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By The Mound of Sound, on October 22, 2012, at 5:29 pm Only 44? That was my first reaction to the announcement that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had agreed to send 44 observers from its human rights office to monitor America’s elections this year.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”
“They [will] observe the overall election process, not just the ballot casting,” said Giovanna Maiola,
By cityprole, on October 18, 2012, at 11:13 am XL Foods targeted for takeover by Brazilian company
CBC online Oct. 18, 2012
If anyone in this country needed to rationalize the road to vegetarianism for any reason at all, this news certainly helps…
Am I the only one left who remembers when Alberta beef was highly regarded as some of the best in the country? Between the dirty oil and the tainted meat, is there anything about Alberta that has any credence whatsoever…besides the minority of citizens who do not vote Conservative, or Really Conservative…?
Not only did the Cons and Libs before them destroy the inspection chain in
. . . → Read More: Left Over: No One is asking “Where’s the Beef?”
By Obert Madondo, on October 15, 2012, at 3:06 pm On this one year anniversary of the Occupy Canada movement, here’s a magnificent piece of reporting by Rolling Stone‘s Sabrina Rubin Erdely, on how the United States government “turned five stoner misfits into the world’s most hapless terrorist cell.” Five Occupy Cleveland activists “who had grown disenchanted with the Occupy movement, which they considered too conservative” decided to “make [...]
By Guest Blog, on October 7, 2012, at 4:53 pm by Marian Wang | ProPublica More than a decade after Aurora Almendral first set foot on her dream college campus, she and her mother still shoulder the cost of that choice. Almendral had been accepted to New York University in 1998, but even after adding up scholarships, grants, and the max she could take out in [...]
By Obert Madondo, on September 21, 2012, at 10:07 am The Mouse That Roared is a documentary-in-the-making film by Judith Ehrlich, the award-winning director of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”, which earned a Peabody, and was nominated for an Academy award for best documentary. The film centers around Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s efforts fights to make Iceland the free speech capital of the digital world. Jónsdóttir is also an activist, poet, Buddhist and single mom.
By Obert Madondo, on September 18, 2012, at 2:58 am How Putin Learned That Putin Was Behind The Plot To Assassinate Putin.
By Obert Madondo, on September 18, 2012, at 1:26 am Democracy Now host Amy Goodman hosts a roundtable discussion of Occupy Wall Street movement on its 1 year anniversary with the following experts: Frances Fox Piven, an author and professor at City University of New York who has studied social movements for decades; Nathan Schneider, editor of the blog Waging Nonviolence, which has extensively covered the Occupy movement; and Suzanne Collado, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street since its inception and member of the group “Strike Debt,” an effort to organize a mass upsurge of debt resistance. Video available on YouTube RELATED: NYPD brutalized Occupy Wall Street protesters and violated
By Guest Blog, on September 17, 2012, at 8:31 pm by Cora Currier | ProPublica Drones have become the go-to weapon of the U.S.’s counter-terrorism strategy, with strikes in Yemen in particular increasing steadily. U.S. drones reportedly killed twenty-nine people in Yemen recently, including perhaps ten civilians. Administration officials regularly celebrate the drone war’s apparent successes— often avoiding details or staying anonymous, but claiming tacit credit for the U.S. In June, a day after Abu Yahya Al-Libi was killed in Pakistan, White House spokesman Jay Carney trumpeted the death of “Al Qaeda’s Number-Two.” Unnamed officials confirmed the strike in at least ten media outlets. Similarly, the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki by
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: How U.S. Gov’t Talks About a Drone Program it Won’t Acknowledge Exists
By Obert Madondo, on September 15, 2012, at 12:20 pm Julian Assange‘s U.S. attorney, Michael Ratner, claims that the U.S. is getting tougher with Bradley Manning hoping to pressure him to testify against the WikiLeaks founder. He tells The Real News Network: They would want him to testify or roll over against Julian. And it’s not me making that up. The lawyer for Bradley Manning, David Coombs, has said openly in court that they are going after Manning with so much toughness, with wanting a 40-year sentence or whatever he said in court, because they want him to testify against Julian Assange. A remarkable story here in some
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: U.S. pressuring Bradley Manning to implicate Julian Assange (VIDEO)
By thescottross.blogspot.com, on September 14, 2012, at 10:41 pm “How dare Islamic fundamentalists kill to protect their religion from such a small and meaningless movie. And though I oppose the hate-filled and misguided film, I would die fighting to protect the studio’s right to release it.” – The irony of fundamentalism.
The recent violence in the Middle East over the release of an anti-Islam movie does not show us how different our cultures are, instead through the conflict of rights and religion, it shows us what our cultures have in common, fundamentalism.
The question of whether the right of free speech is more important than a religion is
. . . → Read More: The Scott Ross: Rights And Religion Make Us All Fundamentalists
By Armine Yalnizyan, on September 14, 2012, at 3:54 pm Four years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s time to take stock of things by asking a stock political question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Where you stand on the answer depends on where you sit. Many people, businesses and communities are still struggling to regain the ground they lost after September 15, 2008, the day the giant investment banker filed for bankruptcy and triggered the biggest global financial and economic crisis since the 1930s. But for others, things have never been better.
For Canada as a whole, the top line numbers are good, as
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Happy Crashiversary! Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
By Obert Madondo, on September 13, 2012, at 5:01 pm Here’s an extended trailer of the ”Innocence Of Muslims”, the shitty anti-Islam movie that unleashed riots in the Muslim world, leading to the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. Earlier today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton distance the U.S. government from the movie, and labeled it “disgusting and reprehensible”.
By Obert Madondo, on September 9, 2012, at 7:58 pm Written by Justin Elliott | ProPublica On a Saturday afternoon last February, journalist Carl Bernstein got up on stage at the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan and delivered a speech questioning the listing of an obscure Iranian group called the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK) on the U.S. government list of officially designated foreign terrorist organizations.The speech, before a crowd an organizer put at 1,500, made Bernstein one of the few journalists who has appeared at events in a years-long campaign by MEK supporters to free the group from the official terrorist label and the legal sanctions that come with it. He
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: Watergate Journalist Carl Bernstein Spoke at Event Supporting Iranian ‘Terrorist’ Group
By Obert Madondo, on September 7, 2012, at 8:31 pm Tar sands extraction, which has caused tremendous pollution and environmental degradation in Canada, has crossed the border to U.S. soil taken root in Utah.
By The Arbourist, on September 4, 2012, at 8:00 am Other than libertarian or misogynistic concerns, both that are as useless as pants on on giraffe, I don’t see what the problem is. Women win, their partners win and society wins.
Filed under: Education, Feminism Tagged: Common Sense, Contraception, Feminism, PSA, US
By Obert Madondo, on September 2, 2012, at 1:05 pm Prominent Academics Respond to the TPP (via EFF) We asked several academics to let us know their thoughts about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP is a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement… RELATED: The Canadian Progressive World joins global protest against ACTA
By Andrew Jackson, on August 30, 2012, at 10:31 am A release by the Fraser Institute – Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States, 2012 Edition – registers as a spectacular own goal.
The Fraser Institute believes – and argues in this study – that strong unions, high minimum wages and high levels of public sector employment undermine labour market performance measured in terms of job growth and productivity.
Yet, if you read this report, you will find – Figure 1 – that the 10 Canadian provinces ranked in the top 21 out of a total of 60 states and provinces in terms of an overall index of
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Labour Market Regulation and Labour Market Performance
By The Arbourist, on August 29, 2012, at 8:15 am
‘Nuff said.
Filed under: Feminism Tagged: Feminism, Materinity Leave, Social Justice, US, Women
By Obert Madondo, on August 27, 2012, at 9:34 am The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and oil executives have consistently claimed that the dirty Alberta tar sands oil is a boon to U.S. energy security. Here are seven reasons why this isn’t the case: 1. Tar sands cannot break the power of OPEC. The oil cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), controls the world market for oil, and this will remain true with or without tar sands. The International Energy Agency forecasts show that OPEC’s share of the market is set to increase with or without tar sands growth. Even if the United
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: Canada’s tar sands cannot enhance U.S. energy security
By Farron Cousins, on August 23, 2012, at 6:00 am dirty-air.jpg
Earlier this week, an appellate court in Washington, D.C. ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had overstepped their authority with their Transport Rule that was put in place to reduce the amount of air pollution being spewed from coal burning plants. The rule would have put stringent limits on the amount of pollution that was being emitted and carried across state lines by weather.
The Courier-Journal has more:
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found in a 2-1 ruling that the EPA
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: US Chamber Rejoices As Courts Rule For Polluters
By cityprole, on August 20, 2012, at 11:57 am A well-known British politician, who is considered a bit of a ‘radical’ in the best sense, in the UK, has launched a defence of Julian Assange, pointing out that, should Assange be convicted of what he is accused of, there would be no penalty in Britain, since his alleged acts are not illegal in Britain..
Galloway is right…and considering (though Galloway demurred discussion of) who these women are attached to, and at least suspected of acting for, it’s hard to simply assume that Assange is wildly speculating that he’s being set up by the Yanks. Further, if they want to
. . . → Read More: Left Over: Pussy Riot? Can you Say Assange?
By John Mashey, on August 20, 2012, at 6:00 am pinoccio.shutterstock_77732134.jpg
The "Wegman Report", led by Edward Wegman of George Mason University (GMU) got criticized in 2010's Experts claim 2006 climate report plagiarized. Experts called it "obvious" even "shocking" plagiarism. GMU's incompetent handling, mistreatment of complainants and flawed rulings were mostly documented in March, but recent FOIAs expose more untruths.
Is the harsh title fair? Read on, then study the 69-page attachment.
GMU Provost Peter Stearns' February letter to GMU faculty made claims of non-plagiarism that contradicted not only experts, but themselves. The process consumed almost two years to assess
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: See No Evil, Speak Little Truth, Break Rules, Blame Others
By Obert Madondo, on August 12, 2012, at 9:19 am Article by Marian Wang | ProPublica, June 14, 2012, 10:05 a.m.
A few months after he buried his son, Francisco Reynoso began getting notices in the mail. Then the debt collectors came calling.
“They would say, ‘We don’t care what happened with your son, you have to pay us,’” recalled Reynoso, a gardener from Palmdale, Calif.
Reynoso’s son, Freddy, had been the pride of his family and the first to go to college. In 2005, after Freddy was accepted to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, his father co-signed on his hefty private student loans, making him fully liable
. . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: Grieving Father Struggles to Pay Dead Son’s Student Loans
By Obert Madondo, on August 9, 2012, at 9:36 pm As the Senate considers a bill to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity, some questionable numbers keep creeping into the discussion.
By Chris Mooney, on August 2, 2012, at 8:36 am Republican Brain.jpg
In the first round of critical reactions to my book The Republican Brain, there wasn’t much to impress. As I related at AlterNet, the general conservative response to the book was to misrepresent its arguments, rather than to engage them seriously. (The book predicted this, incidentally.)
But now that some researchers have been able to read and process the book, some highly intellectually serious criticism arrives courtesy of Yale’s Dan Kahan, of whose work I’ve written a great deal in the past. You can see Kahan’s first two responses to the book here and here
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Are Conservatives Inherently More Biased than Liberals? The Scientific Debate Rages On
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