I tried to post this in the Code Blue section.  It disappeared.  I'm not sure why since I was not contacted about it.  I find that to be a bit disturbing.  It smacks of censorship.
These are desperate times which, as we all know, call for desperate measures.  I don't see or hear of anyone taking such measures.  This is my attempt to do so.
Please follow the link and sign the petition.  Forward the link to everyone you can.  If I can secure sufficient signatures I will hand deliver the petition to the United Nations.

Mr. Hannity: The new appeasers claim that UN (United Nations) authorization is needed for war. (pp. 139-140)

I came across a site mentioned on BBC News website called "Free Rice." It is a slightly silly but addictive little thing that actually adds up to helping the UN feed people. Joy and I are obsessing on it yesterday and today.

Basically, they get money from advertisers. They have vocabulary words and you pick the correct defination...for each one you get right, they donate money for 10 grains of rice to feed people through the UN. So far Joy and I made it to Vocab Level 50 four times (though we always drop back down to 48 or so as we get some wrong) and have gotten more than 11,000 grains of rice....which may be only a few good bowls of rice for someone out there, but what the hell. It's fun in a nerdy way and if enough of us do it, it can have a real effect.

From Mark Weisbrot:

One of the nice things about a blog is that you can provide a few details that don't fit in columns or op-eds that the mainstream press runs. Below is a column I wrote that ran during the past week in a number of US newspapers. It provides some background, missing from almost all press coverage, about why President Hugo Chavez might see George W. Bush as "the Devil:" namely, the Bush administration's involvement in the 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew Venezuela's democratic government, and the administration's continued intervention inside Venezuela, to this day.

Patriots for Al Gore, a Federal PAC advocating for our environment, civil liberties and positive social change, requests that the United Nations establish the post of UN Global Environmental Ambassador, and to consider our recommendation that the Honorable Al Gore Jr. be the first to serve in this post.

This is an article regarding an appearance by Mr. Gore at the UN yesterday where he presented his slideshow on the climate crisis to hundreds of UN diplomats and employees. I remember not long ago making a suggestion that Mr. Gore should take his presentation to the UN considering that this is the global body that will have the most influence on seeking ways to mitigate this global crisis. It did my heart good to then read that he was there giving this presentation.

President Hugo Chavez made an important and constructive speech at the UN. The US corporate media is now busily casting his address as "Extremist in Nature". President Bush also made a UN speech in which he presented such a distorted view of the world's condition that one must truly question his sanity. Chavez received 5 minutes of sustained applause; Bush got brief but polite ovation.

Today I faxed this letter with a cover letter to the Secretary General Of the UN, Kofi Annan. It is the second in a series of correspondence I will be sending to the Secretary General with the hope that a UN Global Environmental Ambassador position will be considered, and that the Honorable Al Gore will be considered to fill the post as our first Global Environmental Ambassador for the 21 st Century.

This is an effort I have been working on for the last year and a half, and one I have no intention of stopping because I believe it is that important for our world.

Now, I am under no illusions here. I know I am simply just a common concerned citizen... but perhaps, just perhaps my conviction regarding this effort will at least elicit a response from a staffer of his to start a dialogue about it. I can only hope. And I do hope because I still believe this type of position is now necessary, and that Mr. Gore is the most qualified individual to fill this position now as he has truly found his calling.

The diary below was orginally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal on Monday, September 4th.

I visited Poland shortly after turning 21. It was March 1990 and I was fortunate to be studying in England my junior year of college. After a rigorous semester of study I jumped at the chance to see Eastern Europe during my next semester break. The memories remain fresh sixteen years later. The tour group put Auschwitz and Birkenau on our itinerary.

For me Birkenau had the greater impact. It was usually hot as we walked the grounds. Days earlier when we first arrived in Poland it was bitter cold. There were crematoriums only partially destroyed by the Nazis in their attempt to conceal evidence prior to the war's conclusion. A lake where the ashes of cremated Jews was dumped remained.

It seems as if Ambassador John Bolton went to Oxford University and wanted to hold his lecture to Neocon talking points, it seems as if he needed his security detail to escort him out of the building when his spiel was not well received.

"Facing an increasingly hostile group of law students in an Oxford seminar that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to pop out on John Bolton's furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of taunts, jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly surrounded by his entourage of three American security agents and whisked out the door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday, the 9th of June."