People tend to ignore the fact that the issues we face against Iran, started with ignoring the will of the People of Iran after World War II, when we helped install the Shah of Iran. The real issue was controlling oil then just as it is now. The real issue in Vietnam was the desire to be rid of a colonial presence, just as it was in 1776 in America. We can be the leader of the World pursuing peace, but we have to stop relying on the business of war making to prove our point.

I am an unemployed online college student, living at home with elderly parents who are in poor health and on a fixed income barely making ends meet with bills, rent and car payments, and we just lost the food stamps we desperately need to survive because I signed up for college. After a long and unsuccessful job search, I started attending courses in an online college in hope of improving my chances of getting hired. When I reapplied for Food Stamps, I marked down that I'm now a collage student. Later I was shocked and devastated to find that I was no longer eligible for Food Stamps; due to an unjust policy by the state of Georgia which makes college students ineligible for food stamps unless employed or part of a work study program. This policy is unfair to anyone who is attending an online collage which offers no such thing, or is attending collage through a scholarship. It makes it harder for poor people who are already strapped for cash and struggling to pay for tuition, at a time when jobs are scarce and an education is needed to help them stand out in the job market or meet qualifications.

All lethal US drone strikes are guided via the Satellite Relay Station located on the US Air Force Base Ramstein. More than 10,000 people worldwide have been killed by these drone strikes. The bin Ali Jaber family lost two of its members through a drone strike in Hadramout in Yemen. Now Reprieve and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) have filed a lawsuit against the German government in a German court on behalf of the bin Ali Jaber family. The suit demands that the German government “take legal and political responsibility for the US drone war in Yemen” and “forbid use of the Satellite Relay Station in Ramstein.” Wednesday, May 27th 2015, 11 a.m., German Bundestag (Meadow) : this case will begin with a hearing before the high administrative court in Cologne. The military base in Ramstein remains under the legal jurisdiction of the German federal government even though the US Air Force has been allowed to use the base. If illegal activities are conducted from Ramstein -- such as extra-judicial killings – and the US judicial authorities do not condemn these crimes and mandate an end to them, then German justice authorities have a duty to act. The United States Government claims the right to deploy killer drones everywhere in the world, but extrajudicial killing is against United States constitutional law as well as German and international law. Extra-judicial killing, the killing of 'suspects' is a grievous violation of the United States Constitution. The initiation and prosecution of wars in sovereign countries that do not threaten the US mainland are in violation of international Treaties the United States has signed and which have been ratified by our Congress. These include the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Judgement and the Kellogg Briand Pact, all signed into US Law at the time of their ratification. Extra- judicial killings carried out by armed drones that are guided to their targets and controlled via Ramstein on German sovereign territory are also violations of both German law and international law. In deference to the suffering of drone victims, and to the deep antiwar sentiment of the German people, as citizens of the United States, we stand in solidarity with the bin Ali Jaber family of Yemen, and the urgent demand by German activists that the (German) Attorney General’s Office act to initiate investigations against military personnel working at Ramstein. The Two-plus- Four-Treaty (the constitutional founding document of the reunited Federal Republic of Germany) grants Germany “complete sovereignty at home and abroad” and emphasizes that “there shall be only peaceful activities from German territory.” The 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War was just celebrated in Europe and Russia. This is a reminder of the devastation caused by war. The German people have not forgotten this. In accordance with the Treaty and in solidarity with the German people and drone victims everywhere, we demand that: > The German Attorney General’s Office immediately initiate investigations on the US military base Ramstein against those individuals who are participating in the operation of the Satellite Relay Station. > The German Government work for the immediate closing of the Satellite Relay Station at Ramstein and abstain from acquiring weaponized drones for the German military. You can get more information by listening to David Swanson's interview with Andreas Schueller on Talk Nation Radio: http://davidswanson.org/node/4725 and Germany is the Tell-Tale Heart of America's Drone War, Jeremy Scahill's article in the Intercept: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/ramstein/

Global justice requires global participation. Partial and biased justice damages the cause of establishing the rule of law and the nonviolent settlement of disputes. To succeed, the ICC must include all nations and treat all crimes equally regardless of where committed or by whom. Here is the list of which countries are members: http://bit.ly/1IDMGbe

Every year, our park is closed to the public for Austin City Limits Music Festival and other events, which affect the citizens of Austin who use this park as a place to exercise. Please consider moving these events to locations that can handle this type of traffic and parking, as it's a nuisance to people who live in these neighborhoods and people who live in this city, as it blocks traffic and destroys the parks due to foot traffic (uproooting of the grass).

For the last 3 decades, many Americans whether they are regular patients, injured workers or veterans are being denied access to real medical care and other benefits. This effects the poorer folks, the elderly, minorities, the disabled & the sick. Under the Affordable Care Act, this was to stop. It has not. The conditions to deny are worse.Why? Because the insurance industry has impunity against its many humane rights abuses which include denial and refusal of the proper medical care, paying for the wrong care & "care" that will make a patient medical condition worse which will create more injuries or illnesses. such as injecting patients with unknown drugs that not only make the condition worse but actually harms the patient immeasurable for life, preventing them from ever working again. Patients that try to fight back in getting the right care or speaking against the denial or refusal of medical care are retaliated against. One way is to have them under constant and illegal surveillance, in many cases, years of surveillance even by local or top law enforcement such as the FBI. Surveillance that involves stalking the patient while out in public and public or private business and while in vehicles with GPS monitoring and causing car accidents, phone tapping, computer hacking, breaking & entering a patient's home or other owned properties. The police break into patients homes under guise that there are illegal drugs in the home. Private investigators are hired to go into churches to spy on ill or injured patients. There is also the theft of U.S.mail evidence that could prove to win against the insurers. Patients are now claiming that they are afraid of their medications and their food being tampered with. Patients or family members who try and speak out for themselves or their families have been stopped by police, looking for "drugs" and or arrested with no charge. Then there are the insurance doctors reports that are falsely altering medical reports and these same doctors will then deem these patients as mental cases. Now it is happening to our veterans, those who are coming came back from the wars in the Mideast. After listening to patients and injured workers for many years, it has become quite clear that being injured or ill makes one a target of inhumane treatment which includes not getting their right medical care treatment or any other benefit. The SSA & Medicare (tax payer money) should not be the only insurance companies to pick up the tab for insurers who continue to ultimately deny any rightful and owed benefits. This has to stop! AND the only way is for our leadership in our Washington D.C. leadership should hold the insurance cartel/monopoly fully accountable with enforcement of the laws that guarantee us our civil, constitutional & human rights. No insurer should have impunity or immunity that results in the delays and denials for the right to receive medical treatment and benefits or in the targeting with inhumane AND illegal practices on those of whom are the most vulnerable, the sick and injured.

Help keep Oregon beautiful, natural, independent, and HEALTHY! If you live in, or care about, the state of Oregon then there is something happening that you should know about. Cascade Locks is trying to sell Nestle rights to Oregon's water and permission to build a bottling plant in our state without so much as a by-your-leave from the Oregonians who currently own this water and who will be affected by this plant. If you do not already know why this would be a problem I invite you to take a moment to look at Nestle's recent actions around the world: http://www.corp-research.org/nestle and how Californians feel about the deals they made with Nestle now that they have the benefit of hindsight http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/20/nestle-water-bottling-california-drought This is an invasive and abusive company that will promise anything to get in and then, once they are established, they proceed to ignore any and all restrictions or complaints about their abuses unless they are constantly and very aggressively enforced. You can see the destructive pattern repeated over and over in Colorado, California, China, and South America. The jobs they promise the community either mysteriously never seem to manifest or they are minimum wage and temp jobs while all high pay positions are filled with imported personnel. Meanwhile the plant continues to sprawl across the previously gorgeous countryside and suck up increasingly precious clean water. Once Nestle owns water rights they are NEVER so stupid as to sell them back again (that alone should indicate that you have something more valuable than what they are offering for it) and it becomes almost impossible to effectively enforce water usage restrictions, as California is discovering. Oregon has some of the most beautiful and unspoiled wetlands in the world, and fresh, clean WATER IS THE MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE IN THE WORLD. Nestle knows that. They see the droughts rampaging across the entire globe and they know how pricelessly precious these springs and aquifers are, so they will offer any price to acquire them and then never let them go. I don't want these unscrupulous profit-hounds anywhere near us, but since Nestle has gone behind the public's back (after the Cascade Locks community rejected their proposals multiple times) nobody plans on giving any of us a real say! This will not simply affect the Cascade Locks area. This is upstream of a lot of other Oregonians who are being given NO say whatsoever in this decision even though they also depend upon this water source. I plan on yelling directly at the Oregon Water Resources board, Governor Kate Brown, and the Cascade Locks City Council to let them know I will NOT quietly sit by while they sell off our most precious natural resource, all on the promises of a known liar! I invite you to join me.

American University produces some of the most influential experts on US Foreign Policy in the country. SIS graduates make up the staff of countless government offices, NGOs, and media organizations. It is therefore regrettable that these students and leaders are given a limited approach to issues of international affairs, weighted heavily towards the National Security perspective. There must be a Peace program at the "Peace University." If we continue to allow our elevated academic institutions to produce people hamstrung by an imperialist ideological framework, there is no reason to expect any change in US Foreign Policy or its structure. Moreover, young people of ages 18 or 19 come to AU with idealistic vigor and the desire to improve the world. They are then subjected to a range of course options that skew their idealism towards militarism and economic subversion of foreign nations. This is an unconscionable state of affairs and we need your support to resist. USFPAC is running a campaign on AU's campus to give prospective students a clear picture of what AU has to offer in terms of Peace studies. We are inviting them (and you!) to sign this petition and join us in the effort to reform SIS academic programming. Our simple demand is that a School of International Service must reflect its charter. Eisenhower founded the institution on the dictum "wage peace." It is time we retrieve his principle.

Reluctance to act on the xenophobia attacks by the South African government will result to straining of relations with other fellow African countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ethiopia and others.

Israel's only stable route is in increasing global instability in the hope its legal anomalies will pass as emergency responses. There is no system of Jewish supremacy that does not carry with it a pushback or contradictory force of anti-Jewish activism. The entire matter should be considered settled--no pun intended--by the US Bill of Rights and its history to date. Merely fudging settlements or boundaries is pushing the problem into the future in larger and larger proportions. Some contradictions, such as that of racism, are constituted with all the right on one side and a vacuum on the other.

NATO is the greatest threat to peace in the world today. U.S. and Western imperialism use NATO to force regime change in countries with independent non-aligned politics. NATO has played a role in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and now Venezuela. Sending advisors and playing war simulation exercises on the borders of sovereign nations in pursuit of imperialist aims brings the world to the brink of WW III. This must be stopped NOW!

More than three months on, the carnage and devastation in Yemen continues. A scenario of escalating violence contained by a seige blocking food, water and medicine from reaching the people of Yemen, is now being referred to as a 'civil' war. However, the forces at play in Yemen could surely have sorted out their poltical differences without destroying the country, and murdering thousands of civilians. It is time to demand that international institutions do their job! If Saudi Arabia is violating international law, and the United States is acting in a perceived self interest that is distorted and unethical, then we must demand that international institutions stand for justice and peace. That is what they were created for, and they won't be able to serve that purpose until the people of the world demand it. Given that: * Over 600 people (updated) mostly civilian, including 93 children, have been killed by the bombing campaign in Yemen, and 100s more injured so far; * More than 100,000 people have been displaced by the bombing and fighting in major cities of Yemen; * There has been major destruction of the physical infrastructure by the bombing in Yemen since the beginning of the Saudi Campaign a couple of weeks ago; * The United States has regularly bombed Yemeni communities with drones, killing civilians, destroying infrastructure and raining terror on the people for more than 10 years, setting a very bad precedent; * Saudi Arabia has bombed the Houthi homelands in northern Yemen repeatedly over the last decade; * Saudi Arabia has fought 6 wars for control of Yemen over the last 60 years; and Given that: * Prior to the bombing campaign there was indeed conflict in Yemen but the Houthis have not engaged in attacks on civilians and the destruction of homes, farms, factories, fuel supplies, and other infrastructure; * The Houthis have been the only force on the ground mounting a successful resistence to AQAP (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula); * Since the Saudi bombing began, AQAP has reemerged in Yemen and mounted devastating attacks against the people of Yemen, in concert with and enabled by the escalating Saudi campaign; and Given that: * The Houthis have participated in the political structure to the best of their ability over the last several years; * According to international experts, the Houthis do not receive significant aid from Iran and are not in any way representing Iran in their struggle to be included in the social and political power structure of their country; * The Saudis' target, the Houthis, are a legitimate political actor in Yemen; * This campaign is an intrusion into the internal politics of Yemen; * The Saudi Campaign against Yemen constitutes a Crime Against Peace and the site of numerous War Crimes; It is paramount that the United Nations Security Council act on behalf of the oppressed people of Yemen to put an end to Saudi aggression against them so that they can have the opportunity to find their way to a political reconciliation and have the opportunity to live and develop the potential of the sovereign nation of Yemen independent of outside influence.