Category Archives: civil rights

I’m Sorry, Dude…

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…were the words of Kelly Thomas as he was harassed and beaten by two police officers.  He died of his injuries in the hospital.  I couldn’t watch the video –had to stop it at 3:12 .

They were so far out of line up to that point it is mindboggling how they could NOT be found guilty of violating this man’s Fourth Amendment rights.  Never mind that he was mentally challenged.   And homeless.

The war on the poor continues….

Young speaking out on Canadian Tar Sands

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Neil Young is trading pointed remarks with the Canadian government over the tar sands oil.

Good for him.   I’m glad someone with some media attention is speaking out for the indigenous.

 

Republican Mask – Democrat Mask

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Reclaim Reform (Ken Previti) has this up on the Chicago Teachers Union’s new IPO….the solution isn’t with those wearing Democrat or Republican Masks whom are in reality corporate employees…but with us.

God bless Karen Lewis and the CTU.

Moving the pet coke

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Well, of course….they’re dumping pet coke in Chicago…and Whiting, Indiana….

“Petcoke tends to have higher metal content than coal – like nickel, vanadium and selenium,” added Geertsma. “Coal can have higher mercury content, so they’re both bad in terms of toxic heavy metals content.”

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The report says that Canadian exports of petcoke to the U.S. more than doubled between 2010 and 2012, and BP Whiting’s expansion will triple its petcoke production to 6,000 tons per day.

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And I got my answer to where the petcoke piles were moved to–Ohio.

 

Understanding the gravity of NAFTA

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Idle No More has a post up on the far-reaching effects of NAFTA.  This is especially important because now we have NAFTA on steroids with TPP being fast-tracked through Congress.

Here’s an update on Blackfire.

More here.

From the article:

Though officials did meet with NGOs opposed to the mine, they accepted Blackfire’s take that protestors were out to squeeze money from the firm, says MiningWatch’s analysis of the emails.

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Of course….because the mining company execs see everything in $$, they think everyone *else* thinks as they do.  It is inconceivable to them that there are people who value the environment, their health, their children’s health, the Earth, etc.

Note how the company was unable to substantiate claims against Abarca.  It appears he was thrown in jail under false claims.

NAFTA, and I fear TPP, are all about taking power and control away from the local people.  It means losing their autonomy to decide what happens in their communities, as the mega million dollar lawsuit illustrates.

These trade agreements are not supportive of the democratic process, rather a dictatorial process.  How is this representation of taxpayers?

Huffington, Gates, join forces

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In what could be called the Billionaires’ News Service, Ariana Huffington and Bill Gates, amongst other billionaires, want to control even more of the media message….er, I mean, news…

…and this, my friends, is why we need the Fairness Doctrine.  This is why we need a break up of the monopoly of the press and media by the 1%–they already have their voices heard, over and over.  They were able to sell the Iraq War through their monopoly of the news outlets–radio, paper, TV–as we saw in the previous blog on Iraq Veterans against the War.  It was scripted without so much as one critical media reporter…oh, wait, Phil Donahue was critical…and he was fired.  The more that media is concentrated, the less independent voices are heard.  If we had the media we had in the 60s and 70s, there would have been more investigating of WMD’s, and less cheerleading by the talking heads.

The Guardian link, has a little more detail.  Keep in mind that the Guardian has also joined forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation… further concentrating Gates’ media messaging…

A side note~~A commenter on the commondreams site has this link up**.  Wow. If this is true, it opens up yet another can of worms of falsifying evidence to get us into yet another war….

And the questions begin:  Why did Scahill and Jones refuse to share a stage with Mother Marian?  If Scahill is as good as investigative reporter that he is reported to be, then why would he not investigate the accusations against Mother Marian?  Why did he not seek her out to get her side of the story?  This is all just mindboggling.

**also note that the author writes articles published in Huffington Post.

Gov. Pence wants to give $1 billion to businesses

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…in the form of a tax break…by eliminating property taxes for businesses.

From the article:

An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency determined that if the tax were eliminated, schools and cities in Lake County would lose $74.2 million, Porter County $14 million and LaPorte County $7.2 million. That’s about the same annual impact as property tax caps, which have decimated government services in all three counties.

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I can smell ALEC all over this push to eliminate taxes for the wealthiest while putting more of the burden on the middle class and poor, if they try to make it up through sales tax.

And then there’s the continued assault on Glenda Ritz’ authority as a duly elected official who got more votes than Pence.  (Indeed, they were practically begging people to attend his inauguration.  A website reported that 1500 people attended his inauguration….I’m betting that 1,000 were homeless people given $20 to be there. Or perhaps state workers threatened with their jobs if they didn’t attend. /snark)  I also tried to access the site that lists Pence’s contributors for his inauguration day–the website was listed as suspicious!  Nope, not going to risk that.

Anyway, here we are still under the death grip of the Koch brothers and neocon toadies….

Slave Labor to fight fires

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So now the prison system is using prisoners to fight wildfires…for $1 an hour, and that’s if they’re lucky.  Others have received only 50 cents an hour.  This is just wrong on so many levels.

And, as someone noted in the comments, it fits right in with for-profit schools, for-profit security state, for-profit healthcare, etc., with forcing people to work for slave wages, so the 1% can make even more profits.  Disgusting.

This is what was happening with the mental health system before reform–they were forcing folks to work without pay.  While I do think that having something to do and learning a trade is valuable, it must be fair and paid with decent wages.