People from many backgrounds have been inspired to “occupy” cities across the nation since Occupy Wall Street began its protest in New York roughly three weeks ago. It was no surprise to see the people of Ashland join in the movement last Thursday, Oct. 6. Roughly 250 protesters gathered in Ashland Plaza. While speeches were being delivered, many people raised signs proclaiming their dissatisfaction with the current economic situation and corporate corruption. Musicians performed while passing drivers honked in support of the crowd. A free dinner was provided for those who stuck around as the evening got colder, and singer/songwriter Patrick Dodd serenaded the crowd with country-folk labor songs.

If you’re a working man or woman in this day and age, songs from Patrick’s latest album, “Workers of the World Unite,” such as “Workin’ Stiffs Song,” “Don’t Need No Boss,” or “Hard Times (Hangin’ Around),” should capture your emotions and your mind. The seventeen songs on the album all focus on the problems of labor. Dodd is a very talented songwriter, able to marry what seems like a never-ending stream of clever and insightful turns of phrase with catchy, sing-along melodies. Many of his songs’ themes draw from events during the long history of labor struggles. One song in particular, called “Walk on Wobbly Walk On,” tells the story of 100 Wobblies (members of the International Workers of the World), from Portland who decided to join their brothers down in Fresno, Calif. to support a strike there. The men hopped a south-bound freight train but were caught and kicked off in Ashland during the dead of the winter in 1911. The Siskiyou Mountains were covered in snow. However, the men decided to continue the 150-mile trek by foot and eventually made it to Fresno where they were faced with gunfire and assault by strike breakers.

As Patrick begins his set, your body sways to the comfort of his sweet music and as you listen to the words he sings you feel a strong connection of solidarity. One of the first musicians Patrick reminds you of is legendary Texas folksinger Townes Van Zandt. Turns out, that’s no coincidence. Dodd says that Townes was one of his teachers in Austin, along with the sadly underappreciated Blaze Foley, and jokes that, “We used to call Austin grad school for song writers. It was a place that you could hang out with Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley and Guy Clark.”

Despite his father having been a professional musician and discouraging Patrick from becoming one himself, Dodd stayed stubborn and now has 30 years experience in songwriting and activism. He wrote his first song at the age of 6 and was inspired by the folk singers of his grandparent’s generation, such as Woody Guthrie, Odeta and Pete Seeger. One morning, while living in Colorado, he decided he didn’t want to do anything anymore other than write music. So, he headed out and ended up working in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tenn. His activist career began when he began receiving frequent calls from his buddies here in Oregon, where he had spent most of his life, saying that they needed help because there had been a change in timber policy and the woods were being eaten alive. As he attended meetings and rallies he realized that the activists’ songs were not current. He and several others began writing songs that were more relevant for the times. After letting it be known that he would be willing to write songs for various causes he was approached by numerous organizations and began writing songs for causes such as AIDS and the American Indian Movement.

Patrick feels strongly about the role of the musician as an activist and has a wealth of inspiring activist moments he has been a part of. However, he believes that his “success rate isn’t garnered on whether everybody listens at this moment. It’s garnered on whether or not I empower the people that are actually trying to change these laws.” Having been a Wobblie himself for many years, he believes strongly in the power of labor unions and says that he thinks “the biggest lie that was wasted on the working population was that unions were bad.” He adds that, “the potential change is in worker discontent” and that “the younger the worker, the more potential there is for change.” As a previous Marine, he believes that “wars are always a group of working stiffs being told to kill a group of other working stiffs. I think one of the best things we could do is unionize every army in the world. If you want to go to war, have a vote!”

Patrick can be seen hanging out or performing at Occupy Ashland in between a few other performances he has coming up in Eugene and possibly Medford. You can also listen to his music free on Patrick’s website, www.patrickdodd.com. Or tune into the weekly outlaw radio show produced by Patrick and his lovely wife Mary, where they perform as Slim and Betty Jean, playing music, performing comedy and discussing current issues at www.takilmafm.com on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. (many of their past shows are archived on the site, and the two have plans to archive the entire series).

Oct 5 behind Mary's Mini Mart in Selma 18090 Redwood Hwy

6pm til???

Oct 5 behind Mary's Mini Mart in Selma 18090 Redwood Hwy

6pm til???

Sales of all herbal remedies, except for a small number of popular products for 'mild' illness such as echinacea for colds and St John's Wort for depression have been banned.

For the first time traditional products must be lice

Both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business as a result.

Some of the most  commonly used products were saved after the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley approved a plan for the Health Professions Council to establish a register of practitioners supplying unlicensed herbal medicines.

However, many remedies were lost as it was only open to those who could afford the licensing process which costs between £80,000 to £120,000.

At least 50 herbs, including horny goat weed (so-called natural Viagra), hawthorn berry, used for angina pain, and wild yam will no longer be stocked in health food shops, says the British Herbal Medicine Association.

nsed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner.

The House approved the Planned Parenthood amendment, H.Con.Res. 36, by a 241-185 vote. All but seven Republicans voted voted for it, and they were joined by just 10 Democrats.

The vote followed a brief but tense debate in which one Republican charged that Planned Parenthood covers up criminal behavior in the process of performing abortions.

"This is an organization that has protected those who prey on our children and has protected those who rape our granddaughters," said Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) "Planned Parenthood holds itself out to be above the law by ignoring mandatory reporting requirements, by skirting parental consent, but aiding and abetting child trafficking. They put quick and secret abortions ahead of the welfare of victimized young girls, and it has to stop."

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"The plant is in a safe condition and there has been no impact to workers at the plant or members of the public from this issue," the commission said in a statement.

Radiation levels rose while workers were removing a monitor that measures nuclear reactions during start-up, low-power operations and shutdown, the commission said.

The highest radiation exposure to any of the workers was 98 millirems, which is equivalent to two or three chest X-rays, a spokesman for the plant's owner said. The NRC's limit for radiation exposure in a year is 5,000 millirems, he said.

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If we don't bust up Big Finance, there soon will be another financial crisis that will destroy what's left of our middle-class way of life. For all the damning evidence you’ll ever need about Wall Street corruption, take a look at the recent report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis:

An Anatomy of a Financial Collapse” (PDF). The 650-page indictment reveals the myriad of ways Wall Street lies, cheats, steals and defrauds on a routine basis. Arguably the report is as revealing as the Nixon tapes or the Pentagon Papers. Unfortunately, it’s too technical to get widely read. So here are the Cliff Notes.

This study, broken into four case studies, forms a biblical tale of how toxic mortgages were born, nurtured and spread like the plague throughout the land, making money for the financial philistines every step of the way.  

The first case study focuses on Washington Mutual (WaMu), the nation’s largest savings bank, and its overt strategic decision to go big into selling high risk, high profit mortgages. Here you will find a detailed description of every type of dangerous mortgage foisted onto the public.

Your blood pressure also will climb when you read how the bank used focus groups to help its mortgage brokers find better ways to sucker customers into risky mortgages even though the applicants had qualified for and wanted safer fixed-rate mortgages.

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Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 2, 2011

A multitude of different inside sources both publicly and privately, including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden at one time, told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would only be announced at the most politically expedient time.

That time has now come with a years-old fake picture being presented as the only evidence of his alleged killing yesterday, while Bin Laden’s body has been hastily dumped into the sea to prevent anyone from finding out when he actually died.

In April 2002, over nine years ago, Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R. Pieczenik, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Baker, told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months”.

Pieczenik would be in a position to know such information, having worked directly with Bin Laden when the US was funding and arming the terror leader in an attempt to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 70′s and early 80′s (a documented historical fact that talking heads in the corporate media are actually denying today in light of developments).

“I worked with Osama bin Laden in ’78, ’81,” Pieczenik told Jones, adding that he later turned terrorist hunter during subsequent administrations.

“I found out through my sources that he had had kidney disease. And as a physician, I knew that he had to have two dialysis machines and he was dying,” Pieczenik told Jones during the April 24, 2002 interview.

“And you could see those in those films, those made-up photos that they were sending us out of nowhere. I mean, suddenly, we would see a video of bin Laden today and then out of nowhere, they said oh it was sent to us anonymously, meaning that someone in the government, our government, was trying to keep up the morale on our side and say oh we still have to chase this guy when, in fact, he’s been dead for months,” added Pieczenik.

Pieczenik then stated that the video tape of a fat Bin Laden look alike “taking responsibility” for 9/11 that was released in December 2001 was “such a hoax” designed to “manipulate” people in the emotional aftermath of 9/11.

The subsequent war in Afghanistan that followed 9/11 was orchestrated “With the agreement of the bin Laden family, knowing fully well that he would die,” said Pieczenik. “And I think that Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, spilled the beans by accident three months ago when he said that bin Laden was dead because his kidney dialysis machines were destroyed in East Afghanistan.”

In addition to Pieczenik, as we reported in August 2002, Alex Jones was separately told by a high level Republican source that Bin Laden was dead and that his body was being kept “on ice” until Osama’s death could be announced at the most “politically expedient” time.

When Jones asked the source if his claim was mere speculation or whether it was actually true, the source re-iterated the fact that he was being deadly serious and that Bin Laden’s corpse was “physically on ice” waiting to be rolled out for public consumption at the most opportune moment.

Many expected that moment to be right before the 2004 election, but after Democrats began speculating about the possibility, Republicans settled instead for a fake Osama video tape that was released on the eve of the election and, according to both George W. Bush and John Kerry, was the deciding factor in a closely-fought contest. Veteran news reader Walter Cronkite labeled the entire farce a Karl Rove-orchestrated “set-up”.

In addition to these sources, a deluge of other heads of state as well as intelligence agency professionals have gone on record over the past nine years to state their belief that Bin Laden was likely dead, after it became clear that the Al-Qaeda leader’s health was in severe decline as a result of kidney disease at the end of 2001. These include;

- Former CIA officer and hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert Robert Baer, who in 2008 when asked about Bin Laden by a radio host responded, “Of course he is dead.”

- On December 26, 2001, Fox News, citing a Pakistan Observer story, reported that the Afghan Taliban had pronounced Bin Laden dead and buried him in an unmarked grave.

- On January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”

- On July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials that “I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore.”

- In October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.

- In 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.

- In November 2005, Senator Harry Reid revealed that he was told Osama may have died in the Pakistani earthquake of October that year.

- In February 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program, stated that the purported video and audio tapes that were being released of Bin Laden were fake and that he was probably dead.

- On November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.

- In March 2009, former US foreign intelligence officer and professor of international relations at Boston University Angelo Codevilla stated: “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.”

- In May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”

In a way, the establishment had their hand forced in having to announce the death of someone whose shadowy existence had proven very useful to them in maintaining fear and uncertainty amongst the population of America and the world.

The fact that the myth behind Al-Qaeda has been completely demolished and that the group, through a myriad of revelations, including Anwar Al-Alawki’s post-9/11 visit to the Pentagon, is now widely known to be a US intelligence front, perhaps now means that Al-Qaeda will be swept under the rug and a new enemy will be invented in order to legitimize the continued US military-complex domination of the globe.

H/T: James Corbett – Osama Bin Laden Pronounced Dead… For the Ninth Time