WILL “KEYSTONE COPS,” IN THE NAME OF “SECURITY,” BE SUPPRESSING PROTEST AGAINST KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE IN NEBRASKA? Local officials of the pipeline company behind the oil company, TransCanada, are in negotiations with local police enforcement agents about using “off duty” police officers to insure against “violence” among the protesters. The local protest group, Bold [...]
Captured by law enforcement after what was often a violent 24-hour manhunt. the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday now recovers in a hospital under the careful watch of state and federal officials. With considerable video evidence of his role in the crime, few think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent of participating in [...]
WATCH YOUR MOUTH, JOHN KERRY. The new U.S. Secretary of State commits the unpardonable sin of comparing the suffering visited on innocent people at the Boston Marathon with the 2010 Israeli raid and killing of numerous passengers on a “flotilla” of vessels bound with humanitarian aid to breach the Israeli blockage of Gaza. Israeli [...]
BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
At least 30 states this year have considered or passed laws that would impose new voting restrictions, as the trend of curbing access to the ballot box that culminated in long lines and breakdowns at polling places during the 2012 election continues unabated. Lawmakers in states across the country, most of them Republicans, appear tone [...]
HANDCUFFING KIDS FOR NO REASON. This is the allegation of two whistle-blowing police officers against the practices of the New York Police Department in a class action suit against the city charging racial profiling. They claim that their supervisors maintained quotas of the number of arrests and summonses they were expected to execute in [...]
ANTI-DRONE ACTION: IT’S NOT JUST A 13-HOUR RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER ANYMORE. Medea Benjaming and Noor Mir describe an April “month of uprising” against drone use both domestically and in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy interests. This “uprising” is taking many forms, including prohibitions for police use in many cities and states, protests at the [...]
What is considered by many to be the pinnacle of American democracy may be facing its greatest threat since the rampant discrimination of the 20th century that led to the creation of the protective legislation now questioned by the conservative majority that controls the highest court in the nation. Forged in the darkest days of [...]
CUBA IN A TIME OF CHOLERA. The Raul Castro government tends to deny the scope of the outbreak of the disease and resist some of the public health measures required to deal with it. This denial seems to be based on a desire not to hurt Cuba’s “reputation” as a desirable tourist destination, but [...]
THE PIVOT TO ASIA AND THE RISE OF “SYMBOLIC” U.S.-CHINA CONFLICT. Various commentators on Asian affairs comment on the possibility that both the U.S. and Chinese governments are engaged in actions of belligerence toward one another to divert publics in both their countries from failures of domestic economic policies. Filipino Asian expert Walden [...]
Recent Comments