Politics & Society

Washington and the Breakdown of the Colombia-Venezuela-FARC Peace Process

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The turn of events in Venezuelan-Colombian relations raises powerful tensions and splits across the political spectrum throughout Latin America. Progressive leaders in the region have denounced the Capriles-Santos-Washington axis. The advances in peace negotiations – as limited as they are – have no possibility of leading to a peace settlement in the face of a revival of cross border animosities. The question is whether Santos wants to sacrifice Colombia’s annual $10 billion dollars worth of trade with Venezuela and the on-going peace negotiations with the FARC, involving marginal social reforms, and intensify the country’s internal conflict jeopardizing his “extractive export model” in order to serve as Washington’s proxy in destabilizing Venezuela.

General News

Samantha Power Sells Out To Lobby To Win UN Job

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The month of March 2002 was a terrible time in both Israel and the West Bank. Some 100 Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a military operation in the West Bank killing some 500 Palestinians. Children made up a significant number of the victims on both sides. The prospects for an end to violence, let alone peace, appeared lower than at any time previously.

Politics & Society

She Held Her Son and Sobbed as I Said, "This Is Not Random."

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In the meantime, these searches and, sometimes, seizures performed routinely at airports across this country have done something more than potentially violate our Fourth Amendment rights: they have conditioned us to accept the invasion of our privacy and person for the sake of security. How far will we let this country go until we, as a public, say that this is enough? That we will no longer allow strange hands to grope our children for the sake of security? That we will no longer allow strange minds to illegally probe our phone records and emails for the sake of security?

Culture

NSA Mining Is the Digital Stop-and-Frisk of Every American

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The fantasy the NYPD has been living in – that stop-and-frisk is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment – is about to come to an end. The question will be whether or not this national, secret stop-and-frisk infrastructure which has been established by the security establishment in this country will suffer a similar fate, eventually. Either that, or as American citizens, we will continue to have our private, digital data be stopped, frisked and released (or not) without our knowledge.

Politics & Society

Follow the Money – Who pays for cost for massive NSA phone/data mining?

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My husband and I own an independent bookstore and one of the things I’ve always prepared myself for is what I would do if I ever got handed one of those “National Security Letters,” demanding information about what products our customers bought. The PATRIOT Act allows the government to demand business records if their need for those records involves some kind of terrorist investigation and people receiving those letters not only have to obey them, but also have to remain silent about having received one. Now that the news has broken that Verizon has been turning over ALL U.S. and international phone call records for at least seven years, and that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have also been mining Internet data, one question that always niggled at me came up to the surface the other night at dinner. As is often the case, Derrick is the one who asked “Someone’s got to be making money off of this. Who pays for all the work involved in compiling, storing, turning over, and sifting through those records?”

Islam

Traveling to the Past to Build Bridges to the Future

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At Dachau, beneath a bronze sculpture of gnarled human forms caught for eternity in barbed wire, and at Auschwitz’s execution wall, the sight of Muslims prostrate in praying stopped tourists in their tracks.
If there was any lingering skepticism on anyone’s part, it melted. We were no longer Jewish and Muslim leaders but people sharing a heartfelt desire to learn, and the impossible task of trying to comprehend. It was a life-altering trip and deeply personal for all. Islam is a religion that champions compassion. That was amply demonstrated to us by the profound compassion and care that these Imams demonstrated throughout the journey, speaking with survivors, and honoring the places where few survived.

Christianity

School Board Member on Why She Got Arrested

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I am a member of the Board of Education for Durham Public Schools, but I did not go to speak to the Legislature as a board member. I went as a Christian, as a product of the public school system of NC, and as a mother. I went to speak on behalf of the children in Durham who I claim as mine – especially the 27% of children who live below the poverty line. It is these vulnerable children – the least of these – who will be hurt the most by the policies being promoted by the majority in this General Assembly. These children are depending on our schools to become educated citizens who can contribute to our state. We must not abandon them.

Culture

Reflections on the Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

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Freedom arrived in the late 1980s, and its symbol was that singular image of “Tank Man” engaging in a brazen and courageous act of self-expression. Once unleashed, though, freedom created a ripple effect (more like a wave) that surged through the culture and threatened to wash away hundreds of years of social mores — the piety of Confucianism, the humiliation of Western imperialism, the righteousness of communism under Mao, all variants of a single unifying characteristic: shame.