...Furthermore, it's pretty clear that from this perspective, the police have no reciprocal "responsibilities" to the citizenry.

Amplify’d from www.informationliberation.com

Support Your Local Police State

In the recent nationally coordinated police crack-downs on “Occupy” protesters we have seen the following scenario play out numerous times: Peaceful demonstrators confront riot police; individual riot policeman commits physical aggression against protester, then immediately escalates the conflict by using potentially lethal force; when the crowd reacts, the other police officers – rather than coming to the aid of the victim – form a protective barricade (I call it a “thugscrum”) around the assailant.

Anytime a police officer commits an act of aggressive violence he is engaged in a criminal assault. If his fellow officers won't intervene to stop him, law-abiding citizens have the moral authority to do so. But this simply won't do, tut-tuts the program manual for the national Support Your Local Police campaign: Read more at www.informationliberation.com

 

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Bolivia's President Says U.S. DEA Agents Not Welcome Back

Amplify’d from www.tokeofthetown.com

Bolivia's President Says U.S. DEA Agents Not Welcome Back

The president and vice president of Bolivia both said this week that American drug agents will not be returning to their country, despite the newly announced normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States.

"They repressed us in Bolivia," Morales said. "That has ended."

"For the first time since Bolivia was founded, the United States will now respect Bolivia's rules," Morales said.

​The DEA "was a mechanism of political blackmail," according to Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, and is not welcome back in Bolivia, reports Fox News. Read more at www.tokeofthetown.com

 

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Organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

It's important to remember that historically, organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

Amplify’d from www.globalresearch.ca

It's important to remember that historically, organized labour has been the most effective vehicle for challenging economic inequality;

Organized Labour and the Occupations Movement

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon has achieved a stature and longevity unrivaled by recent demonstrations in the United States, and has understandably struck a chord with a wide range of people dismayed by the barbaric level of inequality that is the defining feature of contemporary American society. As the small encampment in lower Manhattan has swelled and spread to cities across the country, the rallying cry of the “99%” has at least momentarily introduced the mainstream discourse to a conception of class, which is usually missing from the political theater showcased on corporate news outlets. The risks posed by an over-reliance on mass media coverage notwithstanding, the organizers’ ability to attract the public eye has been impressive and is an encouraging reminder that most people are yearning for a political vision that resonates with the material anxieties they feel. As the most brutal economic crisis in over a generation grinds on for the third consecutive year, perhaps most surprising is that it has taken so long for such an upsurge to occur.

Staying Power?

Chicago police arrest members of National Nurses United, and tear down their first aid tent at Occupy Chicago. [Photo: National United Nurses.]

Years of Struggle

Here the civil rights movement, which is often invoked in relation to OWS, is instructive. Unmentioned in most grade school lore on the subject, the struggle for racial justice grew out of a deeply rooted organizational apparatus that had been constructed through decades of diligent labour and community organizing. Rosa Parks was a seasoned activist who had been trained at the legendary leftist organizing academy, the Highlander Folk School, and Martin Luther King Jr. owes his beginnings to veteran trade unionists who recruited him. No miracles initiated this historic fight; it was planned and executed by individuals and their organizations who through years of struggle in pursuit of concrete demands had cultivated powerful bases of support in specific communities.

Weakened though they may be, and with all the limitations of their sedentary bureaucracies, unions are still the most democratic membership organizations in the United States, with established activists and infrastructures in cities across the country that possess the practical skills and resources necessary to carry on the fight... Read more at www.globalresearch.ca

 

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Federal Judge Blocks Florida's New Welfare Drug Testing Law

HA!

Amplify’d from www.tokeofthetown.com

Federal Judge Blocks Florida's New Welfare Drug Testing Law

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked Florida's new law requiring welfare applicants to pass a drug test before receiving benefits. U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven said it may violate the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

​The judge rejected many of the state of Florida's claims of why the drug tests are legal, reports Amy Pavuk at the Orlando Sentinel. She dismantled the state's arguments that drug tests are not a search, that welfare applicants are more likely to use drugs than the general population, and that the state has a "special interest" in drug testing welfare applicants that would outweigh constitutional rules against it, reports Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org.

"Such blanket intrusions cannot be countenanced under the Fourth Amendment," the judge ruled. Read more at www.tokeofthetown.com

 

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ScienceShot: First Look at Marijuana's Genetic Code

Amplify’d from news.sciencemag.org

ScienceShot: First Look at Marijuana's Genetic Code

See more at news.sciencemag.org

 

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Dr. Dr. -Gimmie the news...

Amplify’d from www.latimes.com

California Medical Assn. calls for legalization of marijuana

The doctor group questions the medical value of pot and acknowledges some health risk from its use but urges it be regulated like alcohol. A law enforcement official harshly criticizes the new stance.

Lyman says current laws have "proven to be a failed public health policy." He cited increased prison costs, the effect on families when marijuana users are imprisoned and racial inequalities in drug-sentencing cases. Read more at www.latimes.com

 

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Here Are The Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About...

Here Are The Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About...

The War You Don’t See

The film begins with a thumbnail history of modern war propaganda, which Pilger traces back to Edward Bernays, the father of public relations. Bernays, who began his career by helping Woodrow Wilson to “sell” World War I to the American people, talks in his famous book Propaganda about the public being the “enemy” which must be “countered.”

Amplify’d from blogs.alternet.org

Banned in the US: the Film You Won’t See

Americans now have the opportunity of seeing John Pilger’s critically acclaimed The War You Don’t See as a free download at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/ The groundbreaking documentary was effectively banned in the US when Patrick Lannan, who funds the “liberal” Lannon Foundation, canceled the American premier (and all Pilger’s public appearances) in June 2010. Pilger provides the full background of this blatant act of censorship at his website www.johnpilger.com. After seeing the film, I believe its strong support of Julian Assange (who the US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute) is the most likely reason it’s not being shown in American theatres. Read more at blogs.alternet.org

 

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Amplify’d from gizmodo.com

Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment

Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment

An 18-million-second picture palette

Read more at gizmodo.com

 

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North Korea Prison Camps:200,000 Living as Slaves

Amnesty International suspects that the horrific concentration camps in North Korea are growing. Some 200,000 people live as slaves – enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor.

Amplify’d from singularityhub.com

Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

No one really knows how bad it is, but it’s much worse than I thought possible. Piecing together information from satellite images and eye witness accounts, Amnesty International suspects that the horrific concentration camps in North Korea are growing. Some 200,000 people live as slaves – enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor. Many die every year, only to be replaced by fresh bodies. Of those that survive, few will ever be released. Deemed ‘prisoners’, the victims of North Korea’s political pogroms are interned for the smallest criticisms of the regime of Kim Jong-Il, and when they are carried away their extended families are rounded up as well. This is not genocide, it’s not a war crime, it’s an unending consequence of North Korea’s authoritarian government.

We are confronted with so many atrocities in global news that it’s hard to pierce our desensitized skin. I can’t describe the horrific conditions in the North Korean slave camps, but Jeong Kyoungil can. He was detained for years at Yodok, officially known as Kwan-li-so (reeducation center) Number 15. Inside its walls he fought frostbite from the bitter cold, starvation, endless work, and a continual stripping of his humanity. He describes how the death of fellow inmates was a joy – an opportunity – because burying these bodies earned an extra helping of food. To starving slaves such as Kyoungil, a few more bites of corn gruel was the difference between life and death. In the following video from Amnesty Internation, Kyoungil describes more of his time in Yodok, and the soul wrenching things he saw there. Read more at singularityhub.com

 

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A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

Amplify’d from www.rollingstone.com

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group, is sworn in while testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee on Capitol Hill on April 27, 2010 in Washington, DC.

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial. Read more at www.rollingstone.com

 

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National Jukebox

Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress

Amplify’d from www.loc.gov

View Playlist National Jukebox Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.

About the National Jukebox Read more at www.loc.gov

 

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Pot Prohibition Turns 100-Years-Old

A Centennial Anniversary That’s Hardly Worth Celebrating!!!

“Despite a century of ever-zealous enforcement and thunderous propaganda at taxpayer expense, marijuana inextricably permeates our culture. Its cultivation, commerce and use have proven ineradicable. We have tried mightily and we have failed to extirpate it. If anyone, anywhere, believes that spending more money on marijuana enforcement will drive out pot, let that person come forward and tell us plainly what it will take to make that happen, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from."!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amplify’d from blogs.alternet.org

Pot Prohibition Turns 100-Years-Old: A Centennial Anniversary That’s Hardly Worth Celebrating

Marijuana prohibition ‘celebrates’ its centennial anniversary today. That’s right, the government’s war on cannabis consumers is now officially 100-years-old.

Self-evidently, cannabis has won.

Although many credit the passage of the federal Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 with the initiation of pot prohibition, the reality is that one hundred years ago today, Massachusetts Governor Eugene Foss signed the first statewide anti-pot prohibition into law. Following Massachusetts, over 30 states quickly followed suit — including California, Maine, Indiana and Wyoming in 1913 — leading the way for federal prohibition some two-and-a-half decades later.

Of course, cannabis use was practically non-existent in Massachusetts (as well as in most of the rest of the country) in 1911. Yet today, 100 years following the plant’s criminalization, the state boasts one of the highest rates of pot use in the nation.

Writing today in the Milford (Massachusetts) Daily News, former NORML Board Member Richard Evans, author of Massachusetts House Bill 1371, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act, nails it:

“Despite a century of ever-zealous enforcement and thunderous propaganda at taxpayer expense, marijuana inextricably permeates our culture. Its cultivation, commerce and use have proven ineradicable. We have tried mightily and we have failed to extirpate it. If anyone, anywhere, believes that spending more money on marijuana enforcement will drive out pot, let that person come forward and tell us plainly what it will take to make that happen, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from.

The futility of enforcement, however, is not the urgent reason to legalize it. The reason is that prohibition has become a destructive force in our society. Read more at blogs.alternet.org

 

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