Sunday 24 June 2012
How the US Government, Banks, Prison-Industrial Complex, Corrupt Officials, Businesses, Law Enforcement, Racists and the CIA Profit From Illegal Drugs
Mark Karlin, Truthout: “Minus the gruesome violence in their host countries, drug cartels are just illegal businessmen, so the business class in the US can relate to them, as can the CIA. They are aggressive, ruthless and greedy, not unlike some of their bankers on Wall Street. The cost of a drug war to achieve geopolitical objectives then is immense in the loss of life, the breakdown of civil society in the nations affected in Latin America, and in the moral grounding, racial injustice and credibility of our governmental and business institutions.”
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Muslim Brotherhood Wins Egyptian Presidential Election
David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times News Service: “Election regulators named Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential elections, handing the Islamist group a symbolic triumph and a new weapon in its struggle for power with the ruling military council…. The chairman of the election commission, Farouk Sultan, announced that Mr. Morsi had won 51.7 percent of the runoff vote completed last weekend. The other candidate, the former general Ahmed Shafik, won 48.3 percent.”
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Ten Leaders Building a New LGBT Politics in the South and Midwest
Jamilah King, Colorlines.com: “The movement for LGBT rights and community has expanded well beyond the once-dominant circles of Washington, D.C., New York and California. Today, leaders in the South and Midwest are working to build their own political communities in their own ways – and increasingly, that means creating links between LGBT rights and the many other issues that impact their lives, including racial justice…. But just who are some of the folks leading that shift?”
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Suppressing Democracy 101
Lamar W. Hankins, The Rag Blog: “Both major political parties have been guilty in the past of rejecting democratic values in order to give their party’s candidates an advantage. Now the right to vote is under attack mainly by Republicans who reject democratic values. They want to discard the right that John Lewis has fought for all of his life and that Lyndon B. Johnson called ‘the basic right, without which all others are meaningless.'”
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Philadelphia City Council Says Stop Funding the War Machine
Jane Dugdale, War Is A Crime: “Philadelphia City Council, by a vote of 15-2, passed a resolution ‘calling on the U.S. Congress to bring all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, to take the funds saved by that action and by significantly cutting the Pentagon budget, and to use that money to fund education, public and private sector family-sustaining job creation, special protections for military sector workers, environmental and infrastructure restoration, care for veterans and their families, and human services that our cities and states so desperately need.'”
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Yes, Barack Obama Thinks We’re Stupid (Immigration Edition)
Matt Stoller, Naked Capitalism: “Recently, Barack Obama announced a laudable new policy position on immigration. His administration will no longer deport undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children by their parents, as long as they don’t get in trouble with the law. These are people who are essentially Americans without citizenship, and the risk of deportation to a country they don’t really know is a terrifying and unfair…. It’s worth understanding how this policy change came about, so that one can get a sense of the incentives that animate the White House policy shop.”
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Obama Campaign Attacks Romney’s Bain Outsourcing, But Support for Outsourcing is Bipartisan Corruption
Zaid Jilani, Republic Report: “So, as the record stands, President Obama, too, is also supportive of outsourcing. But Obama did not pass these trade deals alone. He had strong backing from many Senate Democrats and from most of the Republican party. This support materialized despite the fact that there is strong public opposition to ‘free trade’ policies that privilege investor rights and do not protect worker and environmental rights. Powerful lobbies continue to push for a regulatory and trade structure that promotes outsourcing.”
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US Drone Strikes Setting Dangerous Global Precedent
Isabelle de Grave, Inter Press Service: “U.S. counterterrorism measures are under intense scrutiny from United Nations (U.N.) experts and civil rights groups declaring drone strikes illegal under current frameworks. During the 20th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva from Jun. 18 to Jul. 6, these experts declared such measures in urgent need of greater accountability and transparency.”
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A Biblical Threat to National Security
Kelley B. Vlahos, Anti-War.com: “Can a Bible be a ‘threat to national security’? For years, the government has employed the risk of ‘national security’ excuse to infringe on a wide range of freedoms – like the right to pass through an airport security checkpoint unmolested, or read library books without Big Brother peeking over your shoulder. Michael L. ‘Mikey’ Weinstein is trying to prove that there is more than one way to put the country at risk, and he’s found it in a heretofore unlikely place: the Bible.”
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Coinstar: Or, Why the Poor Gamble
Mary Sojourner, New Clear Vision: “I pulled into the cheapest gas station to fill up. The cheapest gas in the cheapest gas station was $4.15 a gallon. I shoved my credit card (SHOVED is the operative term) into the slot and watched the numbers launch. A middle-aged fellow in a puke-green El Camino drove up to the opposite pump. He looked at the prices and put his head down on the steering wheel.”
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