America Wakie Wakie

Brazil: Poor face iron heel ahead of World Cup | Green Left Weekly

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:08:41 -0400

Brazil: Poor face iron heel ahead of World Cup | Green Left Weekly:

Huge, angry protests have broken out in Brazil over public transport fare rises and poor services. The largest protests in years in Brazil come as large amounts of money is spent in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, which is helping drive up prices and causing wide spread anger

The huge protests come against a backdrop of gtrowing state repression targetting Brazil’s poor. As host of the World Cup and the Olympics, the Brazilian government is trying to “pacify” gangs in Rio’s favelas (shanty towns). But the needs of those who live there is taking a back seat. In a piece pubished at Red Pepper, Mike Davis provides background to the outbreak of mass protests.

fotojournalismus: Istanbul June 17, 2013 1. People shout...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:06:31 -0400

fotojournalismus:

Istanbul June 17, 2013

1. People shout anti-government slogans during a rally by the labour unions in Istanbul on June 17, 2013. (AP)

2. A man walk dogs at Taksim Square in Istanbul June 17, 2013. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

3. Tear gas billows through the streets of Istanbul on June 17, 2013. (Miguel Carminati/Demotix/Corbis)

4. Turkish police pose for a picture at Taksim Square in Istanbul June 17, 2013. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

5. Riot police use water cannons to chase people during a rally by the labour unions in Istanbul on June 17, 2013. (AP)

6. Anti-government protestors continue to demonstrate despite a police crackdown on June 17, 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Burak Kara/Getty Images)

7. An anti-government protester, wearing a gas mask, smokes in central Istanbul June 17, 2013. (Murad Sezer/Reuters)

8. Erdem Gunduz (C) stands in a silent protest at Taksim Square in Istanbul early June 18, 2013. Gunduz, a Turkish man, has staged an eight-hour silent vigil on Istanbul’s Taksim Square, scene of violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters in recent weeks, inspiring hundreds of others to follow his lead. (Vassil Donev/EPA)

thepoliticalfreakshow: RIP Michael Hastings (January 28, 1980...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:00:57 -0400

thepoliticalfreakshow:

RIP Michael Hastings (January 28, 1980 to June 18, 2013)

Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33.

Hastings’ unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, “The Runaway General,” captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. “The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be met by – set by a commanding general,” Obama said, announcing McChrystal’s departure. “It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.”

Hastings’ hallmark as reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power. While other embedded reporters were charmed by McChrystal’s bad-boy bravado and might have excused his insubordination as a joke, Hastings was determined to expose the recklessness of a man leading what Hastings believed to be a reckless war. “Runaway General” was was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, won the 2010 Polk award for magazine reporting, and was the basis for Hastings’ book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan.

For Hastings, there was no romance to America’s misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had felt the horror of war first-hand: While covering the Iraq war for Newsweek in early 2007, his then-fianceé, an aide worker, was killed in a Baghdad car bombing. Hastings memorialized that relationship in his first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story.

A contributing editor to Rolling Stone, Hastings leaves behind a remarkable legacy of reporting, including an exposé of America’s drone war, an exclusive interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at his hideout in the English countryside, an investigation into the Army’s illicit use of “psychological operations” to influence sitting Senators and a profile of Taliban captive Bowe Bergdahl, “America’s Last Prisoner of War.”

“Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity,” says Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana, “the sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there’s no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I’m sad that I’ll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won’t be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours. He will be missed.”

Hard-charging, unabashedly opinionated, Hastings was original and at times abrasive. He had little patience for flacks and spinmeisters and will be remembered for his enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism. In a memorable exchange with Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks, Hastings’ aggressive line of questioning angered Reines. “Why do you bother to ask questions you’ve already decided you know the answers to?” Reines asked. “Why don’t you give answers that aren’t bullshit for a change?” Hastings replied.

In addition to his work as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, Hastings also reported for BuzzFeed. He leaves behind his wife, the writer Elise Jordan.

Matt Farwell is a veteran of the Afghanistan war who worked as a co-reporter with Hastings on some of his recent pieces. He sent this eulogy to Rolling Stone: ”My friend Michael Hastings died last night in a car crash in Los Angeles. Writing this feels almost ghoulish: I still haven’t processed the fact that he’s gone. Today we all feel that loss: whether we’re friends of Michael’s, or family, or colleagues or readers, the world has gotten a bit smaller. As a journalist, he specialized in speaking truth to power and laying it all out there. He was irascible in his reporting and sometimes/often/always infuriating in his writing: he lit a bright lamp for those who wanted to follow his example.

“Michael was no stranger to trying to make sense this kind of tragedy nor was he unfamiliar the emptiness felt in the wake of a senseless, random death. After all, he’d already learned about it the only way he ever deemed acceptable for a non hack: first-hand. In the course of his reporting he figured this lesson out again and again in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the United States, and part of his passion stemmed from a desire to make everyone else wake the fuck up and realize the value of the life we’re living.

“He did: He always sought out the hard stories, pushed for the truth, let it all hang out on the page. Looking back on the past ten years is tough for anyone, but looking back on Michael’s past ten years and you begin to understand how passionate and dedicated to this work he was, a passion that was only equaled by his dedication to his family and friends, and how much more he lived in thirty-three years than most people live in a lifetime. That’s part of what makes this all so tough: exiting, he leaves us all with little more than questions and a blank sheet of paper. Maybe that’s challenge to continue to use it to write the truth. I hope we can live up to that. He was a great friend and I will miss him terribly.”

[Rolling Stone]

What do you think a more appropriate salary for the CEO of Walmart is then? Do you think Mark Zuckerburg's fortune is too much, even though he invented Facebook? People like Mark should have the right to earn as much as he pleases. Just like artists.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 02:12:00 -0400

You’ve asked me a double-barreled question. Which is it you’d like me to answer, the CEO of Walmart or the Mark Zuckerburg question? Because no, they are not the same scenarios.

I am not a capitalist, but within the current paradigm I believe James Sinegal, former CEO of CostCo, has set a more equitable example to follow.

[Note: Mike Duke, current CEO of Wal-Mart, made over $20 million last year, more than 1,000 times the average Walmart associate, as opposed to former CostCo CEO James Sinegal who earned a yearly salary of $350,000 a year with additional compensation totaling 2.2 million, near just a 10th of his peer. Additionally, Wal-mart employees earn an average of $10 or less dollars an hour, with so little in benefits the net cost to taxpayers every year hovers at $6,000 per employee. Wal-mart’s employees are forced to use safety net services like Medicare, SNAP (food assistance), as well as housing and childcare subsidies. CostCo employees earn an average of $17 an hour, with benefits offered after 90 days for both full-time and part-time positions.]

As for Zuckerburg, inventors and artists alike, to say they deserve an infinite amount of compensation in this world is to be willing to take an infinite amount of resources from those co-inhabiting the same planet. Such self-maximizing is immoral, unjust and totally, utterly inequitable. This is not to say great contributions to society are not warranted due celebration, whether through monetary compensation or otherwise, but what you propose is, in my view, ignoring what our society should collectively consider reasonable.

"Whether we help change systems of privilege depends on how we handle the belief that nothing we can..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:57:16 -0400

“Whether we help change systems of privilege depends on how we handle the belief that nothing we can do makes a difference, that the system is too big and powerful for us to affect. The complaint is valid if we look at society as a whole, because we aren’t going to change it in our lifetime. But if changing the entire system through our own efforts is the standard against which we measure the ability to do something, then we’ve set ourselves up to feel powerless. It’s not unreasonable to want to make a difference, but if we have to see the final result of what we do, then we can’t be part of change that’s too gradual and long term to allow that. We also can’t be part of change that’s so complex that we can’t sort our contribution from countless others that combine in ways we can never grasp. The problem of privilege and oppression requires complex and long-term change coupled with short-term work to soften some of its worst consequences. This means that if we’re going to be part of the solution, we have to let go of the idea that change doesn’t happen unless we’re around to see it.”

- Allan G. Johnson (via wretchedoftheearth)

Malcolm X: Panel discussion, WINS Radio, February 18, 1965

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:44:34 -0400

Barnard: How is the situation going to be changed? Do you think by warfare?
Malcolm X: It's not going to be changed by making believe that it doesn't exist to the intense degree that it exists. And it's not going to be changed by putting out polls, like Newsweek magazine did last week, implying that Negroes are satisfied with the rate of progress. This is deluding yourself. And my contention is that white people do themselves a disservice by putting out these kinds of things to make it appear that Negroes are satisfied when the most explosive situation, racially, that has ever existed in this country, exists right now. And all of your so-called responsible leaders, when they speak about the situation, they say everything is in check. Yet every day you find Negro children becoming more explosive than ever before.
Bernard: You're not answering my question, you're avoiding it. I asked you how is it going to change? Is it going to change through extreme behavior, let's call it extreme reaction-in other words, you are going to react extremely to a situation that you don't like? Now, how extreme can your reaction be?
Malcolm X: Well, sir, when Russia put missiles in Cuba, the only thing that made Russia get her missiles out of Cuba was when America pointed missiles right back at Russia.
Bernard: Are you suggesting revolution?
Malcolm X: No, I'm saying this: that when you respect the intelligence of Black people in this country as being equal to that of whites, then you will realize that the reaction of the Black man to oppression will be the same as the reaction of the white man to oppression. The white man will not turn the other cheek when he's being oppressed. He will not practice any kind of love of a Klan or a Citizens' Council or anyone else. But at the same time, the white man is asking the Black man to do this.
So all I'm saying is, I absolutely believe that the situation can be changed. But I don't think it can be changed by white people taking a hypocritical approach, pretending that it is not as bad as it is, and by Black leaders, so-called responsible leaders, taking a hypocritical approach, trying to make white people think that Black people are patient and long-suffering and are willing to sit around here a long time, or a great deal of time longer, until the problem is made better.

sustainableprosperity: Published on Monday, June 17, 2013...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:37:01 -0400

sustainableprosperity:

Published on Monday, June 17, 2013 by Common Dreams

A Civil Liberty ‘Victory’: Controversial Voter ID Law Rejected

- Lucia Brown

The Supreme Court has struck down a controversial Voter ID law in Arizona, an action the ACLU has declared as a “victory.”

The law, known as Proposition 200, extended beyond federal policies by requiring applicants to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Alabama, Georgia, and Kansas have similar laws.

NBC News reports that civil rights groups see the proposition as an effort to deter legal immigrants from voting. Groups also note that the law would require people to register in person instead of by mail, limiting people’s access. Those in favor of the law maintain that it reduces voter fraud.

Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program Director Wendy Weiser commented in a press release:

Voters scored a huge victory today. We applaud the Supreme Court for confirming Congress’s power to protect the right to vote in federal elections. Congress recognized that voter registration must be made more accessible when it passed the National Voter Registration Act, and the Court also affirmed that today.

Weiser concluded her statement by emphasizing all the work that remains to be done to eliminate voting barriers, expressing concern about a potential challenge by the Supreme Court to the Voting Rights Act.

The decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council is one of many highly anticipated rulings to be issued this week.

Lucia Brown is a summer editorial intern at Common Dreams.

_____________________

‬

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/17-2

"When I think about the fact that our CEO Mike Duke made over $20 million last year, more than 1,000..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:34:16 -0400

“When I think about the fact that our CEO Mike Duke made over $20 million last year, more than 1,000 times the average Walmart associate, with all due respect, I have to say I don’t think that’s right.”

- Striking Walmart worker Janet Sparks addressing the company’s shareholder meeting. (via thenationmagazine)

I’m always a fan of drawing attention to CEO-to-worker pay ratios.

(via pantslessprogressive)

Because it’s not right. It’s grotesque. Solidarity.

"The story isn’t me, or Edward Snowden, or the eagerness of Democratic partisans to defend the..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:27:31 -0400

“The story isn’t me, or Edward Snowden, or the eagerness of Democratic partisans to defend the NSA as a means of defending Preisdent Obama, and try as they might, Democrats won’t succeed in making the story be any of those things. The story is the worldwide surveillance apparatus the NSA is constructing in the dark and the way that has grown under Obama.”

- On PRISM, Partisanship and Propaganda | Common Dreams | Glenn Greenwald

That Cheap Stuff You Just Bought At Walmart? Turns Out It Cost...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:10:43 -0400

That Cheap Stuff You Just Bought At Walmart? Turns Out It Cost $6,000 More Than You Thought | UpWorthy

According to a Congressional study, $6,000 is the average amount taxpayers are being dinged per employee. Walmart’s wages and benefits are so low, it forces workers to go on Medicaid and receive housing assistance, childcare subsidies, food stamps, and more. Yes, it’s totally insane, but it’s true.

"Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:49:07 -0400

“Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards.”

- —Mychal Denzel Smith, “White People Have to Give Up Racism” (via zombiemovies)

!!!!!

(via aggregateconscience)

Hope everybody has had or is having a good day. Much love.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:26:39 -0400

Hope everybody has had or is having a good day. Much love.

"We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:19:52 -0400

“We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species… environmental responsibility - for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.”

- Jane Goodall (via mahawki)

A dangerous nun

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:19:07 -0400

A dangerous nun:

socialistworker:

Peter Rugh reports on the case of an elderly Catholic nun who has been condemned to prison for what will be the rest of her life for anti-nuclear weapons activism.

June 11, 2013

TEARS WELLED up in my eyes when I heard that 83-year-old Catholic nun Megan Rice is facing 20 years in prison—a sentence that, if delivered to the fullest extent this September, would essentially condemn her to spend the rest of her life behind bars. Unlike me, however, she reportedly smiled when the jury convicted her of interfering with national security and damaging federal property at a trial in Knoxville, Tenn., last month.

While the media has tended to dismiss Rice as an eccentric, if courageous, old woman, her decision to break into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was in fact a highly calculated move.

She and her accomplices—two other grey-haired antiwar activists—weighed the consequences of their actions beforehand, then timed them to coincide with civil disobedience actions and demonstrations across the country calling for disarmament and a nuclear-free future.

I first met her on March 11, 2012—at a rally in Manhattan’s Union Square, commemorating the anniversary of the meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan. She had poorly photocopied pieces of paper in her hands that she wanted me to take a look at. Nothing top secret—they detailed the Obama administration’s $180 billion efforts to shore-up America’s nuclear arsenal, which was money she felt could be better spent improving the lives of poor and working people.

By all appearances, Rice was a simple, soft-spoken, elderly nun. I would never have guessed from our first meeting that, as The New York Times later reported, she had been arrested some 40 or 50 times over the course of her life.

But to understand her spiritual calling is to understand that her two sides—the humble sister and the so-called threat to national security—are not incongruous. As a member of the Plowshares disarmament movement, Rice takes her inspiration from Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Members of the Plowshares movement have carried out more than 100 direct actions against nuclear weapons since 1980, and many have received hard time as a result.

[READ MORE]

(via Friends of Democracy)

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:54:25 -0400

(via Friends of Democracy)

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:58:54 -0400

thepoliticalnotebook: This Week in War. A Friday round-up of...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:23:07 -0400

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

The death toll for the Syrian conflict is 93,000, according to the UN. 5000 people die every month.

The US announced confirmation of Syria’s use of chemical weapons and the ensuing debate about what the crossing of this so-called red line now means for US action.

Special UN rapporteur Richard Falk has called for an international inquiry into Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

A negotiated end is sought to protests and clashes in Turkey.

Tunisian rapper Weld El 15, on the run from a two year sentence for his anti-police song, has turned himself in.

The AFP tracks casualties in Iraq (Google Doc).

The polls have opened in the Iranian presidential election.

A pre-election hacking campaign targeted Iranian Gmail users.

President Hamid Karzai demanded on Saturday that Britain turn over more than 80 prisoners of war within two weeks.

In Kabul, a mid-week suicide bombing in front of the Supreme Court left sixteen or more civilians dead and many injured.

Bagram was handed over to Afghanistan three months ago, but dozens of foreign inmates, mostly Pakistani, have seen little change in their detention.

The US disrupted Al Qaeda’s online magazine Inspire.

Du Bin, a Chinese journalist who had completed a documentary on forced labor camps and freelanced for the New York Times, has been detained in Beijing.

Korean officials held talks in Panmunjom.

Threats to journalists by paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland are on the rise.

Northern Ireland’s police have seized arms ahead of the G8.

Colombia’s peace talks have resumed in Cuba.

Brazilian journalist and newspaper José Roberto Ornelas de Lemos was murdered at a bakery in Rio de Janeiro on June 11.

A group of American physicians have called, in the New England Journal of Medicine, on Guantánamo Bay’s doctors to refuse participation in the force-feeding program.

An Iraqi prisoner named Abd al-Hadi and identified as a senior Al Al Qaeda commander has been charged in the Guantánamo war crimes tribunal.

Microsoft and Google both call on the government to allow them to be more transparent and forthcoming to the public about the government’s information/data requests to them.

Senator Gillibrand’s amendment that would remove military sex assault prosecutions from chain of command and hand them to independent military prosecutors was stripped from the defense bill after backlash from top brass. Gillibrand, however, plans to push the measure on the floor.

The NSA leaker was identified upon his request as Edward Snowden, who has fled to Hong Kong.

Will China hand him over?

Concerned about what it might mean that the government knows your metadata? The Guardian has an interactive breakdown of what information is available from the telecom services we all use.

ProPublica also has some tips about safer online activity.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently met with surprise success against the Justice Department in FISA court. The EFF is after court documents on government surveillance activity that was found by a FISA court to have circumvented the law, which the FISA court has ruled is legal for them to obtain, (kind of shockingly) rejecting the arguments of the DOJ. Here’s a link to the ruling.

The ACLU hopes to see court success of its own in its lawsuit against the government over the Verizon metadata dragnet. As a Verizon customer itself, it can claim standing to sue. (The complaint itself.)

Inside the NSA’s China hacking group.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Taksim Square, Turkey. A protester throws a petrol bomb towards the police. June 10. Kostas Tsironas/AP.

"Stokely told his audiences that one of the most important aspects of the struggle for Black Power..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:17:39 -0400

“

Stokely told his audiences that one of the most important aspects of the struggle for Black Power was the right to define. Black people have been the victims of white America’s definitions. White people defined black people as inferior, as Negroes and niggers, as second-class citizens. By reacting to white America’s definitions, the blacks allowed themselves to be put in a bag which white America controlled. But now black people must demand the right to define themselves. White America has defined black as evil, Carmichael explains. “I have a little syllogism for that. According to America, everything black is evil; I am black, therefore, I am evil.”

“There is something wrong with that,” he goes on to explain, “because I am black and I am good.” He never fails to score heavily with his audience when he says that.

His favorite example of this always elicited a hysterical response, from both black and white audiences. “Here’s a perfect example of the power to define in action. During the civil rights movement, black leaders would say: ‘We want to integrate.’ And then white people would come along and define what integration means. They’d say: ‘You want to integrate? That means that you want to marry my daughter.’ What the Negro leaders had actually meant was that they wanted more jobs, better schools, housing, and an end to police brutality, and things like that. What we must do is define our own terms. We must not react to white definitions.

”

- Eldridge Cleaver on Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)

Taken from the book “Eldridge Cleaver: Target Zero” (pages 99-100)

thepoliticalnotebook: An amazingly directed and important video...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:02:01 -0400

thepoliticalnotebook:

An amazingly directed and important video on Everyday Sexism, its creator and the online group that has brought women together to talk about the experience of daily sexualization and harassment and are typically kept from talking about.

Via velvetlovepocket (Link here: [x]) and meenerhabi.

What You Don’t Know About The NSA Spying Program? In this...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:52:20 -0400

What You Don’t Know About The NSA Spying Program?

In this weeks Moment of Clarity Lee Camp asks what would happen if a totally benevolent government, like the one we have now, note the silent sarcasm, no longer occupied the White House and Congress, was replaced by a tyrant, and decided to use the surveillance apparatus the two previous administrations have built?