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Life in Occupied Chicago
by Stephen Lendman
Through Monday, downtown residents live in occupied Chicago.
Secret Service agents, NORTHCOM and National Guard forces, as well as thousands of state and local police seem everywhere.
Getting around feels hazardous. Anyone may be stopped, searched, interrogated, even arrested.
Residents were advised to hunker down and stay out of harm's way as best as possible. For many, it's not easy. More on a city under siege below.
NATO is the world's first global war-making alliance. Largely a US imperial tool, it's a killing machine. Its 28 members and dozens of partner states comprise about one-third of the world's nations.
Chicago Under Siege
by Stephen Lendman
NATO arrives everywhere violently. Chicago was no exception. During summit activities, city cops are enforcers. They specialize in serving wealth, power, and imperial interests.
Their guerrilla warfare history is notorious. They're reliable state terror partners.
Their tactics include no-holds barred surveillance, vigilantism, and brutality. They're infamous for physical confrontation, flagrant abuse, and criminal assaults.
From 2002 - 2004 alone, over 10,000 complaints were lodged. Many involve violence, brutality, even torture and murder. Only 18 disciplinary actions followed.
University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman heads its Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project (PAP). It's one of America's leading civil rights initiatives.
When the Respectable Become Extremists The Extremists Become Respectable: Colombia and the Mainstream Media
By James Petras
Introduction: By any historical measure, whether it involves international law, human rights conventions, United Nations protocols, socio economic indicators, the policies and practices of the United States and European Union regimes can be characterized as extremist.
By that we mean that their policies and practices result in large scale long-term systematic destruction of human lives, habitat and likelihood affecting millions of people through the direct application of force and violence. The extremist regimes abhor moderation which implies rejection of total wars in favor of peaceful negotiations. Moderation pursues conflict resolution through diplomacy and compromise and the rejection of state and paramilitary terror, mass dispossession and displacement of civilian populations and the systematic assault on popular sectors of civil society.
NATO / ROGUE ARM OF AMERICA’S WAR MACHINE MUST BE DISMANTLED
Allen L Roland
Graphic from Left Turn / Virage a Gauche
Let’s get something straight ~ NATO is the rogue arm of America’s war machine whereas it has become a global military alliance and obviously designed to engage in aggressive invasions, preemptive wars as well as collaborate with the CIA in numerous illegal activities. Don’t be fooled, America has created an unaccountable international cold war mechanism that enables it to willfully ignore and evade national and international law ~ and it must be dismantled:
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
As I mentioned on Press TV earlier this year ~ The Obama administration has militarized the police force for the street protests yet to come which should reach a climax in Chicago now at the NATO summit meetings. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/226114.html
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Chicago was designated a National Special Security Event, which puts the Secret Service in charge of "event security"; the FBI in control of "intelligence, counter terrorism, hostage rescue and investigation of incidents of terrorism or other major criminal activities"; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of "recovery management in the aftermath of terrorist or other major criminal incidents, natural disasters or other catastrophic events," reported the Independent.
'Our imperative is to promote growth and jobs,' G-8 Leaders
By Michael Collins
So, now it's an imperative to "promote growth."
The joint statement (full text after the jump) from the G-8 meeting in Chicago documents the utter failure of the very leaders who issued it. Were they capable leaders with the least knowledge of economic downturns, the statement would not be necessary. Nevertheless, they deserve some credit for admitting their deficiencies. Unfortunately, they have no serious solutions. (Image Banksy)
The joint statement has some weasel words like "We commit to fiscal responsibility" to balance the urgent words about growth and jobs". That reflects the atavistic positions of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Merkel suffered a huge set back in the Westphalia state elections with her Christian Democratic Party losing 25% to 50%. Corporate media maintains that her popularity as a leader is higher than ever.
Her Scrooge faction comrade, PM Cameron is also pushing austerity. Nobody can pretend that his polling is any better than his party. The Conservatives were wiped out in local elections and Cameron is going down without a life jacket.
The closing paragraph is the give away. The urgent need for growth must accommodate "the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) to stimulating job and economic growth" We will regulate our way out of this crisis by taking the Yellow Brick Road to oppressive copyright laws. What a relief! They're serious.
Did Texas execute yet another innocent man?
Mary Shaw
Carlos DeLuna
A recent study by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review suggests that Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, was actually innocent. The study concluded that a man named Carlos Hernandez actually committed the murder. In other words, the so-called justice system had convicted the wrong Carlos.
According to the report, Hernandez "was well-known to police and prosecutors at the time and had a long history of violent crimes." In fact, Hernandez was arrested for another murder while DeLuna was on death row, and died in prison in 1999, after having admitted that he killed Lopez.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Quiet Drama in Philadelphia
by Ellen Brown
“You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to skip out for beer during commercials. Because the revolution will not be televised. . . . The revolution will be live.” –From the 1970 hit song by Gil Scott-Heron
Last week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year, and 64 schools by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of its current enrollment, and thousands of experienced, qualified teachers.
But corporate media in other cities made no mention of these massive school closings – nor of those in Chicago, Atlanta, or New York City. Even in the Philadelphia media, the voices of the parents, students and teachers who will suffer were omitted from most accounts.
The Politics of Language and the Language of Political Regression
James Petras
Capitalism and its defenders maintain dominance through the ‘material resources’ at their command, especially the state apparatus, and their productive, financial and commercial enterprises, as well as through the manipulation of popular consciousness via ideologues, journalists, academics and publicists who fabricate the arguments and the language to frame the issues of the day.
Today material conditions for the vast majority of working people have sharply deteriorated as the capitalist class shifts the entire burden of the crisis and the recovery of their profits onto the backs of wage and salaried classes. One of the striking aspects of this sustained and on-going roll-back of living standards is the absence of a major social upheaval so far. Greece and Spain, with over 50% unemployment among its 16-24 year olds and nearly 25% general unemployment, have experienced a dozen general strikes and numerous multi-million person national protests; but these have failed to produce any real change in regime or policies. The mass firings and painful salary, wage, pension and social services cuts continue. In other countries, like Italy, France and England, protests and discontent find expression in the electoral arena, with incumbents voted out and replaced by the traditional opposition. Yet throughout the social turmoil and profound socio-economic erosion of living and working conditions, the dominant ideology informing the movements, trade unions and political opposition is reformist: Issuing calls to defend existing social benefits, increase public spending and investments and expand the role of the state where private sector activity has failed to invest or employ. In other words, the left proposes to conserve a past when capitalism was harnessed to the welfare state.
Get Ready to Shake, Rattle and Glow -- The Worst is Yet to Come at Japan’s Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
By Vincent L. Guarisco
It's been over a year since the most powerful 9.0 earthquake in Japan's history struck and a monstrous tsunami reached an astonishing height of 133 feet, severely damaging the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. I published my first article about this disaster back in July, 2011. Since that fateful day on Friday, March 11, 2011, every second of every day, millions of unsuspecting people continue to be exposed to harmful amounts of radiation from three reactor meltdowns. This includes a host of fission products: Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium and uranium. Even as I type this essay, mass exposure is ongoing on multiple continents and, as a direct result, many healthy souls will get sick and die premature deaths. However, the worst may be forthcoming ...
Is the Occupy Movement Justified?
By Timothy V. Gatto
We all know that the economy is a mess. The public's perception of how bad the economy really is, and what is in store for us in the future, varies from one individual to another. One continuous perception that is reported on is that during the great depression, the majority view was that things would get better, that manufacturing jobs would come back, and that better times were ahead. These viewpoints are not held, according to different polls, by the American public today.
Americans have seen our manufacturing sector shipped overseas mainly to take advantage of cheap labor and also because of more liberal oversight of government regulations. Working conditions are not regulated as much, unions are either non-existent or ineffective, and the cost of doing business is much lower overseas. It is really not too difficult to see why our manufacturing base has been outsourced.
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