Ayiti Kale Je: When will government authorities recognize that one of the main causes of “liquid death” and so many other crimes and tragedies is the result of their blind embrace of savage neoliberal policies?
Some New Year’s Resolutions
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I am going to continue to support the Occupy movements, which I consider the best hope for democratic change in the last 40 years, in every way I can
Thank You Daddy
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Sharon Kyle: This picture of my parents was taken in August 2004. They were dancing at my daughter’s wedding. They look like a happy couple but at the time, my father was living in Maryland and my mother, California. They hadn’t been married since the 1970′s.
Last Chance for Venezuela’s Revolution?
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Shamus Cooke:
For all the positive things Chavez has accomplished as President, he is in danger of becoming another Salvador Allende — a martyr whose death ushered in a right-wing dictatorship.
The Migrant Hotel: Where Deportees Find Shelter in Mexicali
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David Bacon: Last year, almost 400,000 people were deported from the United States. That’s the largest wave of deportations in U.S. history, even larger than the notorious “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s, or the mass deportations during the Great Depression.
To My Father
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Sharon Kyle: Today is the day we honor our fathers. Many would say I’ve chosen a peculiar way to honor mine. I won’t be having dinner with him. In fact, I will not see him today even though he lives 60 miles away. I will be in a class all day – a California bar review class – as I prepare to take the California Bar Exam. I am a middle-aged woman who has had three major jobs and is now beginning a fourth as a people’s lawyer (after passing the bar) and my father is one of the biggest reasons I push myself the way I do.
The President’s Job’s Initiative Doesn’t Measure Up
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No president in modern times walks a tightrope as exquisitely as this one. His balance is a thing of beauty. But when it comes to this economy right now — an economy fundamentally out of balance — we need a federal government that moves boldly and swiftly to counter-balance the huge recessionary forces still at large
Afghanistan, “So It Goes”
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History has shown that when foreign soldiers try to police their territory Afghanistan’s tribal, religious, and ethnic identities solidify in resistance. The American troop presence is an irritant that fuels nationalism, tribalism and insurgency.
Laughing So Hard
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So, right, it’s a wonderful movie, and as much as the LA Progressive does such things, we give it four stars, a kiss and a hug and a pat on the behind, and recommend that you see it. But I think we were touched with something more that night.
LAPD’s New Police Chief Charlie Beck: Reformer or Redeemer?
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Was Beck truly the best man for the job, or a nice parting gift to Bratton and a pacification gift the Police Protection League. We certainly shouldn’t be afraid to ask the question, as suspicious as it sounds.
Harry Reid and What Happened to the Public Option
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I’m still not giving up. I want every Senator who’s not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a “Ted Kennedy Medicare for All” amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a “Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All” amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn’t have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.
Child Witches
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Witch-hunts have always created moral panic, mass hysteria, and public lynching of society’s most vulnerable and marginalized.
It Is Likely We Have Executed Innocent People
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Troy Anthony Davis, the Death Penalty and Innocent Men Most Americans have limited contact with the judicial system. For the most part, our contact with the courts usually amounts to an occasional interaction in traffic court or small claims court. Unless you are an attorney, law student, or are in some other way associated with [...]
Colin Powell’s Best Case For America
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Throughout the primary and election campaign, I’ve received lots of smear-mail about Barack Obama. Much of it includes knowingly false statements about him being a Muslim meaning, whether the smear-mail says it openly or not, that he is one step removed from the 19 evil men who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the [...]
Ellen Comes Out Swinging Against California’s Bigoted Prop 8
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I take back everything negative I ever said about Ellen DeGeneres (and it hasn’t been much; we love Ellen in our family). The comedian and talk show host — and my son’s hero — is shelling out big bucks of her own to fight Proposition 8, the evil California ballot measure that would reverse marriage [...]
What Congressman John Lewis Was Really Saying: White Folk Getting Ready to Act Up, Y’all!
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Much ado has been made over Georgia Congressman John Lewis’ statement about the nasty turn the Presidential campaign took at Republican rallies. From Palin saying Obama was “pallin’ around with domestic terrorists, to Republican rally supporters calling the Democratic nominee “an Arab,” “a terrorist,” and calling for Obama’s death, shouting out, “Kill him!”, the rhetoric [...]
Sarah Palin Lives To Gaffe Another Day
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As usual, post-debate bloviating wandered aimlessly through the night with assessments ranging from “she did better than we thought she would,” which is what parents say when their kid doesn’t strike out at a Little League game, to the thoroughly puzzling “America must be surprised.”
The Morning After The Night Before’s Debate
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Living in the Eastern Time zone, it was well after midnight before I got to bed after watching the debate and flipping the dial to see what the Commentariat would pronounce as post-debate truth, wisdom, justice and The American Way.
The Historic Election of 2008: Hope vs. Fear. Unity vs. Division. Success vs. Failure.
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“In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. “The first is freedom of speech and expression. … “The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. … “The third is freedom from want. … “The fourth [...]
“Bush Lied, They Died” Draws a Drunken Punch
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Only an American would visit a foreign country and even think of doing what three Yanks just did to me. Here’s the skinny.
The Bradley Effect
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Since Obama’s presidential aspirations are beginning to look like they have the possibility of becoming reality, we’re hearing a term in political parlance that we haven’t heard for quite some time. The term I’m referring to is the “Bradley Effect”. I first heard mention of this phenomenon sometime in January 2008 during the Democratic Presidential [...]
“Black Is Back” in America
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The Presidency aspirations of Barack Obama have caused a renewed discussion on race in America. The prospect of a black President has cast America in a different light throughout the world — as demonstrated by Obama’s highly successful trip to the Middle East and Europe last week.
At Lyons the Rise of Obama Is a Valuable Example
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By Herb Engstrom — The main reason that I have supported Barack Obama since the declaration of his candidacy is that I feel he was the candidate that could improve the world’s image of America most rapidly. Here I have translated a relevant article that appeared last Friday in France’s “newspaper of record,” Le Monde.”
An Inconvenient Impeachment
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There he goes again, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, reading into the Congressional record just 35 of the reasons why this Congress should be impeaching this sitting president and his VP. With diminutive stature but steely resolve, Kucinich forcefully takes his place alongside the earlier patriots who stood up to executive abuse, the “high crimes and misdemeanors,” [...]
The Night of Terror: Winning the Vote for Women
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The Night of Terror at Occoquan Warehouse is the story of our grandmothers, and great-grandmothers and their fight to win the right to vote. This is what they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote in the United States. [...]
The “I Didn’t Do It” Letter
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Scott McClellan’s new confessional that’s pointed the finger at Bush administration figures in the Valerie Plame scandal reminds me of something my husband got in the mail, in the autumn of 1983. We called it the “I Didn’t Do It” letter. It arrived unexpectedly one afternoon from the offices of gold trader Alan Saxon, the [...]
Winter Soldier
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“Don’t move until it passes,” my Dad told us after our first whiteout in Montana. “The snow is blinding, it’s like a wall so just pull over and wait it out.” Our first blackout happened in the middle of a Scrabble game. Suddenly all the lights went out and the neighborhood powered down and we [...]
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So Let’s Talk About Assassination, Shall We?
Yes. I heard it. But Hillary Clinton’s only one of the most recent public figures to bring up that dirty little unmentionable in American political history. She inferred, more than once, that she, in effect, might as well stay in because – well – something could happen (presumably to her Democratic competitor, Barack Obama), maybe [...]