Did You Know
Did You Know
SF’s New DA, Chesa Boudin, Battles Criminal Injustice System on Two Fronts
Jonah Raskin: San Francisco District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, 40, is battling the criminal injustice system in his own balliwick where cops have literally been getting away with murder, and where they have also aimed to sabotage the orderly workings of law enforcement. ... Boudin is battling much the same system of injustice, thousands of miles from home at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison about 80 miles south of Albany, New York where his father, David Gilbert, once a member of the Weather Underground is serving a 75-years to life sentence for felony murder and robbery. ... Now 76 years old, Gilbert has been behind bars for 39 years...
[ Visit Website ]
Dec 1, 2020, 11:50am
Did You Know
A Lot More to Afghanistan Than the Current Distractions Would Imply
James O'Neill: What the JFK assassination tells us, however, is that the powers that be do not hesitate to lie, and keep lying, if it suits their wider geopolitical purpose. ... We now have the avowed intention of United States president Donald Trump to remove United States troops from Afghanistan. ... (But) there is no intention of leaving ... The CIA will continue to run the export of the very lucrative drug trade ... Afghanistan also enjoys a relatively unique geography. It shares its borders with seven other nations. None of them are on friendly terms with the United States. ... those countries also form a common border with China is another reason for United States interest...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 24, 2020, 11:22am
Did You Know
Across the World, Sports Stadiums and Arenas Are a Gigantic Swindle
Abdul Malik: From Calgary to Los Angeles, everyone knows that sports arenas are a bad deal for cities. But the problem isn’t just the use of public subsidies for private profit: the whole multibillion-dollar sports venue industry is built on the backs of poorly treated, underpaid workers. ... The alleged value new venues offer a city often results in net negative spending in other sectors. ... Sports arenas encompass a broad range of service and hospitality work — food service and prep, cashier, cleaning, and so on. These jobs are largely low-paid and part-time. ... In the wake of the pandemic, the outright abandonment of arena staff bears witness to their lack of workplace protections...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 17, 2020, 12:09pm
Did You Know
The Reactionary Immigration Measures Alabama, Florida and Colorado Just Passed That No One is Talking About
Simon Davis-Cohen: A Trump-aligned group called Citizen Voter, Inc. is spending millions of dollars to push model state constitutional reform to prevent political rights from being extended to non-citizens. ... The reform changes state constitutions to say only citizens can vote. .. Non-citizen voting was once commonplace in the United States (when immigrants were whiter). ... In 1875, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, "citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage." ... On the one had, the Declaration of Independence promises that democracies gain their legitimacy from the "consent of the governed." On the other, millions of people are disenfranchised from voting by immigration laws...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 11, 2020, 11:27am
Did You Know
Amazon Bans Book Exposing US COVID-19 Chaos
Sara Flounders, Workers.org: A decision by the Amazon company to block a book focused on a scientific and cooperative approach to COVID-19 amounts to corporate information control operating at a new intensity. ... The censored book is “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” This anthology of 55 articles by a broad range of social justice authors discuss the importance of free health care, social distancing, testing, protective equipment, education and social mobilizations during the pandemic. ... The book also shows the glaring lack of social support infrastructure in the U.S. in contrast to U.S. trillions spent on elaborate military, police and prison infrastructure, both at home and worldwide...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 4, 2020, 11:32am
Did You Know
Prisoners won the right to stimulus checks. Some prisons are standing in the way.
Keri Blakinger, The Marshall Project and Joseph Neff, The Marshall Project: A federal judge ruled prisoners can get the $1,200 checks many Americans received. Some prison systems are putting up roadblocks, lawyers and prisoners say. ... Advocates in several states have raised concerns that some prisoners do not have access to the forms they need to apply for the stimulus money. ... “When an inmate is in [solitary] they do not have email, electronic bulletin board, or printing access... So inmates nationwide are being denied the ability to file for the stimulus check.” ... To receive the payments, incarcerated people must file a tax return by Nov. 4, even if they earned no income in 2019...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 24, 2020, 3:11pm
Did You Know
The US Did Not Defeat Fascism In WWII - It Discretely Internationalized It.
Gabriel Rockhill: ... a paradigm shift is necessary in order to understand the history of actually existing liberalism and fascism. The latter, as we shall see, far from being eradicated at the end of WWII, was actually repurposed, or rather redeployed, to serve its primary historical function: to destroy godless communism and its threat to the capitalist civilizing mission. ... it was understood that the best way to construct the fascist international was to do so under liberal cover, meaning through clandestine operations that maintained a liberal façade. ... Once the war was over, Senior U.S. intelligence officials, including Dulles, Wisner and Carmel Offie, “worked to ensure that denazification only had a limited scope,”...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 18, 2020, 12:22pm
Did You Know
UN Rapporteur on torture: “Julian Assange is a political prisoner.”
Nadja Vancauwenberghe: This is not about Julian Assange or any crime he's supposed to have committed. This is about WikiLeaks, the methodology introduced by WikiLeaks, which makes it easy for whistleblowers to disclose secret information about states’ misconduct while staying completely anonymous ... Mainstream media institutions are almost totally controlled either by governments, or by large corporations that are deep in bed with governments, and so they are no longer able or willing to exercise their function as the “Fourth Estate” ... Assange case has never been about Julian Assange. It’s about the elephant in the room which everyone seems to ignore: the official misconduct of states that Assange has exposed...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 9, 2020, 2:00pm
Did You Know
Report documents criminality and corruption at heart of global banking system
Barry Grey: An explosive report published Sunday by BuzzFeed News documents the role that major US and international banks knowingly play in laundering and circulating trillions of dollars in dirty money from terrorist organizations, drug cartels and assorted international financial criminals. ... The report is an unanswerable indictment not only of the banks, but also of Western governments and regulatory agencies ... The report goes on to explain that “even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected criminals.”...
[ Visit Website ]
Sep 22, 2020, 12:48pm
Did You Know
O, Homo Contractus, Where Art Thou?
John Hawkins: “Deep State” derives from a John le Carré spy novel. ... the Deep State ... “a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state.” ... “where elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests.” ... “Homo Contractus,” perhaps the most important chapter of Edward Snowden’s recently released memoir, Permanent Record. ... expands on and clarifies the inherent corruption and darkness of Deep State doings, and paints an inescapable picture of a dystopian nightmare underway. ... the Deep State is “the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion of our civil liberties and perpetual war.”...
[ Visit Website ]
Aug 31, 2020, 10:52am
Did You Know
Voting by Mail Faces Obstacles Beyond the US Postal Service
Gabriella Novello: One concern is that thousands of voters will be casting an absentee ballot for the first time and inadvertent mistakes could disenfranchise many voters. ,,, Hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots were rejected in at least 23 states during the 2020 primary elections. In many cases, the ballots were rejected because of a failure to sign the ballot with a signature that was an “exact match” with the signature filed when the voter initially registered. ... Witness signature requirements have also come under scrutiny in recent months....
[ Visit Website ]
Aug 25, 2020, 11:53am
Did You Know
Send in the Clowns for the Circus is in Town
Edward Curtin: Don’t bother, they’re here, already performing in the center ring under the big top owned and operated by The Umbrella People. ... Trump, Biden, Pence, Harris, and their clownish sidekicks, Pompeo, Michelle Obama, et al., are performing daily under the umbrella’s shadowy protection. ... The Umbrella People are the moguls who own the showtime studios – some call them the secret government, the deep-state, or the power elite. They run a protection racket ... Meanwhile, as the circus rolls along, far away and out of mind, shit happens: ... With more than 400 military bases equipped with nuclear weapons surrounding China, the United States military continues...
[ Visit Website ]
Aug 20, 2020, 1:12pm
Did You Know
We need a full investigation into Siri's secret surveillance campaign
Ted Greenberg, The Guardian: The public deserves to know the extent to which Apple employees have been listening to our private conversations and intimate moments ... Now, in a 20 May letter to EU privacy regulators, the whistleblower, Thomas Le Bonniec, renounced his non-disclosure agreement with Apple and demanded that regulatory authorities investigate Apple. He told the EU that while working for Apple his work included listening to the private conversations of people all over Europe ... Le Bonniec said regulators needed to take action because big tech companies “are basically wiretapping entire populations”. ... What’s clearly needed now is a comprehensive investigation in the US, as well as in Europe, into what Apple did with its Siri monitoring program, and whether the other big tech companies have been responsible for similar abuses...
[ Visit Website ]
Aug 14, 2020, 4:59pm
Did You Know
Louisiana Supreme Court denies review of Fair Wayne Bryant’s life sentence for allegedly stealing a pair of hedge clippers
Helen Halyard: Fair Wayne Bryant, now 60 years old, has spent the last 23 years at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana on one count of attempted simple burglary. ... In 2018, Bryant’s attorney Peggy Sullivan appealed his sentence before the Second Circuit Court of Louisiana, stating that her client “contends that his life sentence is unconstitutionally harsh and excessive.” ... Although Louisiana’s State Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Bryant will have one more chance at possible parole. ... One finds one set of rules for the poor and oppressed and another set of rules for those who control the wealth ... Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States....
[ Visit Website ]
Aug 11, 2020, 11:51am
Did You Know
Police Budgets Are Ballooning as Social Programs Crumble
Indigo Olivier: Faced with mass teacher layoffs, deep cuts to education and social services, and a looming eviction crisis, police budgets across the nation remain absurdly high ... despite the fact that racial justice protesters across the country are clearly calling for the defunding of police ... The expansion of the security state, as the welfare state shrivels, is the product of decades of policy. ... On average, roughly a third of city and town general funds, which are discretionary and largely made up of property taxes, are devoted to police departments ... even in a number of cities that have announced cuts to police departments, budgets will remain the same or even increase ...
[ Visit Website ]
Jul 22, 2020, 3:58pm
|
FountainofLight.net