Amnesty International welcomed the acknowledgement of civil casualties by the US military on Friday but called for prosecuting those “suspected of criminal responsibility” in the attack. “Survivors and families of the victims should be kept informed of the progress of the investigation and be given full reparation,” Brian Castner, senior crisis adviser with Amnesty’s crisis response programme, said in a statement. “It should be noted that the US military was only forced to admit to its failure in this strike because of the current global scrutiny on Afghanistan.”
They could change their embargo and sanction policies on Cuba but won’t
The United States could help to rebuild Afghanistan, after having bombed the country back to the stone age (to use the old Cold War idiom). Instead, it is now washing its hands of the situation and leaving. Similarly, Washington could end support for free-market policies that impose poverty on millions of people. But it shows no signs of shifting course. As such, both Democratic and Republican governments are set to continue the Cold War’s history of military intervention, with all the destruction and economic inequality that they entail.
Today’s cruel and partisan Supreme Court is squandering what remains of its authority. It is also imposing unnecessary suffering on those least able to bear it.
Republicans love to hijack democratic and progressive concepts, such as “free speech,” and apply them in a hyperbolic context that is counterintuitive to the original intent. While this tactic burgeoned in recent years, Donald Trump’s presidency and toxic wake has elevated the issues and urgency to defeat this.
A mere month after the conviction of whistleblower Daniel Hale, who did more than any other to reveal the grotesque illusion of reliability behind the US drone program, UAV warfare was again shown to be a butchering enterprise praised by the precisionists and found politically wanting. Those attending the funerals of the slain family members, an event taking place in the shadow of US power in retreat, needed little convincing who their enemy was.
Stoking fear of Afghan refugees, Stephen Miller — architect of Trump’s ethno-nationalist agenda — used the Afghanistan withdrawal and the ISIS airport attack as another opportunity to spread Islamophobia. Just hours after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Miller focused on an anti-immigrant message: “It is becoming increasingly clear that Biden and his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany and Europe,” he wrote, referring to Syrian refugee resettlement through 2016. In Miller’s racist imagination, Merkel allowed the masses of Middle Eastern refugees to “defile” Europe’s traditional heritage while failing to identify Muslim terrorists hidden in their midst.
And then the Soviet Union collapsed — and nothing changed in the U.S. military’s global posture. Or, put differently, everything changed. For with the implosion of the USSR, what turned out to remain truly uncontained was our military, along with the dreams of neoconservatives who sought to remake the world in America’s image. But which image? That of a republic empowering its citizens in a participatory democracy or of an expansionist capitalist empire, driven by the ambition and greed of a set of oligarchs?
“On January 6, did you speak before during or after the Capitol was attacked?” the reporter probed. Jordan looked up in the air making believe he had a think about it. “Ahhh, I’d have to go…IIiiiiii I spoke with him that day after. I think after,” his voice raised almost an octave higher. “I don’t know if I spoke to him in the morning or not? I just don’t know. Have to go back, I mean, I don’t don’t don’t–” he stammered.
Unless we want to engage in a bloody and bitter divorce, we have to solve this problem together. And there’s no reason for the responsibly vaccinated to continue to have to put themselves and their kids at risk to mollycoddle conservative snowflakes who place their identitarian culture war and Fox News obsession over the value of life. We, too, deserve to be able to go back to living normal lives at concerts and restaurants unmasked without fear of infection by a conservative who never bothered to make any sacrifices. Whatever we have to do to get there, we should do.
Advertisement Washington: A 62-year-old Texan who waited seven hours to cast a vote while on parole is facing the threat of 40 years jail for breaking state election laws. Hervis Earl Rogers from Houston was arrested last week and charged with two counts of illegal voting for casting a ballot in 2018 and again last year while still on parole. He could get 20 years for each. Texas is one of 16 US states where felons lose voting rights in prison and on parole.
Convicted under the Espionage Act for having shared a classified document on threats to election security with the media, Winner has been released to home confinement but wears an unwieldy ankle bracelet. It beeps even if she strays too far within her family’s yard. Not wanting her to miss out, a high school friend showed up on a recent day with a kiddie swimming pool and some sand. “Mom, I’m going to the beach today,” Winner said, her mother Billie Winner-Davis recalled. The pair filled the kid’s toy and Winner waded in. Winner’s family and friends are thrilled to have her home after four years behind bars — a stint that took miserable turns as her release date neared. She contracted Covid-19 as part of a mass infection in her prison, filed a sexual assault complaint against a guard, and went thirsty and cold when her facility lost heat and water in February during Texas’s deadly winter storm.
Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of an almost unimaginable disaster. The withdrawal of US and allied forces, scheduled by President Joe Biden to be completed by September 11, threatens to precipitate the unravelling of the most pro-Western government in Southwest Asia.
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, is reportedly bringing charges that allege Rogers voted while on parole for a 1995 conviction for burglary and intent to commit theft. In Texas, it is illegal for anyone convicted of a felony to vote until they complete their sentence, including probation and parole. Rogers’ parole began in 2004 and was set to expire in June 2020. The Texas primaries were held in March. Rogers cannot afford $100,000 bail and is being held in jail, said Thomas Buser-Clancy, an attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is helping represent Rogers.
Put in a broader historical context, the attack on the Capital was an act of political terrorism made in the name of white supremacy. It echoes a sordid history that included the violence against Blacks that took place in Tulsa a hundred years ago. Tulsa was destroyed as a result of white supremacist violence and over 300 Black people were killed. That was an act of economic terrorism. Today economic and political terrorism are unified and drive a Republican Party that is relentless in its destruction of the rights of Black people and its willingness to destroy democracy as well. In the current moment, politics has become an extension of racial violence; this is a politics that no longer hides in the shadows or margins of society and has become a governing principle of the Republican Party.
Time to choose Fox has engaged in a deliberate strategy to make its brand inseparable from Carlson’s. The network should pay a price for that. Advertisers who support the network are now indirectly — and at times directly — supporting Carlson’s vile rhetoric. Media buyers should remember that when Fox tries to pitch them on ads at the upfronts later this month. If they continue to support Carlson, they own the results.
At the same time, Republican governors in states from Texas and Mississippi to Alabama and West Virginia have been loosening or eliminating COVID-19 restrictions in response to declining COVID-19 numbers. Earlier this month Walensky urged policymakers to be mindful that Americans would not be truly safe until as many people are vaccinated as possible, adding that the rise of variants could “complete lose” the gains made so far in defeating the pandemic.
Racist pandemic comments may have sparked this wave of violence against Asian Americans, but in many ways it is simply the latest chapter in a much longer story.
The Senate Parliamentarian dealt a strong blow to the Fight for $15 movement by ruling that a federal minimum wage increase could be included in the stimulus bill. Senator Bernie Sanders is pushing back with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that do not pay at least $15 an hour. This is just the latest battle in a struggle over big business wage practices that goes back decades. There was a time when landing a job with a large corporation was, even for blue collar workers, a ticket to a comfortable life — good wages, generous benefits, and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones.
Democracy fails where ‘not voting’ is a right. Voter suppression doesn’t exist where voting is compulsory
Thus, the country that for centuries had developed a system of government and justice became a victim to the whims of a psychopathic personality who in the short period of four years threatened to destroy had-earned advances towards a democratic and pluralistic society. It shows that unless we are serious in restoring the values fundamental to its existence, we will become one of those countries south of the border pejoratively called “banana republics.”
The coronavirus pandemic relief bill passed by the House of Representatives this week would raise the federal minimum wage in steps until it reached $15 an hour in 2025. But an increase in the minimum wage has been removed from the Senate’s legislation. At least for now, it is stuck at $7.25.
The defeated president called for chaos and his supporters responded by storming the Capitol in Washington, disrupting the counting of electoral votes. Robert MackeyRobert Mackey January 7 2021, 9:44 a.m.
Despite rapidly widening inequality and what could be described as a humanitarian disaster unfolding, the American political elite is instead having a “let them eat cake” moment.
Can the Democrats afford to have him jailed? (ODT)
“Live from Palm Beach, it’s the Power Hour with Donald Trump!” The studio audience erupts in cheers as the former president ambles on to his Oval Office set and takes his place behind a replica of the fabled Resolute desk. The walls are lined with portraits of Trump and posters with the words “rigged” and “stolen”.
“In a historic moment, the majority of Americans have voted for a new leader representing caring, decency, inclusion and multilateralism – and rejecting hate, divisiveness, narcissism and authoritarianism.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have steadfastly refused to articulate a compelling alternative political vision to Donald Trump’s reactionary right-wing politics. Trump looks likely to have lost, but without creating an alternative to defeat it, Trumpism could return with a vengeance four years from now.
“Trump has attacked virtually every important check-and-balance institution in the US that’s got in his way – the intelligence community, judges, the media. Every significant constraint, he wants to get rid of it.” Of course, he’s also opposed to the ultimate constraint in a democracy – the outcome of elections, unless he happens to win.
. “It’s got crazy when you have a US president promoting completely outrageous false information like QAnon,” the fantasist conspiracy movement. “He came into office completely unprepared and instead of being awed by the responsibility, he’s failed to take it seriously. From top to bottom, he’s filled his administration with mediocrities whose only qualification is loyalty to the President’s family. “Almost every statement that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s hard to imagine anyone with worse judgment and less qualified to be president.”
“He came into office completely unprepared and instead of being awed by the responsibility, he’s failed to take it seriously. From top to bottom, he’s filled his administration with mediocrities whose only qualification is loyalty to the President’s family.
“Almost every statement that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s hard to imagine anyone with worse judgment and less qualified to be president.”
Police enforcement is against First Amendment Rights: ” The right to protest is protected by both the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
A Human Rights Watch investigation found that police deliberately trapped and assaulted medics, legal observers, and peaceful protesters.
Witness to Corporate Crime committed in plain sight. America is a Fascist State when a Corporation can and does fly in the face of peoples elected governments no matter what their persuasion. Sending the message that the State is whatever the Corporations declare it to be. Justice and Equality are under Corporate control. (ODT)
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