans, including Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top GOP lawmaker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, backed the measure.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., its chief sponsor, argued that al-Qaida is stronger in other parts of the world and that nation-building in Afghanistan has gone off track. His measure endorsed Obama's timetable to withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2014 but pressed for a quicker pace, without specifying how that would be achieved.

"It is time to end this war, end the longest war in United States history," Merkley said during Senate debate.

UN vote recognizes state of Palestine; US objects

The lap dogs of the pro-Israel in Congress of course will oppose Palestinian statehood in any form. That's if they know whats good for them. No one remain in Congress very long if they dare challenge the most powerful lobby in Washington:

The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize a Palestinian state, a victory decades in the making for the Palestinians after years of occupation and war. It was a sharp rebuke for Israel and the United States.

A Palestinian flag was quickly unfurled on the floor of the General Assembly, behind the Palestinian delegation, as the final vote was cast.

In an extraordinary lineup of international support, more than two-thirds of the world body's 193 member states approved the resolution upgrading the Palestinians to a nonmember observer state. It passed 138-9, with 41 abstentions.

The historic vote came 65 years to the day after the U.N. General Assembly voted in 1947 to divide Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. Israel became a state but the Palestinians rejected the partition plan, and decades of tension and violence have followed.