-
Campaign Issue: How the Other Half Banks
“Pay day loans are full of myths. Some people contend that people who use them are just being financially stupid, that education will remedy this problem. Pew recently recommended that people turn to their family and friends for loans. John Oliver had a good segment, but similarly told people to ‘do anything else.’ But all this assumes that low income people actually have other real choices.”
-
Killer Drones: Analysis and Protest of the “Bureaucracy of Murder”
“In discussing problems encountered by the killing machine, the leaked documents continually blame inadequate resources — especially drones that are too slow and too few. In other words they echo the perennial military plea for more money, a doubtless unintended by-product of the leak. Understanding why — after a decade and a half of war in which ‘high value targeting,’ as the official euphemism terms it, has been our principal military strategy — the enemy now rules millions of people in an area the size of Britain, requires knowledge not only of the way the relevant technology works, and doesn’t…
-
Benghazi and Emails: The Ignored Substance Behind the Circus
“The system for classifying intelligence and other national security documents is broken in major respects. Increasingly, it is also manipulated to punish perceived critics or to protect agency reputations and high officials, both from adverse publicity and in the courts. Hillary Clinton’s use of a private rather than State Department email service illustrates many of these issues. “
-
Incitement and Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
“What will it take for the status quo to change? For the walls to be demolished, the raids ended, the checkpoints dismantled, the families reunited? These events are an urgent reminder of our responsibility to join hands with those who seek equality and justice for all the people of Palestine and Israel. Nonviolent protest, economic pressure, and an end to unconditional U.S. military and diplomatic aid to Israel are the path towards a long term resolution that ends the occupation and brings about full equality for all people in the region.”
-
50th Anniversary of Immigration Overhaul: How it Opened and Closed Border
“The quota structure favored immigration from Northern and Western Europe, restricted it from Eastern and Southern Europe, and excluded Asians altogether. The 1965 immigration act got rid of this blatantly racist system and replaced it with one based on individual qualifications, giving preference to those with skills and those with family members in the United States. To further make the system fair, it set a uniform cap on all countries at 7 percent of the annual total.”
-
First Journalist Reports From U.S.-Based “Little Guantanamo”
Potter says CMUs are part of a dangerous post-9/11 trend that he has been documenting, in which the rhetoric of terrorism is used to justify rollbacks in fundamental rights. “This story is not just about prisoners, it is about us,” he says. “It is about our own commitment to human rights.”
-
U.S. War in Afghanistan: “Increasing Violence and Instability”
“President Obama’s decision to rescind his earlier pronouncement of withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan must be interpreted as an admission to the great scandal of the ‘global war on terrorism’: Western violence has only increased violence and instability, not ended or reduced it. While he continues to ridiculously invoke the insignificant Al Qaeda threat as the main pretext for the ongoing U.S. presence in Afghanistan, President Obama is in fact deflecting attention attention from what’s really going on…”
-
“The Drone Papers,” Killings and Whistleblowers
“I was frustrated anyway about how our superiors were treating me and my peers. We were supposed to function and never ask questions. Then there was this moment while we were hunting for Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen. I suddenly realized that by doing what I was doing I was going against the American Constitution which I had sworn to protect. That was when I decided I had to get out.”
-
Debate Fallout: * Clinton’s Emails and Whistleblowers * Big Banks
“Clinton’s statement shows how out of touch she is with the reality for whistleblowers. Apparently, Mrs. Clinton wasn’t reading the newspapers in 2010 when the Justice Department indicted NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake for espionage as retaliation for going through all the proper channels. There were no safe internal channels for Snowden to use.”
-
Award in Iowa: Black Farms Matter
“Our view is local production for local consumption. It’s just supporting mankind as family farmers. Everything we’re about is food sovereignty, the right of every individual on earth to wholesome food, clean water, clean air, clean land, and the self-determination of a local community to grow and do what they want. We just recognize the natural flow of life. It’s what we’ve always done.”
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