All Further Articles for 2013-07-sites
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Criminalizing California What is up with California? In the wee hours, the city council in Oakland - home of Oscar Grant, the Black Panthers and a famously racist police department - passed two deeply Orwellian measures. One bans "tools of violence" like spray cans and hammers from protests; the other approves a vast surveillance center, manned 24-7 by police, linking city surveillance cameras with police and fire dispatch, Twitter feeds and pretty much everything moving in the city limits. It's called the Domain Awareness Center. What does that mean? For starters, it means be very afraid. Read more |
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We Are Not For Sale: Health Care, Not Cookies An Infuriating Work of Staggering Condescension: Having gone back on his word not to obliterate women's health care with a package of extreme anti-abortion measures he then signed, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory wanted to make nicey-nice with protesters at his mansion, so he went out and brought them.....cookies. They were not well-received. Meanwhile, the Moral Monday protesters are taking their grievances on the road with local rallies and legal challenges to stop the GOP. The new North Carolina Music Love Army will sing them on their way. Read more |
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Slow Death For Democracy Arguing that ever since Bradley Manning's arrest in 2010 "the government has perverted the values it claims to represent," David Gespass of the National Lawyers Guild powerfully slams the message of Tuesday's conviction: "Hypocrisy and criminality are rife in the U.S. government and, in its eyes, the worst criminals are those who expose such evils." More on the terrifying "logic of authoritarians...pursued so vigorously by a putatively democratic state." "There are two ways in which any government can seek to control security leaks. The first is by honesty and transparency. (The) second is by threatening draconian consequences to anyone who exposes questionable policies and practices to the light of day. That is the path the United States, and this administration, has chosen." Read more |
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Follow the Money Redux: Legislators Voting To Keep NSA Snooping Took Piles From Defense Contractors On last week's unholy alliance of Democrats and Republicans voting to continue the NSA's domestic surveillance programs: Turns out those legislators voting to keep the spying got 122% more money from private defense contractors - who get 70% of the $10-20 billion Congress kindly gives the NSA - than did those who voted to end it. Maplight has much more. Read more |
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Huh? Fox Can't Understand How Muslim Scholar Could Write Book About Jesus In case you haven't seen this or don't yet know the unfathomable depths of stupidity to which Fox continues to aspire, here's a jaw-dropping interview with religion scholar Reza Aslan, author of a new book on Jesus, in which host Lauren Green simply asks over and over how Aslan - a (gasp) Muslim - could write about “the founder of Christianity.” 'Cause, wait. Can they do that? Two kickers: Green is Fox' "religious correspondent," and thanks to the viral uproar, Aslan's book is #1 on Amazon. “You’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?” "Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim.” Read more |
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Highly Deplorable and Completely Unacceptable: Rail Co. Refuses to Pay to Clean Town It Obliterated It was bad enough when a train from the U.S.-owned MM&A railroad derailed and exploded in Quebec, killing at least 47, leaking millions of gallons of crude oil and decimating the small town of Lac-Mégantic. Now, after its glib CEO randomly tried to blame firefighters and an engineer, the company is refusing to cover $4 million in clean-up costs. Quebec is suing. If we ever needed proof corporate accountability matters - think tar sands - this is it. Read more |
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The Facts Are Indisputable: Rush Not Just Slimy But, Happily, Unprofitable Is it possible hate might not sell as well as it once did? Unconfirmed news that Cumulus plans to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, their two biggest right-wing mouthers-off, from over 40 radio stations. Boycott calls in the wake of Rush's attacks on Sandra Fluke reportedly led to the company losing millions; others suggest he's the one who's fed up. Either way, don't slam the door. Read more |
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The Things They Are Doing: Wisconsin Police Arrest People for Standing In A Room, Holding A Flag, Singing and Other Dangerous Activities Because Koch Brothers' stand-in Scott Walker is some tired of pesky protesters trying to block his corporate agenda and otherwise exercise their alleged constitutional right to peacefully assemble, Wisconsin police are in the third day of a crackdown in the Capitol that saw scores of demonstrators arrested, many of them Solidarity Singers in their 70s and 80s. Unreal video of cops sweeping in to handcuff white-haired miscreants, singing moms and a veteran whose flag that, in a moment of awful and sublime symbolism, they trash. Read more |
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Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Pike John Pike, the former UC Davis cop who casually pepper-sprayed students during a 2011 protest, is seeking workers' comp, claiming he suffered psychiatric injury from the incident. No, really. Pike was fired after eight months' paid leave despite arguing to investigators that he had to use pepper spray “to gain compliance (and) get my troops out of there." Pike has an upcoming hearing for his claim of psychological injury - though you'd think such injury might in fact have preceded the lunatic, sadistic decision to douse peaceful, seated, defenseless people in the face in order to inflict excruciating pain for no discernible reason, no? Read more |
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#Summerheat Activists Arrested Protesting State Dept Contractor Who Lied About TransCanada Ties 54 #Summerheat activists from the group 350.org were arrested Friday after blockading the elevator and entrances of the Environmental Resources Management Office in DC. It was recently revealed that ERM, the State Department's lead consultant to assess environmental impacts of Keystone XL, has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Read more |