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      Buddy Dyer

      Amid Pandemic-Driven Liquid Oxygen Shortage, Orlando Asks Residents to Slash Water Use or Face Boil Alert

      Mayor Buddy Dyer called the situation "another result of what happens when residents do not get vaccinated, become critically ill, and need dire medical support and treatment."

      Brett Wilkins
      Aug 20, 2021

      As Florida's Republican-led Board of Education warned school districts they would face fines for not complying with Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban on mask mandates, leaders in the state's fourth-largest city issued a plea that vividly illustrated the consequences of the governor's refusal to follow public health guidance.

      "This is another unfortunate impact of the pandemic continuing to surge in our community."
      --Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer

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      Our Skewed Politics on Gun Ownership Are a Deadly Joke

      Our Skewed Politics on Gun Ownership Are a Deadly Joke

      It is a measure of how subservient our political system is to the gun lobby that when the Supreme Court affirmed a federal gun ownership ban for domestic abuse convicts this week, it was hailed as a huge victory. In a 6-2 decision, the court deemed that the two plaintiffs from Maine, Stephen Voisine and William Armstrong, would have to abide by a 1996 law banning those convicted of domestic violence from buying guns, even though their convictions were apparently based on actions considered "reckless" rather than intentional.

      Sonali Kolhatkar
      Jul 01, 2016

      It is a measure of how subservient our political system is to the gun lobby that when the Supreme Court affirmed a federal gun ownership ban for domestic abuse convicts this week, it was hailed as a huge victory. In a 6-2 decision, the court deemed that the two plaintiffs from Maine, Stephen Voisine and William Armstrong, would have to abide by a 1996 law banning those convicted of domestic violence from buying guns, even though their convictions were apparently based on actions considered "reckless" rather than intentional.

      The Lautenberg Amendment strengthened the 1968 Gun Control Act by making it a felony for those convicted of domestic violence-related misdemeanors to "ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms." While the law is good on paper, and is one of the few federal gun restrictions we have, the trouble is that enforcement is difficult.

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      Opinion
      Paris, Orlando and Turkey: Displacing the Narrative of Western Innocence

      Paris, Orlando and Turkey: Displacing the Narrative of Western Innocence

      What is clear is that there is a context - no matter how painful to admit - of U.S. and Western complicity in creating the very forces that now terrorize the imagination of publics in the West. Just a cursory glance of that sordid history reveals the baselessness of the assumption of innocence that makes up the dominate narrative being pushed by the corporate press in the U.S. and inculcated as a part of Western commonsense.

      Ajamu Baraka
      Jul 01, 2016

      What is clear is that there is a context - no matter how painful to admit - of U.S. and Western complicity in creating the very forces that now terrorize the imagination of publics in the West. Just a cursory glance of that sordid history reveals the baselessness of the assumption of innocence that makes up the dominate narrative being pushed by the corporate press in the U.S. and inculcated as a part of Western commonsense.

      Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor, congratulated himself on his brilliant strategy to create the "Soviet Union's Vietnam" by bogging it down militarily in Afghanistan with the creation of an international corps of right-wing Islamists ready to fight the godless Soviets. Like all colonialist calculations, the Pentagon thought that these elements could be weaponized to do the bidding of U.S. and Western imperialism. They mistakenly believed that once the mission was completed that they could conveniently toss them aside like the Hmong in Vietnam, the Gurkhas from Nepal, the black Buffalo soldiers in the West of the U.S. - the list goes on. With direct logistical support from the Pakistani ISI, the Mujahedeen performed marvelously, destroying a secular nationalist government with Marxist leanings and plunging the nation into the chaos that led to the establishment of the Taliban who created their 8th century version of an Islamic state.

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