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Is the OAS Interfering in the Bolivian Election?
“The OAS is interfering in Bolivia’s elections process without explanation or justification. The OAS admitted in its preliminary report that it was possible for Morales to be elected in the first round, but said there should be a second round anyway. They’re saying in effect that Bolivian law doesn’t matter; the results were too narrow for their taste, so they wanted a second round. …The rapid count shouldn’t even be part of the story now that the full official count is completed and all the information is public. But confusion over the nature of the rapid count results and the…
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Gorbachev Warns of “Colossal Danger”; Weapons Agreements Targeted; Activists “Railroaded” for Nuclear Protests
Late last month seven Plowshares activists, motivated by the biblical edict to turn swords into plowshares, were convicted on four counts for entering the first strike Trident missile arsenal based at Kings Bay, Georgia to “symbolically disarm” the weapons. They are known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. During the trial, the judge prevented the jury from hearing expert testimony, including a declaration from Daniel Ellsberg about necessity and justification defenses for the activists. Similarly, the judge prohibited the activists from talking about international law, including treaties the U.S. is party to as part of their defense, threatening them and their lawyers with being held in…
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Adam Schiff “No Friend of Progressives”
“Schiff’s record on foreign policy, civil liberties, human rights and other key issues has often put him more in line with Republicans than with liberal Democrats. … It is ironic, therefore, that Trump and the Republicans are portraying him as some kind of left-winger. …while Schiff has emerged as a marquee foe of Trumpism, we should be aware that he remains deeply enmeshed with corporatism and militarism. …Contrary to the wishes of the majority of his liberal California constituents, Schiff effectively renounced the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles by voting to authorize it and lied about Iraq having ‘weapons…
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Pakistan: “Father of the Taliban” Trying to Oust Democratically Elected Government
“After more than a year in power, the popular Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI (Movement for Justice) ruling government is confronting its most dangerous assault yet. Despite the country being dogged by unscrupulous, criminal, and illegal capital flight by the ruling elites of the country as soon as Khan took power, as well as a concerted campaign of economic warfare from foreign powers to compel the PTI government to accept an IMF loan package, Khan’s supporters knew that he would face such opposition, both internally and externally, and have steadfastly weathered a very difficult storm in Pakistan’s political economy.”
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The Rise of ISIS: War and Torture
In 1998, Denis Halliday, who had just resigned as assistant secretary general of the United Nations and the head of the UN “oil-for-food” program in Iraq, warned that the long-term U.S. policies of bombings and sanctions threatened the rise of a “Taliban-type” movement — in effect foreseeing the rise of ISIS even before the 2003 invasion. Said Halliday: “Whatever happens now, I would underline the importance of responding to the younger generation of leadership in Iraq. Let’s avoid the possibility of a Taliban-type of movement emerging in the country, brought on by the isolation and anger and alienation that sanctions…
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Report Exposes FBI’s Systemic Surveillance of Activists
“A new report from Defending Rights & Dissent finds that nearly every major social movement of the past decade — including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock protesters, environmental activists, and supporters of Palestinian rights — has been targeted by the FBI...’This report exposes FBI political surveillance as systemic and part of a wider pattern of abuse. [It] documents how the FBI frequently cites its counterterrorism authorities when spying on protest groups. It also documents how the groups targeted by the FBI are frequently peace, racial justice, environmental, and economic justice advocates.”
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“Kangaroo Court” “Railroading” Noted Peace Activists
“These activists have spent varying amount of time in jail for having entered a major nuclear facility to nonviolently ‘symbolically disarm’ the massive nuclear arsenal stationed there…’But decisions of the judge have largely shut the door to the jury hearing anything about such defenses of ‘justification’ or ‘necessity.’ On Friday, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia prohibited a whole series of defenses — including the testimony of international lawyer Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, on the illegality of U.S. nuclear policy — writing that while the defendants’ ‘subjective beliefs…
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Harvard and TIAA Involved in Destruction of Most Biodiverse Savannah in World
“When financial actors like Harvard and TIAA invest in vast tracts of land in fragile ecosystem like Brazil’s Cerrado, they are promoting exactly the kind of agro-industrial development and corporate land concentration we need to move away from in the era of ecological collapse and climate apartheid. That their landholdings appear to be literally on fire should be a wake-up call to these firms and their beneficiaries that the business model they promote is the farthest thing from sustainable or responsible.”
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Medicare for All: Tax Increases Not Needed
“We’ve identified more than $300 billion in annual military savings alone that we could better invest in priorities like Medicare for All, working with the national grassroots movement, Poor People’s Campaign…Remaking our military as a truly defense-based institution, rather than a war machine and A.T.M. for private contractors, will require major changes. It’s a project that can’t happen overnight, and it will need serious planning and wiser uses of some of our $50 billion surplus to ensure both U.S. security and that people leaving military service find new jobs in our economy. That’s no excuse for continuing to spend hundreds of billions…
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Facing Decades in Prison, Activists of Conscience Confront “Culture of Death”
“Nuclear weapons have been called the taproot in our civilization. They contribute to the cheapening of life and inform the other forms of violence. [What is new is that] a deep connection is coming to the surface, between climate change and nuclear weapons. What’s of particular interest to me in this [the Kings Bay action] is that the willingness to use nuclear weapons is of a piece with a general willingness to rape the earth by digging for oil when we know we’re killing ourselves in the process. … When we talk about school shootings, we don’t talk about the…
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Howard Zinn