News and Politics // Current

^#61

Student-run grocery could save Missouri town

This is very cool!

DailyMenendez
added this

Leahy: Investigate Bush Now

Count me in as one of the many Americans who feel we need to get to the bottom of what went wrong. "I agree. We need to be... more

Conniepae
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Why Aren't People In The Media Pushing the Story About Republicans Blocking Unemployment Benefits? |

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/why-arent-people-media-pushing-unempl

kennymotown
added this

Dems aim to strip insurers' antitrust protections

WASHINGTON - Democrats launched a drive at both ends of the Capitol on Wednesday to strip the insurance industry of its... more

current89
added this

More countries cut ties to Israel over Gaza, "Israel a terrorist nation"

More countries are accusing Israel of participating in "state terrorism" against "the most weak and innocent human beings: children, women and the aged and called for Israeli leaders be tried before an international court for crimes against humanity. They furthermore urged that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert be declared war criminals. This is in addition to the recent calls from European, Arab and Asian nations as well as Australia and New Zealand calling for a war crimes investigation into Israels activities.
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Venezuela announced Wednesday it is breaking diplomatic relations with Israel over the conflict in Gaza, joining Bolivia, which did the same thing earlier in the day.
Bolivian President Evo Morales announces Wednesday that he is severing diplomatic ties with Israel.

Bolivian President Evo Morales announces Wednesday that he is severing diplomatic ties with Israel.

In the announcement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, the government cited "the gravity of the atrocities against the Palestinian people."

The statement accused the Israelis of having "ignored, systematically, calls from the United Nations, violating in a repeated and shameless manner the resolutions approved by the overwhelming majority of their members and placing themselves ever more on the margin of international law."

---------------more at the link with more countries coming soon

I'd like to point out that my reporting what i find in the news about Israel is only to keep it fresh in the minds of people as well as to inform the US public, since the US media is pretty well one sided in their views of Israel. Millions of people, probably hundreds of million--are very upset with what Israel has done and collectively as a peaceful people, we do not want Israel to get away with it.

For the most part, including myself, we are NOT antisemitic and we are NOT for ANY violence. You can say all you want, and myself and many others will not even entertain your name calling, or your propaganda. We know of the Israel government and Israel Lobby propaganda machine and just reading how they manipulate facts literally gets me sick.

Some of the name calling by some is indicative of us being involved with the terrorists. If that is so, maybe a visit by your local government is in store for you since you have of some evidence of "criminal" activity on these blogs. We can arrange for the visit if you insist. It'd make our day!

We are merely red hot mad at Israel for the inhumane treatment and murders of many innocent people as well as how Israel trapped and set up the Palestinians almost two years before the slaughter and right after the original cease fire agreement (18 months ago) by closing all borders and not allowing any life sustaining supplies to be shipped in. According the the UN this is in itself an act of war to ANY country. Gaza was and is under siege all this time.

So, we respect your opinions and welcome debate...serious debate and you can call us anything you want. BUT....Call us terrorists or in cahoots with Hamas or any other so called "terrorists" organization and I guarantee you will have a 'special' government visit to write your report of your "evidence" you say you have. Then you can face the ramifications of your actions.

If Israel wants to start treating the innocent Palestinians like PEOPLE and give them a FAIR and BALANCED Peace deal, we're with Israel 100%. In our opinion, Israel is more of a terrorist then any other organization or country and has committed far more crimes, more horrible than any others against civilians and Israel will pay for these crimes thru the criminal courts throughout the world.More countries are accusing Israel of participating in "state terrorism" against "the most weak and innocent human... more

WorldPeaceTV
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58 comments

9 months ago

^#66

Nasa prepares moon smashing satellite

As Britain tucks into its lunch on Friday, hundreds of scientists, engineers and astronomers on the other side of the planet will... more

slagface
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76 comments

28 days ago

^#67

US Justice Issues Memo Reminding Feds to NOT TERRORIZE Law-Abiding Cannabis users

In early February national media attention exploded around statements from a White House spokesperson and from U.S. Attorney... more

ras_menelik
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9 comments

17 days ago

^#68

Scholars reject Obama's Stance on Warrantless Cellphone Recording

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/scholars-reject/

The Obama administration’s position that the government can force mobile carriers to hand over cellphone tower location information on their customers without a warrant is wrong, two legal scholars say.

"Because CSLI acquisition is hidden, indiscriminate and intrusive, and because it reveals information over a period of time, it should be subject to the highest level of Fourth Amendment oversight (the same procedures used for wiretapping and video surveillance)," the scholars wrote late Friday.

The scholars are Susan Freiwald, of the USF School of Law, and Peter Swire, of Ohio State University.

Their words, published by the American Constitution Society, came a month after the Justice Department made its claim in a little-noticed case that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply.

Most Americans have or will carry a mobile phone in their lifespan, so the outcome could have wide-ranging privacy ramifications. Smartphones, like the iPhone, use cell-tower information to power geo-location applications like Google Maps.

In a case pending before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government maintains it can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause — the standard required for a search warrant.

While judges have differed on the issue, the resulting evidence can be used in a criminal prosecution. The case on appeal concerns a Pennsylvania judge who rejected the government’s position in a drug prosecution that the new administration inherited.

Mobile-phone providers keep cell-site information for up to 18 months. Historical cell-site location information includes the tower connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call. The government does not claim a warrantless right to cell-site information for future calls, only for calls already dialed.

"Cellular providers could, if they wanted, keep track of your cell phone’s location every seven seconds," the scholars wrote, "because your phone ‘registers’ that often with the nearest tower."http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/scholars-reject/ The Obama administration’s position that the government can... more

asherp
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22 comments

7 days ago

^#69

US Coal Plants Dump Thousands of Gallons of Waste Into Drinking Water Supplies a Day

Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York Times just revealed that hundreds of coal plants across the country are routinely dumping thousands of gallons of waste water into rivers and lakes--rivers and lakes that millions of people get their drinking water from.

So here's why all that dumping is going on, in a nutshell--coal plants, as you well know, are extremely heavy polluters. Some plants pollute so heavily, some even spewing sickly yellow smoke, that little coal waste chunks litter nearby residents' yards and coat their property in a thin film. So when a community gets tired of this--and gets sick of the respiratory illnesses and intermittent acid rain the plant creates as well--sometimes they're able to get the state to insist on stricter pollution regulations.

If they're lucky, as in the case of the super-polluting coal plant in Masontown, Pennsylvania, they're successful, and the coal company installs 'scrubbers' that trap up to 150,000 tons of the pollution and keep it from entering the air. Hooray! Right?

Not so fast. Since the scrubbing process creates waste water from all that pollution, it turns out that the coal companies are simply dumping all of into nearby rivers and lakes, many of which Americans get their drinking water from.

And if you're anything like me, you're first reaction will be something like, "how the hell are they allowed to do that?" The answer is, oftentimes they're not. But they're getting away with it unpunished. You see, there's no federal regulation--at all--that specifically determines how much, if any, waste coal plants can dump into water sources. There are state regulations, and restrictions set by the Clean Water Act, but the Times found that while the plants are receiving notices for violations, nothing is being done about it:

Ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that have violated the Clean Water Act since 2004 were not fined or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators.

It also notes those few plants that have had to pay fines--but they're egregiously low, even for excessive violations:

Hatfield's Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006. For those violations, the company paid less than $26,000. During that same period, the plant's parent company earned $1.1 billion.

In other cases, there's no existing framework at all to prevent companies from dumping harmful chemicals. This, for example, is particularly alarming:

only one in 43 power plants and other electric utilities across the nation must limit how much barium they dump into nearby waterways ... Barium, which is commonly found in power plant waste and scrubber wastewater, has been linked to heart problems and diseases in other organs.

The atrocities go on and on. No wonder coal companies are balking at the prospect of limiting their pollution under a climate bill--they're evidently entirely unfamiliar with taking the environment and/or people's health into account at all. So allow me to hark back to my opening question: coal plants pollute the air, give people heart and respiratory problems, contribute to climate change, and now, dump tons of dangerous waste into our drinking water every day. Why is anyone trying to save these things?Why is anyone fighting to save these things again? A detailed report in the New York Times just revealed that hundreds of coal... more

pjacobs51
added this

32 comments

23 days ago

^#70

Gaza battles rage as death toll rises to 1,000

Please, both sides, stop this now. Please. Almost three hundred children dead. Both sides are only sealing the fate of those on... more

JanforGore
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52 comments

10 months ago

^#71

Dems scramble after warning from health insurers

Insurance companies aren't playing nice any more. Their dire message that health care legislation will drive up premiums for... more

xiola
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73 comments

23 days ago

^#72

CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US

American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the... more

synjun
added this

34 comments

9 months ago

^#73

Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within

This is a synopsis of the 28 minute French film by Pascale Bourgau who interviewed US military women raped on duty. It's been seen on European TV but not in the US.

Pascale, a reporter for the Belgian channel RTBF (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon), while six months pregnant, along with Anne Barrier, toured the United States to meet these women and tell of their pain, rebellion and today, their struggle.

The documentary was selected for the New York Independent Film Festival and will be shown Monday evening, October 26 at 5:45pm at the City Cinema East, 181 2d Ave, NYC.
Following the showing of "Rape in the Ranks", there will be a panel to discuss rape in the US military at the Telephone Bar and Grill, 149 2nd Ave (212-529-5000).
See http://nyfilmvideo.info/2009-new-york-october-film-schedule-tickets/monday-october-26th-film-schedule-tickets-scree-2.htm

Filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux is available for interviews. Her telephone is 212-982-0684 and 646-2638402.
___________________________________________________________________
Here is the synopsis:

Raped by their comrades, Tina, Jessica, Suzanne and Stephanie have been ignored by U.S. military officials in seeking justice. Though the Pentagon acknowledged receiving 3,000 reports of sexual assault in 2006 alone, and had launched a rape prevention program in 2004, the number of reported sexual assaults has since skyrocketed, but not the number of convictions. Only 2% of accused rapists are ever brought before a courts martial. Very few women have been willing to speak out, with the exception of these four brave women. Unable to stand the nightmarish daily rapes by her commander in Iraq, 21 year old Suzanne refused to report back for mission and was brought before a courts martial. 25 year old Jessica was raped in the U.S. and Korea, yet still dreams of going back to active service and seeing her attackers brought to justice. Stephanie has come to regret never reporting her own rape and perpetuating the law of silence. 20 year old Tina, who was raped in Iraq, is no longer around to recount her nightmare. She supposedly "killed herself." Her mother claims she was murdered. This report tells the story of their pain, revolt, and uphill battle for justice.

Image captions: Left: Pascale Bourgaux interviewing Ann Wright, a former colonel who resigned before the war in Iraq; now a pacifist and defender of the cause of raped female soldiers (Washington, outside the White House).
Right: Jessica and her husband Brendan Brinkman.
_______________________________________________________
En Francais: http://www.capatv.com/?p=2609
Visit the Stop War Project: http://stopwar.lafilmonline.comThis is a synopsis of the 28 minute French film by Pascale Bourgau who interviewed US military women raped on duty. It's been... more

JonRaymond
added this

25 comments

11 days ago

^#74

DIRECT POLITICAL ACTION 101 by Michael Moore

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY: 1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more... more

WhiteNoise
added this

17 comments

14 days ago

^#75

America's Drug Problem-- Not Heroin, Crack, Coke, Weed, or Meth

http://www.citizen.org A film by Brandon Augustin Ramirez, a student in the Digital Media Department of FIDM.

asherp
added this

40 comments

27 days ago

^#76

Gaza is a concentration camp, Israeli official promised a holocaust in Gaza

Gaza is an immense concentration camp -- 1.5 million people squeezed into 140 square miles hemmed in on all sides by 25-foot-high walls separated by a vast expanse of bulldozed earth. The 2005 "pull-out" left Gaza still controlled by Israel from air and sea, its entries and exits prisonlike mazes electronically controlled and under constant surveillance. Bombing it, assaulting it with tanks and Uzis, is like shooting animals in a pen. The claptrap about "pinpoint" accuracy and "avoiding civilians" is a lie so flagrant, so transparent, that any child -- certainly any Gaza child -- could grasp it.
There have been eight military assaults on Gaza since 2004; blockades started in 2005, and then a siege of medieval proportions in 2006, punishment for Gazans' having elected the wrong party for Israel and its U.S. patron. By December 2008, Richard Falk, special rapporteur on the Occupied Territories for the United Nations, reported an overall Gaza malnutrition rate of 75 percent, a childhood anemia rate of 46 percent and a devastated infrastructure. For more, see Richard Falk's "Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe." here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html

This latest war -- called Operation Cast Lead -- is the "holocaust" promised by Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai last spring when he said Israel would create a shoa if Qassem rockets kept dropping on Israeli towns like Sderot. Shoa, Hebrew for holocaust, is a serious word denoting the extermination of an entire people. Vilnai embarrassed the Israeli government, and no official has used the term since.

more links to this as well as other people calling Gaza a concentration camp:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/1366088,w-gaza-strip-vatican-israel010709.article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7817019.stm

Israeli newspaper:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1221489063620&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

and Israels response:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09vatican.htmlGaza is an immense concentration camp -- 1.5 million people squeezed into 140 square miles hemmed in on all sides by 25-foot-high... more

WorldPeaceTV
added this

81 comments

10 months ago

^#77

Tomorrow is election day

Well, not necessarily for everyone. It's not a presidential election year (obviously) and not a midterm election year for Congress, but yes there are a fair number of elections going on tomorrow. Lots of local races and a few bigger ones. Here are some of the highlights on the national stage:

NY-23: A little corner of New York state you've probably never heard of is attracting big attention for its special Congressional election. Why? First, because commentators think it could be a bellwether for the 2010 midterm elections. Second, because it suddenly got real crazy. There was a three-way race between a moderate GOP incumbent, a Democrat, and a Conservative Party candidate. Then suddenly Sarah Palin swooped in and endorsed the third party candidate, and it ignited a firestorm about tea party conservatives in the GOP. So much so that Dede Scozzafava, the GOP candidate, dropped out. What does it mean? What does it meeeeean? We'll let the politico-blogo-sphere sort it all out after we get the results.

New York City Mayor: New York is voting on their mayor. Incumbent mayor Michael Bloomberg had the law changed so he could run for a third term, and seems to be strongly in the lead. Except Gawker anti-endorsed him. (Ouch).

Maine on Gay Marriage: Last May, Maine's legislators legalized same sex marriage. Now its voters will decide whether or not to repeal it. Boy wonder statistician Nate Silver gives the vote to repeal "5-to-2 underdog" odds.

New Jersey's Governor: Why should you care about who's governor of the Garden State? Well according to the AP: it's "...a campaign being billed as a vote on President Barack Obama's popularity." Democratic governor Jon Corzine is fighting to keep his seat as his Republican opponent has fared well in the polls. Will a GOP win foretell doom for Obama's efforts? Again, we'll let the politico-blogo-sphere sort it all out after we get the results.

What else is going out there? Here in San Francisco we're having a municipal election with two uncontested candidates and a few local propositions.

How about where you live? Any local races out there that could be resonant to the rest of the country?

From the News Blog: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/02/tomorrow-is-election-day/
Image from Gawker: http://gawker.com/5395311/gawker-endorsement-dont-vote-for-bloombergWell, not necessarily for everyone. It's not a presidential election year (obviously) and not a midterm election year for... more