‘Sixty percent of the world’s population, or more than four billion people, have little or no internet access…’
via The Role of the Internet in Building Just and Open Societies | Open Society Foundations (OSF).
Category: news dump
How to End Empire, by Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali [tv / web] writes: ‘…Therefore the least departure from capitalist norms on any continent, however moderately expressed or practiced, arouses the frenzy of the privileged and their retinues. Fear of the unexpected — uprisings, electoral revolts that challenge the status quo, street protests by the young, peasant jacqueries — compels the global elites to depend, in the last instance, on the threat or use of US military strength to settle every dispute in their favor. This creates a level playing field for the global rich alone, regardless of the resulting slaughter. Baghdad, Helmand, Tripoli, Kinshasa tell the tale.
Not since the interwar years has conflict been incited so shamelessly, and with such frightening frivolity. The combination of unchallengeable military power and the political intoxication it produces sweeps all else to the side. What the whole world knows to be false is proclaimed by the United States to be the truth, with media networks, vassals, and acolytes obediently in tow. The triumph of crude force is portrayed as a mark of intelligence or courage; criminal arrogance is described as moral energy.
Of course, such aggression doesn’t always succeed politically and, in most cases, the chaos it unleashes is much worse than what existed before. But the economic gains are palpable: the privatization of Libyan and Iraqi oil are the most salient examples.
via How to End Empire | Jacobin.
I am not sure that the imperialists got what they hoped for in these places – Oil and Gas are flowing from Iraq and Libya, but not even at the rates of the ‘best times’ of the prior regimes. Unless he is saying that privatization is the only point and they hope for extraction later after the natives stop resisting.
Immortal Technique in Christiania
Immortal Technique [fb / Inst]: ‘…Live from the indoor skate ramps in #Christiania The Fristaden. Nothing is perfect. But somethings are at least more honest. I got mad love here, from residents, visitors, from the Danish, and kids from all over. A few places in Africa, Britain, Italy, Afghanistan some people from the states & even Inuit people who had come from their Indigenous home of Greenland. They told me the long tumultuous story of their ongoing struggle….’
via Immortal Technique on Instagram.
Jeb Bush ‘I won’t talk about the past’
If I was a Democrat, I’d accuse Jeb of spitting in the face of the active duty US soldiers fighting his brother’s wars today.
‘Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) isn’t interested in talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially as it relates to his brother, former President George W. Bush. “I won’t talk about the past,” Bush said on Friday when a reporter asked him about an upcoming foreign policy speech in Chicago…’
via Jeb Bush On Iraq And Afghanistan Wars: ‘I Won’t Talk About The Past’.
#AtheistTerrorism — Armed and Atheist in North Carolina
‘…Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, who lived in the same condominium complex as the victims, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He is being held at Central Prison in Raleigh.
Police searched Hicks’ home the night of the shootings and found two fully loaded handguns, a fully loaded AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, two shotguns, five other rifles, two other handguns and two pellet guns, according to one search warrant. They also found numerous magazines with varying amounts of ammunition, boxes of ammunition, shotgun shells, BBs, gun scopes and other gun-related items, the warrant states…’
via 14 firearms seized from Chapel Hill shootings suspect’s home :: WRAL.com.
Pakistanis are not AntiVaxxers, they fear the CIA – and for good reason.
‘…resistance to such campaigns increased dramatically after the 2011 raid by American forces that killed Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, amid revelations that a polio campaign had been used by the C.I.A. as cover for espionage…’
via Attack on Polio Vaccination Team in Pakistan Leaves One Dead – NYTimes.com.
Video: May 2014, Democracy Now!
1790 USA: ‘Muslim American community white for purposes of the law’
‘…Let’s start at the beginning. By the time of the American Revolution, a sizeable Moroccan Muslim community—known as “Moors” in the language of the era—had developed in and around Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the community’s members were likely former slaves, but many others had chosen to immigrate from Morocco, with which the U.S. had a so-called “Treaty of Friendship.” Morocco, indeed, was the first African nation to recognize the new United States during the Revolution. Worried about being denied rights due to South Carolina’s system of slavery, a group of Muslim Americans petitioned the state’s courts requesting that they be recognized as white. A tribunal of judges led by prominent South Carolinian Charles Pinckney agreed with their petition, and the state legislature passed the Moors Sunday Act (1790), designating this Moroccan Muslim American community white for purposes of the law….’
via If This 1780s Southern Politician Fought Islamophobia, We Can Too.
Emma Goldman Papers forced to leave Berkeley
Surprise! Surprise! the state doesn’t want to fund Anarchism.
As Infoshop.org says, time to step up and support.
‘…“I’m afraid Dr. Falk has made this a bit adversarial,” [Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman says], “and we need to put things into some historical perspective. Since the project began, state support for the university has been slashed. So now, all research projects must find their own basis of support. Our current approach is to provide seed funding, but we make it clear that it comes with a time delimitation—typically three to five years. By contrast, the university provided financial support for the Goldman project for 25 years….’
via One Fewer Radical at Berkeley: Emma Goldman Papers Forced to Go Elsewhere | California Magazine.
Obama wants a blank cheque for war, and it to be backdated.
Who will remembers us, after we erased ourselves?
Vint Cerf called for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
via Google boss warns of ‘forgotten century’ with email and photos at risk | Technology | The Guardian.
Who pays for the USA’s Islamophobia Network?
‘Explore the $57 million network fueling Islamophobia in the United States.’
Start here » https://islamophobianetwork.com/
‘This in-depth investigation conducted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund reveals a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing. This spreading of hate and misinformation primarily starts with six key people and their organizations, which are sustained by funding from a clutch of key foundations.’
» https://islamophobianetwork.com/about
Atheist Terrorism, American-Style
‘…What’s hard to get one’s mind around is that everyone who’s singing this tune—the police, the wife, the prosecutor—seems to think that it’s reassuring. Getting blown away by a neighbor just because he’s pissed off at you for some ridiculous reason has become the equivalent of a natural disaster in our country, with our gun culture. It’s got nothing to do with the killer’s ideology, or with the victim’s identity. That’s the thinking. And, with this “parking” alibi, we’re being asked to imagine that these killings are a private tragedy, not some big public deal—not terrorism, not even like terrorism. We’re being told to believe that the vigilante killing of three young Americans is socially and politically meaningless.
It seems we are also supposed to be relieved by the fact that Hicks, who carried a gun to earlier confrontations with his neighbors, was not a religious fanatic. Are we then supposed to ignore the fact that he was an anti-religious fanatic, who was said to have taunted the women he later killed for dressing according to their traditions and beliefs? We are told that he was in favor of gay marriage, as if that negated his militant intolerance of others. He spent most of his time on Facebook heaping contempt on Christians, who are more numerous by far in Hicks’s neck of the woods than Muslims. And yet with law-enforcement sounding like Hicks-family spin doctors, we are being urged to consider this murderer as a figure of all-embracing American assimilation—a man who did not care who they were but hated them as he would hate anyone and everyone, equally and without fear or favor, for the way they parked…’
via The Chapel Hill Massacre Blues – The New Yorker.
Richard Seymour reviews Hollywood’s extra-judicial killings
‘Richard Seymour reviews 24, Zero Dark Thirty, and Homeland and explains that what they all have in common is that they emerge from a cultural terrain formed by the ‘war on terror’ and its aftermath.’
Tariq Ali’s blog » http://tariqalitv.com/portfolio/27-extra-judicial-killings/
Obama gives the next President an Unlimited War
Bruce Ackerman writes:
‘…The problem is the double-barreled position advanced by Mr. Obama. He asserts that he already has sufficient congressional authority for an open-ended war with the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS. He bases this claim on an expansive reading of Congress’s 2001 resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to make war on Al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks. As long as this resolution remains on the books, Mr. Obama claims, he can continue fighting, even if Congress never agrees to a new resolution.
[….] In short, “Heads I win; tails you lose.” Whether or not Congress passes Obama’s new resolution, the next president can continue making war indefinitely….’
via Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War – NYTimes.com.
RIP: 60 Minutes’ Bob Simon
RIP Bob Simon.
‘Veteran CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, for more than four decades one of America’s most respected journalists, was killed in a crash Wednesday night after his limo driver lost control of the vehicle on the West Side Highway….’
via 60 Minutes’ Bob Simon killed in car crash | New York Post.
US Judge: People Who Say W Bush Lied To Rise Of Nazis
Just wow.
‘…A federal appeals judge wrote in a column published on Sunday that people who accuse former President George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War are peddling myths like those that led to the rise of Hitler….’
via Federal Appeals Judge Compares People Who Say Bush Lied To Rise Of Nazis.
and, as if facts mattered, read this:
CNN 2008: ‘President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups….’
via Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war – CNN.com.
Jeb Bush is a dick.
‘…Jeb Bush, a rumored 2016 Republican presidential candidate, just decided to publish hundreds of thousands of emails sent to him during his time as governor of Florida. On its face it seems like a great idea in the name of transparency, but there’s one huge problem: neither Bush nor those who facilitated the publication of the records, including the state government, decided to redact potentially sensitive personal information from them…’
via Jeb Bush dumps emails including social security numbers of Florida residents online | The Verge.
Bob Dylan thanks Johnny Cash
Bob Dylan @ Grammys 2015:
‘…Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about ’63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. “Big River,” “I Walk the Line.”
“How high’s the water, Mama?” I wrote “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, “How high is the water, mama?” Johnny was an intense character. And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted letters to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing.
In Johnny Cash’s world — hardcore Southern drama — that kind of thing didn’t exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. They just didn’t do that kind of thing. I’m always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the man in black. And I’ll always cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days…’
via Grammys 2015: Transcript of Bob Dylan’s MusiCares Person of Year speech – LA Times.
The Mayor is also pro-shoplifting
‘…On the face of it, the Spanish town of Marinaleda is indistinguishable from any other in its region. Nestled in the picturesque Campiña valley, the surrounding countryside is made up of rolling green hills, miles of olive plantations and golden fields of wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. The town is pretty, tranquil and typical of those found in Andalusia, Spain’s poorest and most southerly province.
It’s also a democratic, anti-capitalist village whose mayor actively encourages shoplifting…’
via A City Where Everyone Works, There Is No Police, And The Salary Is 1200 Euros |.
Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains
‘….It is remarkable that it is so common for cells from one individual to integrate into the tissues of another distinct person. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as singular autonomous individuals, and these foreign cells seem to belie that notion, and suggest that most people carry remnants of other individuals. As remarkable as this may be, stunning results from a new study show that cells from other individuals are also found in the brain. In this study, male cells were found in the brains of women and had been living there, in some cases, for several decades…’
via Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains – Scientific American.
Is Police Reform Impossible in America?
Donovan X. Ramsey writes:
‘…America is safer than it was 20 years ago. Really. Still, white Americans (and many black Americans, for that matter) believe there’s more violent crime than there actually is, and that blacks are largely responsible for it.
In fact, nearly half of white Americans polled believe that violent crime has increased in the last 20 years. Another 13 percent believe that it’s stayed the same. Less than a quarter of whites realize there are less violent crimes today than there were in the 90s when the crack epidemic and gang violence were at their height. Even more, whites overestimate just how much blacks are involved in “serious street crime” and, on average, believe that black people commit a larger proportion of crime than whites do. According to a 2012 study by researchers at the University at Albany, whites significantly overestimate the share of armed robberies, break-ins and drug crimes committed by black people.
via Police Reform Is Impossible in America.
Google Translate defines ‘A Gecik’
Why this sudden plunge in oil prices?
Michael T. Klare writes:
‘…Why this sudden plunge in oil prices? That old mantra, supply and demand, is mostly to blame. The high prices of recent years have been driven, in large part, by ever-increasing demand from China and other rapidly developing countries of the Global South. Chinese consumption jumped from 7 million barrels per day in 2005 to 11 million in 2014; comparable increases were posted by India, Indonesia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Production increased to satisfy all this added demand, but not always fast enough to keep up—thus explaining those high prices. Over the past six months, however, the fundamentals have shifted. The economic doldrums in Europe and tepid growth elsewhere have resulted in less than expected levels of demand, while the flow of crude from America’s shale formations has reached flood proportions, producing a glut of supply and driving prices downward.
Historically, the major oil powers have responded to falling prices by reining in production, thereby constricting supply and reversing the slide—but not this time around. Saudi Arabia, which lost market share to its rivals after pursuing this strategy in previous price declines, has chosen to keep pumping at current rates. At the same time, several producers, including Iraq and Russia, have increased their output. But with the US market inundated with cheap domestic shale oil and demand shrinking elsewhere, the Saudis and their competitors have been forced to lower prices in order to attract customers in non-US markets. Some have speculated that the Saudis also hope that low prices will force the Russians into curtailing their support for the Assad regime in Syria; but retaining market share appears to be their principal objective.
Whatever the combination of factors at work, the plunge in prices is having far-reaching consequences. For countries that depend on oil revenue to finance government operations, the price collapse has already inflicted serious damage. Major producers like Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela have announced budget cutbacks, significantly impairing the ability of these governments to implement favored domestic and international programs. Russia, for example, is under pressure to reduce its military expenditures, calling into question its ability to undertake major military operations in Ukraine or other peripheral regions.
via The Oil Price Collapse Is Not Just Another Bust Cycle | The Nation.
Swedes and Pirates
Ted Rall asks why it ok to burn them?
Ted Rall asks:
‘Americans were shocked by a video released by the Islamic State depicting the execution by immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot. But the United States burned many, many Iraqis to death in 2004 – and nobody cared. Why the different reactions?’
via Burning with Rage at The Other | Ted Rall’s Rallblog.
