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Syria and Climate Change: Does Global Warming Fuel Conflict?
“Syria is a prime example. There has been a terrible drought there, which coincided with austerity measures imposed by the Assad government cutting aid to Sunni farmers. Many of them were forced to leave the land, partly due to drought, partly due to the lack of support to properly deal with the drought. Then, they arrive in cities, and there’s more austerity taking place. This is experienced as oppression by the Alawite elite against an increasingly impoverished Sunni proletariat who’ve been thrown off their land.”
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After Paris: Is the “War on Terror” Feeding Terror?
“Uncontrollable rage and ritual denunciations are not going to defeat IS. To defeat IS, we need to recognize that this Frankenstein’s monster is neither simply a fault of ‘the West,’ nor of ‘the Muslims.’ It is a co-creation of the Western and Muslim worlds, specifically of Western and Muslim ‘security’ agencies who have lost all moral compass in the pursuit of geopolitical prowess, self-aggrandizement and corporate profiteering. Citizens of all faiths and none must stand together in solidarity to reject the violence perpetrated in our name on all sides.”
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From Beirut After Bombing: “We are Not Numbers”
“We are not numbers. I say this as I remember the 43 people killed and the 239 wounded in this terrorist attack on a neighborhood. We are not numbers. Among dead and injured are books/backpacks belonging to schoolchildren.”
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Documents Expose FBI’s Targeting of School of the Americas Watch
“The uncovered documents show the bureau continued to deploy its Domestic Intelligence Terrorism Squad to monitor activity within the organization using confidential informants inside the movement to gather information. In addition, the FBI’s headquarters and counter-terrorism units were requested to provide the FBI’s Field Office in Atlanta with ‘all intelligence relevant to the SOA, so that this information can be provided to local/military law enforcement agencies.'”
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Fast Food Protests Today
“But as evidenced by the 270 nationwide rallies intended to influence the 2016 election, Fight for 15 is more a march on the media than a worker organizing campaign. Interviews with dozens of workers and SEIU organizers have revealed workers have almost no input over the goals of the campaign, who is being organized, what is the strategy, or even when or how to protest.”
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Netanyahu in D.C.
“Earlier this year, Hagler successfully helped worked towards the [United Church of Christ] Church passing a divestment and boycott resolution on Israel. Hagler today said: ‘It’s ironic that so many are focusing on Palestinian knives given the massive scale of Israeli attacks on Palestinians.'”
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What About the “Keystone XL Clone”?
“While the Obama White House Keystone XL decision has been touted by most environmentalists and criticized by Big Oil and its front groups, the truth is much more complex and indeed, dirty. That’s because for years behind the scenes the Obama Administration has quietly been approving hundreds of miles-long pieces of pipeline owned by pipeline company goliath Enbridge…”
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TPP and China: “It’s the Geopolitics Stupid”
“Tensions between rising and declining powers are inevitable, but they can be transformed and overcome through common/shared security trade and military-related diplomacy. We would do well to learn from history and to pursue win-win diplomacy rather than self-defeating zero-sum challenges.”
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What’s ISDS? How TPP “Puts Corporations in Driver’s Seat”
“The text released this morning clearly demonstrates what we have long feared: The TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions would enable investors from any of the TPP countries to challenge environmental and public health laws, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals that circumvent the U.S. and any other country’s judicial system. Right now, a number of smaller Free Trade Agreements and Bilateral Investment Treaties already grant these powers to transnational corporations — and they are being used to attack clean air rules in Peru, mining laws in El Salvador, a provincial fracking moratorium in Canada and a court decision…
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Electoral Reform Wins in Tuesdays’ Election
“Electoral reform played a big role in the 2015 elections this year. Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed a state constitutional amendment requiring that redistricting be done according to certain criteria by a bipartisan commission, and advocates of public financing of campaigns had big wins in Seattle and in Maine.”
Blog
“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