Category: Civil Rights

Last week the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the City’s Police Department has decided to purchase a mobile observation tower. Paying the $119,000 price tag with funds from a Homeland Security grant, the SDPD has already tried the tower out out on numerous occasions, and expects delivery of the two-storied platform in February.
Police told the U-T that they had used the tower at the beach over Labor Day, had used it at UTC during the recent holidays and at Qualcomm when the Raiders played the Chargers. “It has assisted us in making arrests, ” police Capt. Shelly Zimmerman told the newspaper, “and has certainly been a huge deterrent.” We’re told that the El Cajon police use a similar tower at Westfield Parkway Plaza shopping mall to “monitor crowds.”

Peace activists in the nation’s capital met for weeks last fall, brainstorming how they’d demonstrate their opposition at the inauguration of John McCain as president. Then Barack Obama won the election. What’s a liberal protester to do? “It was a happy dilemma,” said Barbra Bearden, spokeswoman for Peace Action, which is affiliated with the Activist Coalition of D.C.

Among the wars currently being fought by the American government is one in which there can be no winners. Our prior law enforcement experiences warn us that the “war on terrorism” has spawned an internal “war on dissent” in which everyone loses.

MARJORIE COHN: Since Israel began its war on Gaza nearly 2 weeks ago, more than 680 Palestinians — about a quarter of them civilians — have been killed. Some three thousand Gazans, including hundreds of children, have been wounded. Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” marks an escalation of Israel’s two-year blockade of the Gaza Strip which has deprived 1.5 million Palestinians of necessary food, medicine, fuel and other necessities.

Today – Thursday, January 8 – a group of 70 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials will join a conference call, set up in Washington, D.C., to decide the fate of 150,000 members of United Healthcare Workers-West, SEIU’s third-largest affiliate. Among the actions the SEIU International Executive Board (IEB) may take is transferring 65,000 long-term care workers in California, against their will, from UHW into a new statewide entity with officers appointed by SEIU President Andy Stern.

What does history tell us about the proper role of American politicians during wartime? Supporters of President Bush like to compare his leadership in pursuing the unpopular Iraqi war to the steadfastness of Abraham Lincoln in his own prosecution of the difficult Civil War. … Trouble is, Lincoln had quite a different attitude toward another war, the little-known Mexican War of 1846-48.

Like they did for the Iraq War, the corporate media has grossly under-represented this week’s U.S. peace protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. A Dec. 31st Associated Press story on the protests reported that “hundreds” of people had participated in “pro-Palestinian protests” on Tues., Dec. 30th, and made it seem as if these protests had only occurred in five cities: N.Y.C, L.A., Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, and Dearborn, Michigan.

LETTER FROM BETHLEHEM: Dear Friends and Family- It’s 2009 but I have a hard time calling it a new year. I didn’t go to a new year’s eve party – they were all canceled out of respect for the people in Gaza. Instead Hazem and I went to dinner with a few friends and came home to once again watch the news. The broadcasted firework displays, which have always amazed and dazzled me, only reminded me of the sky in Gaza.

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side.

Heavy fighting has taken place in and around Gaza City with Palestinian fighters putting up a stiff resistance to advancing Israeli ground forces. Large explosions and intense gun battles were reported from the Shejaiya neighbourhood late on Monday. Flares lit up the skies as Israeli helicopter gunships and fighter jets flew low over the the city.
Palestinian civilians are continuing to suffer as the Israeli military pushes deeper into the Gaza Strip. At least 548 people have been killed in the territory in the last 10 days, with at least 100 deaths reported since the Israeli ground offensive began on Saturday.

After weeks of Minnesota recount wrangling over the close contest between Republican Senator Norm Coleman and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken, the state canvassing board has certified Franken as the winner. The canvassing board decision came Monday afternoon, after a final review of the tally, put Franken ahead by 225 votes. The formal issuance of a certificate of election will not come for at least a week — perhaps longer — as legal challenges are sorted out.

In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration’s 10 greatest moments — disastrous failures, all — is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush’s memory before we go to bed every night.