Watch Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Blast the Keystone Bill
| January 12, 2015 | 8:17 pm | Analysis, Bernie Sanders, Economy, National | Comments closed

January 10, 2015

by Katie Rose Quandt
Source: BillMoyers.com
As expected, a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline sailed through the House of Representatives for the tenth time on Friday. The bill is predicted to pass the Senate next week, but Republicans may not have enough votes to override the veto Obama has promised.
On Wednesday we got a preview of the Senate debate when the Energy and Natural Resources Committee met to vote on the bill. Before the vote, which passed 13-9, Democrats used the opportunity to express their environmental concerns, question the bill’s job-creation numbers and propose that the steel piping must be American-made. Republicans touted the pipeline as an economy-boosting job creator that will give the US energy independence. The most striking moments came when the microphone went to Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who eloquently summed up the arguments against building a tar sands pipeline directly through the United States.
Taking the environmental angle, Sen. Bernie Sanders implored his fellow senators to think of their grandchildren, who will one day ask, “What were you doing? Did you not hear what the scientific community all over the world was saying?”
Later in the hearing, Sen. Sanders proposed a four-part amendment officially recognizing the following:
“One, climate change is real. Two, climate change is caused by human activity. Three, climate change has already caused devastating problems in the United States and around the world. And, four, it is imperative the United States transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the lone committee Democrat in favor of the pipeline, responded that while he agrees with parts one, two and three, “the fourth one’s a killer, Bernie.” Eventually, Sanders’ amendment was tabled.
When Sen. Warren had a chance to speak, she immediately challenged: “I want to to know why the pipeline is the very first, number one item on the agenda in this new Congress. Who does this new Republic Congress work for? Foreign oil companies or the American people?”
Here’s a rundown of some other memorable statements from senators on both sides of the aisle:
1. Using what has become something of a go-to pro-pipeline argument, Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) questioned why the bill has been stalled in Congress for six years, when “Americans won World War II in a shorter amount of time.”
2. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) described the destruction caused by a 2010 tar sand spill in her home state’s Kalamazoo River: “We still can’t fish. People along the river can’t use their property, their backyards. This is going to take tens of years to clean up.”
3. Committee Chairperson Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stated that although she believes in climate change, I don’t agree that all the changes are necessarily due solely to human activity.” She welcomed her fellow senators to visit the Permafrost Tunnel in Alaska, to view evidence of long-term climatic shifts.
4. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) is worried about precedent: “My fear is that by making tar sands the linchpin of American energy policy, we are literally locking ourselves into a policy that fully embraces energy imports and extremely high levels of relative carbon pollution for as long as 50 years. All at a time when we should have a national policy focused on domestic production and ever cleaner fuel sources. A vote to approve Keystone sends the signal that carbon pollution and climate change are not serious economic concerns.”
5. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) said the pipeline will keep electricity rates low in rural Montana: “As I was traveling one day to a rural co-op in Glasgow, Montana, there in my pickup, show up in my jeans and my jacket, they told me that if the Keystone pipeline’s approved, electric rate for their co-op will remain flat for the next 10 years. Why? Because they will supply electricity to the pump stations in the pipeline.”
6. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) spoke out for the “hundreds of communities that are home to millions of people” along the pipeline’s path. “These communities rely on the surrounding land for clean water. They also rely on the land for grazing, cattle and other economic activities … We owe it to the people and communities in this region to follow the process that’s been set in law to proceed. And that is the presidential review process … This bill short-circuits that process.”
7. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) argued that the pipeline could curb US dependence on Saudi Arabian and Venezuelan oil. “We already buy 2.5 million barrels a day from Canada … We’re being told right now that if we don’t build this line, that the price will go up. I’ve never — I don’t understand economics. I understand one thing. Security of our nation depends on us having the ability to have control of our own destiny.”
8. Sen. Angus King (I-ME) noted that the bill is “peculiar,” explaining: “I don’t know if I’ve ever recalled seeing a bill in any legislature that starts with the name of a particular company that’s the beneficiary … We’re supposed to be establishing policy here, not issuing building permits to individual companies. You know, why not write a bill to give money to Apple Computer?” King also noted that the US added 20,000 construction jobs in November, “and this project is talking about 4,000 jobs over the course of two years. They’re important jobs, absolutely, but let’s put them in the context of the overall national economy. Permanent jobs: 35. A new McDonald’s in Fargo, North Dakota, would add more than 35 jobs.
Katie Rose Quandt reports and produces for BillMoyers.com. She was previously a senior fellow at Mother Jones, and has written for America, In These Times, and Solitary Watch. You can follow Katie Rose on twitter @katierosequandt.
Stop private militias in Texas!
| January 11, 2015 | 7:35 pm | Action, Immigrants' Rights, Local/State | Comments closed

Please sign the petition

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/stop-private-militias?source=c.em&r_by=8638452

 

 

I am a 20th Century Escaped Slave
| January 9, 2015 | 10:37 pm | Cuba | Comments closed
From COUNTERPUNCH
COUNTERPUNCH
December 30, 2014
An Open Letter to the Media
 
by ASSATA SHAKUR
My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave.
Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.
I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.
In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:
“The FBI and the New York Police Department in particular, charged and accused Assata Shakur of participating in attacks on law enforcement personnel and widely circulated such charges and accusations among police agencies and units. The FBI and the NYPD further charged her as being a leader of the Black Liberation Army which the government and its respective agencies described as an organization engaged in the shooting of police officers.
This description of the Black Liberation Army and the accusation of Assata Shakur’s relationship to it was widely circulated by government agents among police agencies and units. As a result of these activities by the government, Ms. Shakur became a hunted person; posters in police precincts and banks described her as being involved in serious criminal activities; she was highlighted on the FBI’s most wanted list; and to police at all levels she became a ‘shoot-to-kill’ target.”
I was falsely accused in six different “criminal cases” and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed.
The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the “evidence” presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.
On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty tail light.” Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became “suspicious.” He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back.
Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Foerster was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Foerster. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Foerster was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths.

Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison.

In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.
The U.S. Senate’s 1976 Church Commission report on intelligence operations inside the USA, revealed that “The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the public’s perception of persons and organizations by disseminating derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through “friendly” news contacts.” This same policy is evidently still very much in effect today.
On December 24, 1997, The New Jersey State called a press conference to announce that New Jersey State Police had written a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on their behalf and to aid in having me extradited back to New Jersey prisons. The New Jersey State Police refused to make their letter public. Knowing that they had probably totally distorted the facts, and attempted to get the Pope to do the devils work in the name of religion, I decided to write the Pope to inform him about the reality of’ “justice” for black people in the State of New Jersey and in the United States.
In January of 1998, during the pope’s visit to Cuba, I agreed to do an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza around my letter to the Pope, about my experiences in New Jersey court system, and about the changes I saw in the United States and it’s treatment of Black people in the last 25 years. I agreed to do this interview because I saw this secret letter to the Pope as a vicious, vulgar, publicity maneuver on the part of the New Jersey State Police, and as a cynical attempt to manipulate Pope John Paul II. I have lived in Cuba for many years, and was completely out of touch with the sensationalist, dishonest, nature of the establishment media today. It is worse today than it was 30 years ago.

After years of being victimized by the “establishment” media it was naive of me to hope that I might finally get the opportunity to tell “my side of the story.” Instead of an interview with me, what took place was a “staged media event” in three parts, full of distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies. NBC purposely misrepresented the facts. Not only did NBC spend thousands of dollars promoting this “exclusive interview series” on NBC, they also spent a great deal of money advertising this “exclusive interview” on black radio stations and also placed notices in local newspapers.

Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press. The black press and the progressive media has historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We need to continue and to expand that tradition. We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman.

I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in true freedom, to publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.

Free all Political Prisoners, I send you Love and Revolutionary Greetings From Cuba, One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That has ever existed on the Face of this Planet.

Assata Shakur lives in Havana, Cuba.
Close Guantanamo—Then Give It Back to Cuba
| January 9, 2015 | 10:28 pm | Cuba, International, National | Comments closed

TRUTHDIG

 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/close_guantanamo_–_then_give_it_back_to_cuba_20150107

Posted on Jan 7, 2015

By Amy Goodman

This week marks the 13th anniversary of the arrival of the first post-9/11 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, the most notorious prison on the planet. This grim anniversary, and the beginning of normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S and Cuba, serves as a reminder that we need to permanently close the prison and return the land to its rightful owners, the Cuban people. It is time to put an end to this dark chapter of United States history. “The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable,” President Barack Obama wrote nearly six years ago, in one of his first executive orders, on Jan. 22, 2009. Despite this, the prison remains open, with 127 prisoners left there after Kazakhstan accepted five who were released on Dec. 30. There have been 779 prisoners known to have been held at the base since 2002, many for more than 10 years without charge or trial. Thanks to WikiLeaks and its alleged source, Chelsea Manning, we know most of their names. Col. Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor in Guantanamo from 2005 to 2007. He resigned, after an appointee of George W. Bush overrode his decision forbidding the use of evidence collected under torture. Davis later told me, “I was convinced we weren’t committed to having full, fair and open trials, and this was going to be more political theater than it was going to be justice.” Obama did create a special envoy for Guantanamo closure, although the person who most recently held the position, Cliff Sloan, abruptly resigned at the end of December without giving a reason. In a just-published opinion piece in The New York Times, Sloan wrote, “As a high-ranking security official from one of our staunchest allies on counterterrorism (not from Europe) once told me, ‘The greatest single action the United States can take to fight terrorism is to close Guantanamo.’” The U.S. has imposed a crushing embargo against Cuba for more than half a century, ostensibly to punish the small country for its form of governance. What kind of alternative does the United States show Cubans on that corner of their island that the U.S. controls? A hellish, military prison beyond the reach of U.S. laws, where hundreds of men have been held, most without charge, and many beaten and tortured.

President Obama rightly chastises Egypt for imprisoning three Al-Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. “They should be released,” Obama told reporters last August. Yet, sadly, Egypt only needs to look to the U.S. to determine acceptable treatment of Al-Jazeera journalists. Sami al-Hajj was a cameraman for the network. He was covering the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 when the Pakistani military picked him up and handed him over to U.S. forces. After 17 brutal days at Bagram Air Field, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held without charge for more than six years. He was tortured, beaten and humiliated. Al-Hajj went on a hunger strike for 480 days, and was subjected to forced feeding through nasal tubes. He was released in May 2008. I sat down with Sami al-Hajj in December 2012 at Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, where he was heading the network’s Human Rights and Public Liberties desk. He said the U.S tried to coerce him into spying while he was imprisoned: “They [offered] to give me a U.S.A. nationality and take care about my family if I work with them in CIA to continue my job being journalist with Al-Jazeera, just send them information about the link between Al-Jazeera and al-Qaida and the terrorist people and some people in the Middle East. Of course, I refused to do that. I told them, ‘I’m journalist, and I will die as a journalist.’” The United States knew he was innocent, but wanted him to spy on Al-Jazeera, so it subjected him to years of harsh imprisonment in an attempt to break him? The United States took Guantanamo Bay by force in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, and extracted an indefinite lease on the property from Cuba in 1903. Returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuba will begin to right more than a century of wrongs that the U.S. government has perpetrated there. Most importantly, the return of the Guantanamo Bay prison and naval base will make it harder for any future war criminals, whether in the White House, the Pentagon or the CIA and their enthusiastic cheerleaders in Congress, to use Guantanamo as their distant dungeon, to inflict torture and terror on prisoners, many of them innocent, far from the eyes of the people of the United States, and far from the reach of criminal courts. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.   Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.   (c) 2015 Amy Goodman

NAACP Legal Defense Fund files a potential game changer in the case against Darren Wilson
| January 9, 2015 | 9:59 pm | police terrorism | Comments closed

Tue Jan 06, 2015 at 09:28 AM PST

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/06/1355899/-NAACP-Legal-Defense-Fund-files-a-potential-game-changer?showAll=yes

byShaun King

Sherrilyn Ifill

At a time when most people have given up on any semblance of justice for slain Ferguson teenager Mike Brown, Sherrilyn Ifill and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have made what may be the biggest game changing request in the case yet.According to Missouri law, a Missouri Circuit Court Judge has the power to appoint a Special Prosecutor in any case in which a citizen has not yet been indicted and prosecutorial misconduct is alleged. The judge with jurisdiction in the case against former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson is Maura McShane.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in their open letter to McShane, makes an extremely compelling case for misconduct by St. Louis Prosecutor Bob McCullough and his staff. In the nine-page letter, Ifill and the NAACP LDF thoroughly detail three instances of misconduct. One is enough to appoint a special prosecutor.

In summary the letter details the following:

1. How prosecutors violated Missouri law and professional ethics for calling a witness they’ve since admitted they knew did not witness the shooting and was not at the scene. They not only called her once, but twice, and encouraged her to bring physical evidence on her second visit. This witness, Sandy McElroy, perjured herself over 100 times.

2. Prosecutors consistently made documented mistakes in the essential instructions they gave to the grand jurors. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell masterfully details one such mistake here.

3. Legal analysts and now an actual member of the grand jury felt strongly that Bob McCulloch and his team acted as de facto defense attorneys for Darren Wilson and that it often appeared as if Mike Brown was on trial instead of Darren Wilson.

Please read the full letter from Sherrilyn Ifill below.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/06/1355899/-NAACP-Legal-Defense-Fund-files-a-potential-game-changer?showAll=yes

Ready to run: Campaign training for women
| January 9, 2015 | 9:46 pm | political struggle | Comments closed

http://www.chatham.edu/pcwp/education/readytorun/pittsburgh.cfmRead-to-Run-300x250-ad-Politics-PA

Run Warren Run
| January 8, 2015 | 9:31 pm | Action | Comments closed

http://runwarrenrun.org/

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