Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday 6 December 2014


 Daily Headlines

Have the three recent white cop killings of Black males incited enough outrage that it has belatedly given power to a movement to reform police and the criminal justice system in America?

New York City exemplifies two perverse criminal justice policies that drive many criminologists to distraction. It is the home of the most destructive epidemics of elite financial frauds in history.
Examining the misdirect in US African policy.

During the four-day spree, about 133.7 million shoppers spent about $50.9 billion. The psychological necessity to push, shove, and trample strangers while fighting for the right to purchase overpriced merchandise made in China has just begun.
A top problem of Ukraine has been corruption and cronyism, so it may raise eyebrows that new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, an ex-U.S. diplomat and newly minted Ukrainian citizen, was involved in insider dealings while managing a $150 million U.S. AID-backed investment fund, writes Robert Parry.
An IMPORTANT article, sketching the prospect of a populist "Pitchfork Movement" that brings plutocracy to its knees. But above all, this article sketches that movement's relationship to Liz Warren, provisionally trusting her to live up to the high cause she's publicly embraced, but ready in a heartbeat to cast her off as a Judas if her only role is to save Democrats' undeserved credibility.
Giant corporations like Apple and Google have come under fire in both the UK and the US recently for raking in massive profits, while shifting those profits overseas to avoid taxes. A report by the UK's Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Cisco Systems collectively earn interest while avoiding taxes on over $124 billion that's held overseas.
The new world order is now unequivocally clear.
Our moral leaders have told us time and time again that violence against any one of us wounds us all. Until we recognize and address both forms of violence -- the seen and the unseen, the overt and the structural -- our society cannot be made whole. Until the hidden heart of violence is made visible, none of us will be able to breathe.
Let's face it, Putin has really knocked it out of the park this time. Team Obama is clearly out of its league and has no idea of what's going on. If Turkey turns eastward and joins the growing Russian bloc, US policymakers are going to have to scrap the better part of their strategic plans for the coming century and go back to Square 1. What a headache.
Spray-on Solar Power Coming Your Way
Pretty soon, powering your tablet could be as simple as wrapping it in cling wrap. Scientists have just invented a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces using miniscule light-sensitive materials known as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) -- a major step toward making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture.
"Rolling Stone" magazine didn't do the rising social concern of rape on university campuses any justice with Sabrina Rubin Erdely's article: "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA;" no, it set this issue back to the Dark Ages. . . ."Rolling Stone" needs to focus on musicians, TV stars, and glitterati, and keep clear of the heavy atomic issues like rape.

The shakeup at the top of the masthead at The New Republic is reverberating all through the once-high-flying magazine's staff as more than a dozen senior editors and a longer list of contributing editors quit on Friday following the resignation of editor Franklin Foer and literary editor Leon Wieseltier. The massive upheaval was touched off by the decision of TNR's owner, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and his new CEO, former Yahoo News executive Guy Vidra, to change the mission of the company from a magazine-focused institution to a digital media company with an expanded Manhattan office.
By Dr. Cheryl Pappas
Come Home for the Holidays
This is my holiday challenge for all of us: To hold onto our minds and take ownership and responsibility of who we are and how we independently think and feel.
Joe Scarborough was at his intolerable worst recently. It all started after he saw a group of football players giving a symbolic gesture of solidarity with those who believe Darren Wilson got away with murder. It offended him. Well, if I could spend a moment or two with "Moaning" Joe, this is what I'd tell him.

By Herbert Calhoun
Hip-Hop and the Ghettoization of the the American Mind: Another "meme" in the American Family Portrait
A book review of Cora Daniels' book Ghetto Nation with the reviewer's commentaries.
Mark Pearl Harbor, not by celebrating the state of permawar that has existed for 73 years, but by reading The Golden Age by Gore Vidal and marking the golden age of anti-isolationist imperial mass-killing that has encompassed the lives of every U.S. citizen under the age of 73.

Veteran CNN anchor Candy Crowley has decided to leave the network, according to an email sent by network head Jeff Zucker. "It is with mixed emotions, that I wanted to let you know that Candy has let us know that she has made the decision to move on, so she can embark on the next chapter of her already prolific career," Zucker wrote.
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.
United States commandos stormed a village in southern Yemen early Saturday in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda, but the raid ended badly with the kidnappers killing the American and a South African held with him, United States officials said. The raid was the second failed operation by United States forces to rescue Mr. Somers from Yemen in less than two weeks. The deaths of the hostages -- as well as several Yemeni civilians -- seemed likely to raise new questions about the Obama administration's reliance on military power to free its captured citizens.

When people move, smart politicians listen. The demonstrations across the nation after Ferguson and Garner, the growing protests of low-wage workers risking jobs because they simply can't breathe suggest that people are starting to move. The question soon will be who stands with those in motion and who stands with a status quo that clearly cannot hold.
As California finally experiences the arrival of a rain-bearing Pineapple Express this week, two climate scientists have shown that the drought of 2012-2014 has been the worst in 1,200 years. But not to worry, "climate change denier" Senator Inhofe will put on his Superman cape and rescue the state, if not the world.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday privately expressed concern about the timing of the release of a long-awaited Congressional report criticizing the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods days before it was expected to be released. One source said one concern was that Islamic militant groups holding U.S. hostages would execute them once the report is released. At least three Americans, including one woman, are currently believed to be held by such groups.
Retired cop's rant about why Cosby accusers took so long to complain about alleged sexual assaults.
Turkey's decision to partner with Russia in its plans to abandon South Stream due to EU demands could have earth-shaking consequences.
The Russian government downplays the dangers and continues to speak of "our Western partners," with whom the Russian government hopes to work things out. The Russian government and the Russian people -- indeed all the peoples of the earth -- should understand that Russia has no partners in the West. Russia only has enemies.
Nobody's willing to say it yet. But after Ferguson, and especially after the Eric Garner case that exploded in New York yesterday after yet another non-indictment following a minority death-in-custody, the police suddenly have a legitimacy problem in this country. Law-enforcement resources are now distributed so unevenly, and justice is being administered with such brazen inconsistency, that people everywhere are going to start questioning the basic political authority of law enforcement.
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.

 Latest Articles

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." Preachers in the South have been doing so ever since.

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.
Maryland City Votes Unanimously to Alert Citizens to the Health Risks of Cell Phone/Wireless Radiation and to Oppose Cell Towers on School Grounds

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.
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.
Taking it to the streets, the Equal Justice movement gathers momentum.
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.
The Chokehold is Still Alive and well Courtesy of the Supreme Court
Police departments nationally scrambled furiously in the aftermath of the chokehold death of Eric Garner and the non-indictment of the officer that applied the hold to publicly declare that they do not use the chokehold. They waved and cited inter-department regulation after regulation to prove that they bar the use of the hold, don't teach it to officers, and that many officers themselves say they wouldn't know how to use it

 Best News Links from the Web

Days before the 2002 vote on Fast Track Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), predicted that its passage would: Be the most important tax cut of the next decade, Create millions of jobs, Boost the financial markets, Secure democratic governments throughout the Western Hemisphere, Reduce the pressures of mass immigration, Be greatest economic stimulus we can ask for, Give the president a powerful tool in the fight against terrorism. In spite of the aforementioned promises, millions of domestic jobs were lost, the financial markets melt-down, democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere have suffered, mass immigration has increased, terrorism is unabated, the weak economic recovery has violated the expectations of the middle-class and last but not least the U.S. Fiscal Cliff has been exacerbated.

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. African Americans' frustration and anger over Garner runs much deeper than the decision not to indict the white cop who killed him; it is a reaction to a white supremacist system that oppresses us and excludes us in every area of American life -- economic, educational, social and political. Even the most empathetic white person is just not going to know what that's like.
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: "These things to tend to peter out on their own, people get tired of marching around aimlessly," For the second night in a row, protesters took to the streets Thursday--in much larger numbers than the day before--to protest a Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the death of Eric Garner, a black Staten Island man who was placed in an apparent chokehold as police tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes.
A report summarizing a yearlong investigation by the legislative panel examining the George Washington Bridge lane closures found no evidence of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's involvement but concluded that two of his allies acted "with perceived immunity" when they gridlocked Fort Lee's streets for apparently political reasons. The 136-report, drawing off sworn testimony, private interviews and thousands of subpoenaed documents, also highlights the unsuccessful efforts by a now-shuttered arm of Christie's office to court the Fort Lee mayor's endorsement, finding that the closures were "motivated in part by political considerations."
Hatch Lauds Senate Passage of Bill to End Social Security Benefits for Nazis - Press Releases - United States Senator Or
"I am proud the Senate spoke in unison and passed this bill in a bipartisan fashion," said Hatch. "It's outrageous that Nazi war criminals and anyone who participated in Nazi persecution atrocities continue to collect Social Security benefits while living abroad. With the President's signature, this will stop once and for all." Meanwhile, Orin is also happy to vote for arming Nazis in Kiev, bringing us one step closer to nuclear war--with his much ballyhooed NSA in Utah being the epicenter for a nuclear blast.
Former President Bush has spoken at length about his close ties to former President Bill Clinton, at times calling him his "brother from another mother." CNN's Candy Crowley asked Bush during an interview published Friday where that leaves Hillary Clinton: "My sister-in-law!" the president responded light-heartedly. When asked about a potential Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, the former president conceded they would both be formidable candidates but insisted his brother -- his real brother -- would win. "I think he'd beat her," he told Crowley. "Absolutely."