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Escalating Militarization of Police
“Police cannot use deadly force unless there’s an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to them or other people. If the suspect was holed up in a parking garage and there was nobody in immediate danger from him, the police could have waited him out. They should have arrested him and brought him to trial.”
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Police Killings
Kelly is co-coordinator of the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence. President Barack Obama at a NATO meeting in Warsaw decried the violence in Dallas while at at meeting of the military alliance. Kelly writes regularly on issues of violence and peace. She recently wrote the piece “Of Lethal Drones and Police Shootings.” Her books include Other Lands Have Dreams: Letters From Pekin Prison.
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Democratic Platform on Health Care
“Currently inequity is hard-wired into our health care system. We continue to see wide disparities based on gender, race, age, where you live, and what you can afford. Luckily, nurses have the cure — Improved Medicare for All. It provides a single standard of quality care, freedom to choose any doctor — while saving trillions of dollars. Plus access isn’t based on the size of your wallet. Nurses believe you can’t put a price tag on human life — but I do want to share one key number: $1 trillion. That’s what we save with Medicare for All over 10…
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WaPo on Hillary’s Attempted “Sister Souljah Moment” on Charter Schools
“Educators are skeptical. Journalists and bloggers have spotlighted Clinton’s close ties with Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and others of the wealthiest drivers of modern-day educational policy and practice who have reframed the conversation from schooling as a public good to schooling as a business or commodity. Among her closest advisors are those who previously advocated the appointment of Arne Duncan, whose legacy as Obama’s Secretary of Education is the magnification, not reversal, of some of the most destructive elements of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind.”
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Clinton, Trump and the “War on Terror” Hub
“Few Americans are aware of what’s actually going on at Ramstein, but its mix of vast military activity is based on the assumption that large-scale U.S. war-making has no end in sight,” the writer of the article, Norman Solomon, said today. “Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have given clear indications of wanting to double down on war policies that rely on massive air power and depend on Ramstein.” The article says that Ramstein is “the most important Air Force base abroad, operating as a kind of grand central station for airborne war — whether relaying video images of drone…
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Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun
Shortly before the invasion, as the UN was considering a second resolution authorizing war, Katharine Gun, who worked at the Government Communications Headquarters — the British equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency — exposed a damning NSA memo. The memo talked of “mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council” to get an “edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.” Her exposure of the effort helped scuttle efforts for a UN resolution authorizing war. The U.S. and Britain proceeded with the “shock and awe” bombing campaign and invasion without such approval. Katharine Gun faced years in…
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Corbyn Coup Attempts and the Chilcot Iraq War Report
“Rather than taking the fight to a weak and divided Conservative Party, 172 MPs and 600+ councillors in the Labour Party have joined forces with right-wing and liberal media to take pot-shots at Corbyn. They claim that Corbyn is ‘unelectable,’ despite winning the biggest mandate of any party leader in British history. Even leaders proven to be ‘unelectable,’ such as Ed Miliband, are now calling for Corbyn to resign. “Right-wingers within the Labour Party would rather sabotage their own party than see it elected with a socialist leader. “This latest round of attacks on Corbyn’s leadership also coincide with the…
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Administration Accused of Whitewashing Drone Killings
“The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed. Today’s announcement tells us nothing about 14-year-old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in Obama’s first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed civilians that day. Is Faheem’s family in those numbers? They make no mention of nine-year old Nabila Rehman. She traveled all the way to the U.S. in 2013 to try to get answers about the strike that killed her grandmother, Mamana Bibi. Will she now get the same apology as an American and Italian hostage killed…
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GMO Labeling: Congress to Undo New Vermont Law
The Senate will vote next week on a federal bill that would nullify Vermont’s law, and other state labeling efforts percolating, thanks to the heavy hand the ag-biotech industry wields over our congressional representatives. “With a vote for this so-called ‘compromise’ bill, Congress would effectively be pulling transparent GMO labels from grocery stores. This legislation is in effect a voluntary disclosure bill since there are no penalties for companies that decide not to comply with the mandate to provide even the most meager disclosure mechanisms, like QR codes or 1-800 numbers. And the definition of GMO in the bill is…
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‘Transgender Troops’ Should Be an Oxymoron
“In the U.S., trans people are routinely kicked out of their families of origin, harassed in school and at work, persecuted by religious leaders and politicians, and attacked on the street simply for daring to exist. Trans people are often denied access to basic services like housing and health care, fired from jobs or never hired in the first place, and forced to flee the places where they grew up, simply to survive. Trans women, particularly trans women of color, are brutally murdered at an astounding rate. “It’s no surprise that both the Human Rights Campaign and the National LGBTQ…
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn