Category: American Empire

UPDATE: See insideAnn Wright Ann Wright was was one of three diplomats who tendered her resignation on the eve of the Iraq war in protest. Since then, she has become an international speaker on matters of war and peace and rape and assault in the military.

As many as 500 San Diegans rallied in Balboa Park seeking justice for murdered Florida teen Trayvon Martine, shot just one month ago. Protesters then marched to downtown San Diego and held another rally at the Court house.  “No justice! No peace!” was one of the loudest chants as the crowd moved through the streets.  After the rally at the courthouse steps, candles were lit to continue the vigil.

Monday’s event was the second protest in San Diego in memory of Trayvon.  One woman at the San Diego rally said, “This is our Emmet Till”. Till was a young African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.  Till’s murder is noted as a pivotal event motivating the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Protests, rallies, and marches were held across the country as the shooting with racial overtones reverberated coast to coast, including Los Angeles.

By Michael Moore / The Nation / March 14, 2012 (April 2 issue)

Occupy Wall Street. What other political movement in modern times has won the sympathy and/or support of the majority of the American public—in less than two months? How did this happen? I think it was a revolt that has been percolating across the country since Reagan fired the first air traffic controller. Then, on September 17, 2011, a group of (mostly) young adults decided to take direct action. And this action struck a raw nerve, sending a shock wave throughout the United States, because what these kids were doing was what tens of millions of people wished they could do.

Yes, we need to get the hell out of Afghanistan. Here’s why:

Almost to the day of the 44th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly left his outpost and embarked on a solitary nighttime hike to two nearby Afghan villages where he then methodically massacred 16 mostly women and children sleeping in their beds. This occurred on March 11th.

My Lai occurred on March 16th, 1968, and was the most massive civilian massacre of civilians by American ground soldiers in Vietnam. Its scale of death clearly outmatched this current horrific and monstrous act by Sgt Bales. Between 350 and 500 Vietnamese were killed – mostly women, children – even babies – , and elderly villagers.

By Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone – RSN / Originally published March 16, 2012

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers?

Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they’ll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world’s worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt’s funeral. They’re out of control, yet they’ll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

By Sheila Johnson

Last December, on a visit to Japan, I had a chance to spend a day being driven around Sendai and its environs to see at first hand some of the earthquake and tsunami damage of March, 2011. We did not go anywhere near the ‘dead-zone’ around Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, but what I saw was shocking enough — lamp-posts bent like pretzels by the force of the water, entire towns wiped from the map, and rice-fields that would normally have been covered with rice-stubble instead scrubbed clean of all topsoil.

Even worse, these rice-fields had been covered, I was told, by six feet of sea water. How long, I wondered, will it take for the salt to be leached from the soil so that rice can grow there again? And what about the nuclear fall-out and its damage to soil, plants, and animals?

Government budgets at every level now include allocations aimed at fighting an ephemeral “War on Terror” in the United States.

By Stephan Salisbury / TomDispatch.com – AlterNet / Originally published March 4, 2012

At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.

There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization — a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.

Hey Gang, for the fourth time in as many months (or at least it seems like it), the Keystone XL Pipeline has been blocked. The Republicans needed 60 votes to pass S.B. 1813, in which they inserted the rider to allow the pipeline. The bill, sponsored by Senator Boxer, was to increase the Federal Transportation Commission’s budget to build roads and increase highway safety. The bill was ostensibly a public works act to help increase employment recovery at the state and local level.

A funny thing happened on the way to figuring how to get President Obama not to sign HR 347. Yesterday late afternoon, I was on an urgent national conference call to discuss how to stop the bill. HR 347 is a bill that was passed with lightening speed with almost no opposition just recently by the Senate and House.

During the call, we were told that the bill is on President Obama’s desk and that he had until March 12th to sign it or veto it. This national phone connect was a “call to action” against the bill.

By Michael McAuliff / Huggington Post / March 8, 2012

WASHINGTON — A pair of lawmakers on Thursday offered a bill that would repeal laws that allow the indefinite detention of Americans and others by the military without trial.

The power of military authorities to arrest and jail people …

HR 347 is an authoritarian bill some say is designed to restrict the Occupy movement and to outlaw protests near or at government buildings.

Editor: On the heels of the passage of the NDAA of 2012 comes a new bill, HR 347, designed – it appears – to outlaw protests near government buildings or against government services. President Obama has yet to sign it. Learn about it here and do something about it.

By Tom Carter / wsws.org / March 3, 2012

A bill passed last Monday (Feb. 27) in the US House of Representatives and Thursday (March 1) in the Senate would make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by a lengthy prison term—to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the “anti-Occupy” law, but its implications are far broader.

The bill—H.R. 347, or the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011”—was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, while only Ron Paul and two other Republicans voted against the bill in the House of Representatives (the bill passed 388-3). Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill.

By Rodolfo F. Acuña / La Prensa San Diego / March 2, 2012

Throughout the history of Mexican Americans, education has been considered the stairway to the middle-class. Education meant security and basics such as health insurance. This heaven meant better jobs and a small house or two for old age.

As with the European immigrant, the stairway was built in stages. Those with limited education could often get union jobs. After a generation or two in factories, Mexican Americans accumulated sufficient capital to keep their children in school, and a few sent them to college.

To build the stairway, workers and their families fought for compulsory education, they petitioned school boards, and led walkouts protesting de jure and de facto school segregation.