Vietnam
Cambodia
Dominican Rep.
Grenada
Libya
Panama
Iraq
Somalia
Haiti
Bosnia
Kosovo
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
Syria?
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A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz and a Technology Blog @ Technology. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Countries the U.S. has invaded since World War II
Black brokers settle racist claim with Merrill Lynch — MSNBC
Merrill Lynch, the behemoth brokerage firm, has agreed to fork over $160 million to settle a racial bias lawsuit brought by a longtime broker who accused the company of providing better opportunities, as well as more compensation, for white employees.
The settlement was confirmed to MSNBC.com by Suzanne Bish, a lawyer with Stowell & Friedman, for the plaintiffs
Black brokers settle racist claim with Merrill Lynch — MSNBC
The settlement was confirmed to MSNBC.com by Suzanne Bish, a lawyer with Stowell & Friedman, for the plaintiffs
Black brokers settle racist claim with Merrill Lynch — MSNBC
FULL: President Obama Speech at 50th Anniversary of March on Washington,...
On Wednesday the President gave an eloquent speech meant to touch all Americans but he failed to go beyond lip service to the twin themes of the original March, freedom and jobs. Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the freedom issue last week in his promise to use the Courts to attack the illegal voting laws enacted by the renegade states of Texas and North Carolina but the jobs issue requires a programmatic approach to attack America's structural inequality which has not appreciably changed since 1963. Inspite of an obstructionist, Republican controlled House of Representatives the President could have called on the American people to put pressure on those representatives to enact a public works bill to repair our crumbling infrastructure and create jobs. We need policies that address inequalities. As Karl Marx said better than anyone else "the philosophers have analyzed the world in various ways, the problem however is to change it.
Obama decides to strike Syria, will seek authorization from Congress
A truly excellent speech and stance by an American President. Whether you disagree or agree with military action against Syria you have to respect the President respecting the Constitution and the American people asking their consent to go to war. This is a high mark in the Obama Presidency that historians will remember.
Obama decides to strike Syria, will seek authorization from Congress
Obama decides to strike Syria, will seek authorization from Congress
War Weariness
It would seem that Americans are conflicted about that role, at least in this case.
An NBC News poll released Friday found that while 58 percent of Americans believe that the use of chemical weapons by any country is a “red line” requiring a significant United States response, including military action, only 42 percent believe that we should take such action in Syria and only 21 percent are convinced that such action is in our national interest. Fifty percent of Americans believe that we should take no significant military action.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/opinion/blow-war-weariness.html?_r=1&
Friday, August 30, 2013
The Witnesses - By David Kenner | Foreign Policy
Syrian activists took the YouTube videos that dragged America to the brink of war -- and then paid with their lives.
No, Martin Luther King Jr. Was Not A Republican -- But Here's What He Had To Say About Them | ThinkProgress
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right.
All In : The largest fast-food strike to date
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All In : The largest fast-food strike to date: ""
(Via.)
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Reforming America's Criminal Justice System: Refocusing on Delivering Results, Aligning with Our Values, and Reducing the Burden on Taxpayers
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Do Not Ignore The Orhanizers Of The March On Washington In 1963
Please do not forget A Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin who organized the March on Washington August 28, 1963.
American mythology focuses on MLK's speech. It was a great one but there were many other speakers and the message was freedom and jobs. That message still rings loudly today.
Federal Reserve Employees Afraid To Speak Put Financial System At Risk
The shaky morale is a legacy of Alan Greenspan’s 19-year term as Fed chairman. From 1987 to 2006, the Greenspan Fed pushed for a hands-off approach by regulators, who then found themselves blamed for the financial crisis that led to the most punishing economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“Supervisors during the Greenspan years were beaten down pretty regularly,” Phil Angelides, former chairman of the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, told HuffPost. “It doesn’t surprise me that you would still have some dysfunction, a lack of morale and something less than a highly energized and well-coordinated arm of the Federal Reserve, where for so long the regulators and bank supervisors were held back by the leadership of the Fed.”
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Cory Booker Opens Stop-And-Frisk Data To The Public. Here’s Why It Might Help. | TechCrunch
Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker has just begun testing an innovative solution to the racial problems plaguing law enforcement’s use of stop-and-frisk: hold officers accountable by making details of every stop accessible to the public. The controversial practice of “stop-and-frisk” allows police officers to pat down any citizens for looking mildly suspicious; law enforcement claims it’s a vital tool against crime in overcrowded cities, while civil liberties groups claim that it unfairly targets minorities (In New York, minorities make up 90 percent of all stop-and-frisk incidents).
Obama Weighs ‘Limited’ Strikes Against Syrian Forces - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — President Obama is considering military action against Syria that is intended to “deter and degrade” President Bashar al-Assad’s government’s ability to launch chemical weapons, but is not aimed at ousting Mr. Assad from power or forcing him to the negotiating table, administration officials said Tuesday.
Racial Disparities in Health Care: The New Frontier for Civil Rights | Black Politics on the Web
On the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, the evolution of civil rights in the U.S. has vaulted healthcare to the forefront of issues enveloped in this nation’s persistent racial disparities. Among the empirically verifiable indicators of healthcare disparities one finds evidence that doctors consistently refer black patients to lower-quality hospitals, that black men are more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, that blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to have diabetes, that infant mortality rates for blacks are 1.5 to three times as high as for whites, that there are significantly higher rates of advanced breast cancer diagnoses among blacks -
See more at: http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2013/08/27/racial-disparities-in-health-care-the-new-frontier-for-civil-rights/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BlackPoliticsontheWeb+%28Headlines+from+BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com%29#sthash.oh0oV4ob.dpuf
Daily Kos: Facebook received 38,000 requests from governments for user data
In only a six month period, Facebook has received 38,000 requests from governments around the world, with half of those coming from U.S. agencies:
Government agents in 74 countries demanded information on about 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of this year, with about half the orders coming from authorities in the United States, the company said Tuesday.
50 Days Without Food: The California Prison Hunger Strike Explained | Mother Jones
The state's reliance on long-term solitary confinement is at the heart of a fast that could leave prisoners dead
Rick Lowery, Ph.D.: Abortion: What the Bible Says (and Doesn't Say)
The Bible doesn't talk about abortion, but it does say when a human being's life begins.
Genesis 2:7 is clearest. The first human became a "living being" (nefesh hayah, "a living breath") when God blew into its nostrils and it started to breathe. Human life begins when you start breathing, biblical writers thought. It ends when you stop. That's why the Hebrew word often translated "spirit" (ruah) -- "life force" might be a better translation -- literally means "wind" or "breath."
Monday, August 26, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
MHP: Workers inspired by Dr. King’s dream – then and now
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
MHP: Workers inspired by Dr. King’s dream – then and now: ""
(Via.)
MHP: Students take up the banner for voting rights
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MHP: Students take up the banner for voting rights: ""
(Via.)
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Ken Auletta: What Kind of City is the Mayor Leaving to His Successor?
Michael Bloomberg, whose third and final term as mayor of New York expires at midnight on December 31st, keeps a digital clock running in reverse in his City Hall office, counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds left in his term. He remains one of the wealthiest men in the city—his fortune is estimated at twenty-seven billion dollars—but this seems of limited comfort to him. In 2008 and 2012, he considered running for President, as a moderate Republican or as a self-financed third-party candidate, but he was eventually persuaded that he couldn’t win. Now he is clearly vexed by the challenges of envisaging his own future and a City Hall without him.
Ken Auletta: What Kind of City is the Mayor Leaving to His Successor?
Ken Auletta: What Kind of City is the Mayor Leaving to His Successor?
50 Years Later. Charles Blow New York Times
I’m absolutely convinced that enormous steps have been made in race relations. That’s not debatable. Most laws that explicitly codified discrimination have been stricken from the books. Overt, articulated racial animus has become more socially unacceptable. And diversity has become a cause to be championed in many quarters, even if efforts to achieve it have taken some hits of late.
50 Years Later
But my worry is that we have hit a ceiling of sorts. As we get closer to a society where explicit bias is virtually eradicated, we no longer have the stomach to deal with the more sinister issues of implicit biases and of structural and systematic racial inequality.
I worry that centuries of majority privilege and minority disenfranchisement are being overlooked in puddle-deep discussions about race and inequality, personal responsibility and societal inhibitors.
I wonder if we, as a society of increasing diversity but also drastic inequality, even agree on what constitutes equality. When we hear that word, do we think of equal opportunity, or equal treatment under the law, or equal outcomes, or some combination of those factors?
And I worry that there is a distinct and ever-more-vocal weariness — and in some cases, outright hostility — about the continued focus on racial equality.
50 Years Later
Friday, August 23, 2013
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Rusbridger: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage | Media | theguardian.com
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor-in-chief, has said that the destruction of computer hard drives containing information provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden allowed the paper to continue reporting on the revelations instead of surrendering the material to UK courts.
Rusbridger told BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Tuesday that he agreed to the "slightly pointless" task of destroying the devices – which was overseen by two GCHQ officials at the Guardian's headquarters in London – because the newspaper is in possession of digital copies outside Britain.
The move followed weeks of private discussions with Whitehall officials who eventually threatened legal action over the material "unless we handed it back or destroyed it", he said.
Rusbridger: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage | Media | theguardian.com
Rusbridger told BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Tuesday that he agreed to the "slightly pointless" task of destroying the devices – which was overseen by two GCHQ officials at the Guardian's headquarters in London – because the newspaper is in possession of digital copies outside Britain.
The move followed weeks of private discussions with Whitehall officials who eventually threatened legal action over the material "unless we handed it back or destroyed it", he said.
Rusbridger: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage | Media | theguardian.com
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Meet the Press: How racial profiling informs policing in America - This idiot police chief misstated the Terry v. Ohio Supreme Court reasonable suspicion standard. He represents everything that is wrong in American policing. He does not understand the law and he is full of racial animus. He is the problem in NYC along with it's elists mayor.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
NAACP Legal Defense Fund is Appalled at Mayor Bloomberg’s Comment that People Should be “Fingerprinted” Before Entering NYC Public Housing Residences | Black Politics on the Web
On John Gambling radio show, Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized Davis v. City of New York, a putative class action lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”) and co-counsel the Legal Aid Society on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the NYPD’s policy and practice of unlawfully stopping and arresting public housing residents and their guests for trespassing. Rather than addressing the overwhelming evidence that thousands of innocent people have been stopped—and sometimes arrested—for trespassing in public housing apartments, however, Mayor Bloomberg instead suggested that residents and guests should be “fingerprinted” before entering their own homes.