January 2011
99 posts
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Yemen’s brittle system rattles →
BUOYED by the news from Tunisia, Yemen’s opposition has been demonstrating too. In the capital, Sana’a, placard-wielding protesters called for removal of the long-serving president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Internal dissent is nothing new in Yemen. But the sight of an estimated 10,000 demonstrators openly demanding the head of state’s resignation is rare.
On Jan 23rd Mr Saleh’s security force...
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Vast Majority Wants to Amend the Constitution to... →
Last January, the Supreme Court handed our democracy over to corporations.
It said, in its Citizens United decision, that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money to try to elect or defeat candidates for office.
It said that corporations are, amazingly, persons.
So long as this ruling stands, any hope of having democracy in America will fade.
But fortunately, the vast majority...
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“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
– Henry David Thoreau (via veganatalie)
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No Surprise: Abortion Does NOT Cause Mental-Health... →
A list of good things that come from Denmark: Vikings, butter cookies and Legos. As of today, add one more thing: a study that says that abortion definitively does not lead to mental-health problems.
As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, Danish scientists studied 365,550 teenagers and women in the country who had an abortion or first-time delivery between 1995 and 2007. By ...
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Egyptian protests intensify, challenge 30 years of... →
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across Egypt demanding the ouster of U.S. ally President Hosni Mubarak. These are the largest anti-regime protests in Mubarak’s 30-year rule of this North African country of 85 million people. Though the White House has declared the Mubarak regime “stable,” even greater protests are expected on Jan. 28 following Friday services at...
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is...”
– Che Guevara (via s4mm4n)
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No One Can Say “I Didn’t Know” →
A government that “underestimated” the discontent of the Tunisian population, claims Alain Juppé, Minister of Defense, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs willing to assist Ben Ali by supplying resources for repression, while tens of protesters have already been killed. A president of the Republic who, in 2008, saw “spaces of freedom expanding” in Tunisia and who, according to the Parisian,...
Corrupt Politics: Glenn Beck Won't Stop Death... →
corruptpolitics:
Seventy-eight-year-old Frances Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been receiving death threats. It all started when Glenn Beck decided to target her on his Fox News program for a paper she wrote in 1966, calling Piven an “enemy of the Constitution,” one of the “nine most dangerous…
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Tunisian uprising inspires democracy fight →
The North African country of Tunisia exploded with a mass democratic uprising in December 2010 and it is still unfolding today.
The country of about 10 million people was ruled by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali (many call dictator) since 1987 until the Tunisian people forced him to flee the country and take up residency in Saudi Arabia on January 15, 2011.
The rebellion, referred to by...
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Green MP warns of growing anger as "reckless"... →
Coalition plans to sell off swathes of England’s publicly-owned forests have been published in the face of widespread public opposition and questions over the economic case for the proposals.
Private owners could be allowed to take over management of nearly half a million acres of land previously owned by the Forestry Commission. Some 15% of the forest estate, worth an estimated £100m, is...
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Beijing's first gay marriage sparks storm online →
Beijing’s first gay marriage between two men was held in Beijing on Saturday amid a storm of controversy over same sex unions, the Beijing Times reported. Da Wen and Xiao Qiang (not their real names) held a “comparatively open” wedding ceremony with fifty-about friends attendance after meeting three years ago in an internet gay community. “We just want to live a stable...
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True crime stories: some New Labour memoirs →
With David Cameron in power and a full-scale Thatcherite assault under way on the welfare state, working class living standards and the public sector unions, it is easy to forget just how right wing New Labour was. Well, fortunately, two of the architects of New Labour, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, together with their loyal ally John Prescott, have rushed into print to remind us.
The...
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What’s wrong with school history? →
“The moment I understand history as possibility, I must also understand education in different way”.1
The huge student protests over tuition fees and the Educational Maintenance Allowance beginning in November 2010 were an inspirational challenge to the coalition government’s far-reaching plans for marketising education. Alongside attempting to slash public funding, Tory education...
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Bread, circuses and tea towels can’t stifle... →
socialisimo:
Civil society may be dissolving, governments are in crisis across Europe and significant parts of the inhabited world are either under water or on fire, but it’ll all be fine as long as nobody disrupts the royal wedding. The opposition leader, Ed Miliband, has joined the chorus of hand-wringers pleading with students and the trade unions not to start any funny business while the...
Domestic Terrorism: As American as Apple Pie →
domesticterrorism:
Over the last few months I’ve come to realize that many anarchists and socialists in the U.S focus a great deal on the radical traditions of Europe (Spain, France, Russia, Greece, etc) while ignoring the fact that the United States has a very rich Socialist tradition. In fact, many on the right…
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Putting Poverty on the Agenda →
“There is definitely a story going untold,” says Melissa Boteach, manager of Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years. “When you have 1 in 7 Americans living in poverty. 1 in 5 children living in poverty—including 1 in 3 African-American children and Latino children—and it’s not on America’s radar, something’s very wrong.”
...
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MLK’s legacy & renewed assaults on the workers &... →
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights, social justice and peace activist who was martyred on April 4, 1968, was born 82 years ago on Jan. 15. Since 1986 Dr. King’s birthday has been commemorated by a federal holiday on the third Monday of January. This year the holiday falls on Jan. 17.
The recognition of Dr. King’s birthday as a federal holiday was the result of a nearly two-decade...
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Starbucks Workers Celebrate, and Protest →
Each year since 2008, members of the Industrial Workers of the World Starbucks Workers Union had demonstrated on Martin Luther King’s Birthday, protesting that the company’s baristas who worked on the holiday were not given holiday wages.
On Monday, members of the organization held a roving demonstration in Lower Manhattan that they said was organized to celebrate Starbucks’ new policy to pay...
Africa: a continent drenched in the blood of... →
Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of newly independent Congo, was the second of five leaders of independence movements in African countries to be assassinated in the 1960s by their former colonial masters, or their agents.
A sixth, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, was ousted in a western-backed coup in 1966, and a seventh, Amilcar Cabral, leader of the west African liberation movement against Portugal...
A revolution unfolds in Tunisia →
domesticterrorism:
AFTER FOUR weeks of mass protests in nearly every corner of Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country January 14.
With protesters outside of the Ministry of Interior in Tunis chanting, “Ben Ali, thank you, but that’s enough!” his corrupt, repressive, 23-year rule came to an abrupt end. Ben Ali’s departure marks the end of a de facto dictatorship in...
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“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Blame the billionaires, not government workers →
TURNS OUT that the bankers who scored trillions of dollars in government bailout money aren’t responsible for the federal budget deficit in any way.
Neither are the super-rich who will continue to enjoy an immensely lucrative tax breaks enacted during the Bush administration thanks to a bipartisan deal brokered late last year.
And don’t point the finger at the Pentagon. The brass...
Bush and Bayer helped kill the bees →
There’s no reason for concern about the mass death of bees through Colony Collapse Disorder. No reason at all unless you happen to be a plant who relies on pollination or a living being who is planning to sustain life by eating food. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you might want to increase your stock in German agribusiness giant Bayer. They’re making a ton of money...
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