Monthly Archives: March 2015

If You Can’t Change Laws, Change Minds

Every once in a while we run across things that give us hope. This is one of those things. The following comes from States United To Prevent Gun Violence, an organization that uses a new approach to an old problem. The rest speaks for itself.

States United To Prevent Gun Violence opens a “gun store” in NYC as a hidden camera social experiment to debunk safety myths. Every gun has a history. Let’s not repeat it. From their website gunswithhistory.com:

“States United to Prevent Gun Violence is a national non-profit organization working to decrease gun death and injury and build healthy communities by supporting and strengthening state gun-violence-prevention organizations and nurturing new state organizations.

Together with our 28 state affiliates – and our combined 200,000 grassroots supporters – we are dedicated to making our families and communities safer through stronger laws, community education, and grassroots action.”

Us and Them: On Understanding Climate Denialism

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Written by Martin Kirk. Published March 19, 2015 on CommonDreams.

Graffiti on a wall by London’s Regent’s Canal is believed to by an ironic work of art by acclaimed street artist Banksy.

So we’re in the midst of another round of climate-change related mud slinging. The latest issue of National Geographic, “The War on Science”, was seen to sneer at the 130 million American who don’t believe in human induced climate change. The Washington Times‘ Stephen Moore fired back with an emotional op-ed titled “The Myth of Settled Science,” and to go by the pundits and the comment threads, people on both sides are tearing their hair out, utterly sick of what they see as their opponents’ brainwashed, dangerous nonsense.

Continue reading →

Trifecta for Anger

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Loretta Lynch. Photo by US Government

Human trafficking has become a major issue around the world. The United States is no exception. Members of Congress advanced a human trafficking bill which had bipartisan support, something of a rarity in itself.

The bill aims to address the human tragedy of trafficking, predominantly in the sex industry. Once rescued from their abductors and abusers, many women are in desperate need of medical services related directly to the crimes perpetrated against them. The bill would allow funds confiscated from and fees paid by the criminals to help offset the costs these needed services would incur.

Then the engine of progress came to a screeching halt. Someone actually read the bill and realized there was language similar to the Hyde amendment which would block funds for abortions, even though the funds do not come entirely from tax payer dollars. Continue reading →

How Not To Cover Your Tracks

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Sometime today, the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (S.697) will be introduced at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. This bill, if enacted into law, would be the first update in 39 years to the federal regulations dealing with toxic chemicals and substances such as asbestos and formaldehyde along with hundreds of other chemicals.

Asbestos cleanup by volunteers, Detroit. Photo by Friend_in_Detroit (mcs asbestos debris) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The bill has received significant positive press from a diverse group of organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Technology Sciences Group, It has bipartisan sponsorship; Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Tom Udall (D-NM). It has many co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. It is supposed to be the result of two years of negotiation and collaboration between the sponsors, the chemical industry and environmental groups. In other words, something we don’t see very often these days. So, what could possibly be wrong with it? Continue reading →

Who Are They Supposed To Represent?

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One of the worst kept, and at the same time best kept, secrets in Washington over the last few years has been the negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership, commonly referred to as TPP. If you’ve been following what we discuss, the TPP should be very familiar to you by now; it’s one of our favorite subjects to write about.

Trade Ministers from TPP meeting in Vladivostok. Photo by East Asia and Pacific Media Hub U.S. Department of State [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

We’ve discussed ad nauseum the secrecy that the Obama administration has enshrouded the negotiations with. However, on Monday The Huffington Post ran a story that puts all the other attempts at hiding the details of the TPP from the public to shame. It goes like this: Continue reading →

A Tale Of Two Bills

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On Saturday, the West Virginia legislature finished their regular session. While this normally wouldn’t get our interest, there were a couple bills that were voted on in the last few days that caught our eye. Of course, the main push behind both these bills came from the real power in West Virginia; the fossil fuel industry.

West Virginia State Capitol building. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The first, SB423, amends the state’s Aboveground Storage Tank Act. The act was signed into law last April, and was a response to the Elk River chemical spill three months earlier. We wrote about how the spill of 7500 gallons of crude 4-methylcyclohexylmethanol (MCHM) prevented 300,000 West Virginians from drinking, cooking or washing with the water in their homes, and we wrote about Freedom industries’ attempts to shed all liability and responsibility for the cleanup. Continue reading →

Protesting is not a crime

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Revealed: Police and FBI Spied On Black Lives Matter Organizers Ahead of Mall of America Protests

‘We will not be intimidated,’ declares Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter

Written by Sarah Lazare, CommonDreams staff writer. Published February 13, 2015.

How big is MOA? Big enough to hold over 3,000 protesters! Image via Facebook.

Participants in a nonviolent Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of America last December were not only aggressively confronted by law enforcement and heavily prosecuted by the Bloomington attorney’s office, but they were also—as it turns out—preemptively spied on by local police and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Continue reading →

Oil’s Not Well In Venezuela

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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Photo by Cancillería del Ecuador [CC BY-SA 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Photo by Cancillería del Ecuador [CC BY-SA 1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

To consumers, the decline in oil prices over the last nine months has been a welcome turn of events. From the gas pump to our home utilities bills, we’ve welcomed the lower prices, and thus the extra money we have. We hear various talking heads espousing about how lower oil prices will stimulate growth and lead to a more vibrant economy.

That is, unless you live in a country that derives 95% of its economy from oil. We’ve talked about Venezuela on several occasions, and in one of our more recent articles, we discussed the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the causes of the collapse. The effects of the drop in oil prices on an economy that was already struggling has been catastrophic.

During the years that Hugo Chávez was in power, he instituted large, sweeping social programs aimed at elevating the economic status of the poorest Venezuelans. What paid (and still pays) for these programs? Oil, or to be more specific, petrodollars from China in exchange for oil. When the bottom fell out of the oil market, the Chinese naturally started paying less for the oil. So, as the international price of oil fell, so did the living conditions of the people of Venezuela. Continue reading →

Minnesota Nice At Last?

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Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that six cities will be pilot sites for a federal program. The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice was announced last September, and is aimed at reducing racial bias and improving ties between law enforcement and communities. The six pilot cities are Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Stockton, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Pittsburgh and Minneapolis.

Now, you’re probably thinking: “OK – I can understand Gary, Fort Worth and Birmingham. Stockton and Pittsburgh I can understand. But Minneapolis? Minnesota nice?”

Yes, Minneapolis – and it belongs on the list. Last October, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota released a report which shows that a black person is 8.86 times more likely to be arrested than a white person for disorderly conduct, 7.54 times more likely to be arrested for vagrancy and 11.5 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. Continue reading →

Another Mess In Myanmar

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On Tuesday, hundreds of riot police clashed with students protesting a new education law in Letpadan, Myanmar. According to eyewitness accounts, students, monks and journalists were beaten with batons and sticks by security forces and then dragged into trucks. Authorities say that more than 120 people were arrested.

Photo via Facebook

One hundred students had started off in Mandalay more than a month ago, and were planning to march 400 miles to Yangon to protest the new law that puts all decisions about education policy and curriculum in the hands of a group consisting mostly of government ministers, The students are callling for changes to the new law, including decentralizing of the school system, teaching in ethnic languages, and allowing the formation of student unions. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Monthly Archives: March 2015

If You Can’t Change Laws, Change Minds

Us and Them: On Understanding Climate Denialism

How Not To Cover Your Tracks

Who Are They Supposed To Represent?

A Tale Of Two Bills

Oil’s Not Well In Venezuela