Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 7 December 2014


 Daily Headlines
we are all in the shoes of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Those who think themselves somehow above it all by virtue of race or class are simply not paying attention.

This week tens of thousands of people in the United States flooded the streets to demand racial justice. It is one of many issues that has been building for years, reaching the tipping point and seeming to explode in a national awakening. We also saw that in the last two weeks with national protests for living wages.
By Uri Avnery
The Plebiscite
Netanyahu is quarreling with the US administration, severely damaging a relationship that is the lifeline of Israel in all matters, while Europe is slowly but surely approaching sanctions against Israel. Inequality in Israel keeps on widening; prices in Israel are higher than in Europe, housing almost unaffordable. With this government we are galloping towards a racist apartheid state, heading towards disaster.

The Global Wage Report 2014/15, released Friday by the International Labor Organization, documents the stagnation of wages for workers in most of the advanced industrialized countries, even as productivity continues to rise. The result is an ever-rising share of income raked in by the capitalist class, while the share that workers receive from what they produce continues to shrink.
The Obama administration is negotiating a huge trade deal. The President promises CEOs he will go against his own party to push its passage. To get this done the corporations are pushing Congress to pass something called Fast Track -- a process that essentially pre-approves trade agreements before Congress even reads the agreements for the first time.
Personality alone isn't likely to win the day. Nor will fragmented appeals to disparate population groups. Yes, Democrats should support issues like humane immigration, marriage equality, and justice for African-American communities. But they should do so for moral reasons, not because they think it will lead to some imagined electoral panacea.
In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Federal Assembly that Washington's plan for Russia is to break the country into pieces as was done to Yugoslavia. The American scenario for Russia is "disintegration and dismemberment."
By David Swanson
Silver Linings in Rolling Stone Rape Fiasco
Rolling Stone alleged a gang rape at UVA and now doubts its own report.
Since the beginning of slavery in America, it has been justified as being "according to the "Word of God." Indeed, in May 1861 a group of Southern clergymen seceded their churches from the Union. In December they met in Georgia to adopt an official statement to justify secession from the Union as well as justify slavery on the basis of "biblical justification."

By Thelma Mueller
Is the System Broken?
This is an article on the Grand Jury decision of "No Indictment," on the Eric Garner chokehold death.
Two movies to inspire.

There's a new twisted cousin to 3GMO foods already making headway ininfiltrating the food system. Synthetic biology is the science of designing organisms in the laboratory that make things more efficiently than in nature. And, like their genetically engineered predecessors, the public has already been inducted into the huge science experiment. Why? Because chances are you may have already eaten them.
When there are big things happening in our communities and in our world we sometimes wonder how to discuss them with our kids. I think the magic lies in following our child's interest and ability to understand, a willingness to play with the edges, and the important skill of talking with, not at.
Racism in the United States appears to have worsened during the administration of its first black leader, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday. Maduro, who has come under fire from President Barack Obama's government in recent weeks for his treatment of domestic political foes, said he was appalled by recent cases of police killings of blacks in the United States.
After a grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict the NYPD cop who choked Eric Garner to death this week, thousands of people across the nation took to the streets in protest. Many of those angry people were white and I am willing to bet most were genuinely outraged. But when it comes to the issue of "feeling our pain," white people just can't go there with us.
Maryland City Votes Unanimously to Alert Citizens to the Health Risks of Cell Phone/Wireless Radiation and to Oppose Cell Towers on School Grounds
An examination of the dual meaning running through each verse of John Lennon's song "Love," changing quite dramatically the overall tenor of the entire song.
President Obama, Eric Holder, and their minions are as guilty as Daren Wilson and Daniel Panteleo. All of them kill with impunity. They answer to no one. They refuse to investigate much less prosecute extra-judicial executions.
By Arshad M Khan
Where is our moral compass?
The article examines the lack of moral clarity in our actions and policy at home and abroad.
The way the discourse has been shaped right from the very beginning was on preconceived terms. It began with a minority black "law-breaker" and an armed white law-enforcer backed by a powerful racist state and continues in the same vein. That's what I find problematic.

By Hiroyuki Hamada
End of the Empire
The police violence against Mike Brown, Eric Garner and countless others, which is culminating in the wide spread protests across the country, betrays the wider tendency of the declining empire of violence and exploitation. The aim of our struggle toward a better tomorrow should reflect this fact and its ultimate aim should be focused on ending the empire.
Americans have had very little good news to celebrate over the past two years due to declining wages, unpunished racial killings, a rush toward theocracy, and most recently, the prospect of the most extremist right-wing Congress in the nation's history. There has been steady good news on the economic front in consistent Wall Street gains, record corporate profits, world-leading oil exports, falling gas prices, and job growth numbers as a result of the Obama Administration's rejection of Republican economic policies. However, now that Republicans will have control of both houses of Congress, they will start, immediately, passing legislation to revert back to Bush-era economics and undo the economic progress of the past six years.

The Government of Ukraine held a ceremony on Saturday, December 6th, with the country's President, Petro Poroshenko, reviewing newly donated weapons, from undisclosed donors.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel formally announced his candidacy for a second term on Saturday in a speech that highlighted his successful effort to push through a minimum wage increase in the city. While mostly avoiding specific references to the achievements of his first term, Emanuel expressed pride in a bill that the city council passed this week to bump up the minimum wage gradually to $13 an hour in 2019 from the current $8.25 an hour.
The deserts of the Middle East and North Africa have become a kind of quicksand for U.S. policymakers, the more they thrash around violently the faster they sink, with the latest round of warfare against the Islamic State worsening matters, not improving them, as Phyllis Bennis told Dennis J. Bernstein.
Days before the 2002 vote on Fast Track Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), predicted that its passage would:
By Jean-Luc Basle
America's exceptionalism: Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island
Empire and freedom do not mesh. Ask Thomas Jefferson, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Mohandas Gandhi. Ask Edward Snowdown, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.
The morning after 10,000 people descended on Manhattan to protest a grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, resulting in gridlock and more than 200 arrests, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the department's strategy would remain the same:

Taking it to the streets, the Equal Justice movement gathers momentum.
Examining the misdirect in US African policy.

 Latest Articles
Condoleezza Rice on the "Final Four" Panel?
The naming of Conoleezza Rice on this football panel to pick the "Final Four" is nothing more than showing this to be a political group. Her credentials for this panel are on the same level as those she had to be National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, both on which she proved incompetent.
December 5, 1933- Repeal of Prohibition
I regret that I didn't pay more attention to my History courses. I am even sorry that it wasn't my Major in college. However, I should forget the regrets and turn to history books to learn more about the struggles of our nation. Here is my new appreciation for the Constitution of the US which has with stood the ravages of time.

 Best News Links from the Web
My casual faith in America is the part of me -- thoroughly grounded in white privilege -- that has believed without overmuch reflection that our country values equality of all races at its core; that our laws and policing are color blind in their practice; that the efforts of politicians, business leaders and clergy are sincerely geared towards serving all the people; and that America is steadily progressing on the path towards a 'more perfect union,' to quote our president. My 'faith' in America was based on things hoped for but as yet unseen (to borrow from Hebrews 11:1). But more importantly, it was based on things hoped for, but not worked for -- at least not very hard. Contrary to much that I intellectually knew to be true about the vicious, pernicious nature of racism, I held onto a lazy faith that racism in America would slowly erode itself through some kind of magical process.

The idea of disinviting Obama from delivering the State of the Union address is apparently gaining currency on the right. Though it seems like the pettiest of actions, there's something significant driving it: A fundamental unwillingness to accept that Barack Obama is legitimately the President of the United States.
Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu lost to Republican congressman Bill Cassidy in the Louisiana Senate runoff election on Saturday, completing the GOP's dominance of the Deep South in the upper chamber. The Associated Press called the race not long after polls closed. The three-term incumbent, who chairs the influential Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, worked hard in the last days of the campaign to bring African American voters to the polls. She also tried, but failed, to convince enough fellow Democrats in voting to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
President Barack Obama went to a hospital on Saturday after complaining about a sore throat, the White House announced. According to the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, Dr. Jackson, the president's physician, recommended he go to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington for diagnostic tests. "According to Dr. Jackson, the test is a matter of convenience for the President, not a matter of urgency," the White House said.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:41