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Old 09-12-2016, 05:51 PM   #3601
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A crowd of approximately 11,000 angry anti-gay protestors who call themselves “pro-family” gathered in Guanajuato on Saturday to protest Mexican President Pena Nieto’s proposal for same-sex marriage “without any form of discrimination.” The protestors ran into a bit of obstruction.

A 12-year-old boy stood in the middle of the street, hands out, in hopes of stopping the crowd—or at minimum, to make a statement.
“I have an uncle who is gay and I hate the hatred.”

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016...otestors-IMAGE
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Old 09-20-2016, 11:41 AM   #3602
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TTIP 2.0? New Leak Exposes Threats of Lesser-Known TISA Trade Deal

Greenpeace Netherlands exposed the threats to democracy and climate action contained within the little-known Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) on Tuesday with new leaks divulging several chapters of the clandestine global trade agreement.

"It's a sad day for democracy when ordinary people are dependent on leaks to learn about the far-reaching consequences of toxic trade deals that are being cooked up behind closed doors," said Nick Dearden, head of the U.K.-based Global Justice Now.

And TISA is perhaps the least well-known and most highly protected of the imminent agreements: "Somehow TISA is also even more secret than the notoriously covert CETA, TTIP and TPP deals, with parties unable to release details of negotiations until five years after it has taken effect," Greenpeace observes.

These latest leaks "confirm what civil society groups, trade unions, and consumer watch dogs across the world have been warning against, that TISA is a turbo-charged privatization and deregulation deal that will enormously benefit corporations at the expense of ordinary people and democracy itself," Dearden added.

Indeed, the leaks from the highly secretive deal—currently being negotiated by 50 nations around the world—affirm that with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on the ropes, other such "democracy-wrecking" deals are looming.

"The deal, a spiritual and practical sibling of the much-maligned TTIP and TPP free trade agreements, is designed to drive deregulation across the vast global services sector," observes Greenpeace, "increasing international trade in everything from banking to energy services."

In its analysis (pdf) of the TISA leaks, Greenpeace explains that the deal's emphasis on deregulation presents a grave threat to countries' ability to adhere to the terms agreed upon in the Paris climate accord:

Countries that sign up to TISA will be required to lock-in liberalization and could be prevented from rolling back failed policies due of two key clauses—the 'standstill' and 'ratchet' clauses.

The standstill clause freezes the extent of liberalization in certain sectors, which means the markets of TISA state can never be less liberalized than they were at the time they signed the deal.

Meanwhile the ratchet clause—which sometimes appears in other trade agreements—stops countries from reintroducing trade barriers that had been previously and unilaterally removed.

Together these two clauses undermine the ability of governments to ever reverse the liberalization of services, even if elected on a mandate to do it. That means they could be stopped from testing liberalizing policies, since there would be no way to reversing them if things went awry.

In order to make the objectives of the Paris Agreement a reality and in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions to the point where the worst impacts of climate change can be avoided, governments must be allowed to interfere and use all policy tools available to them. Arbitrarily locking governments into deregulation could have hugely negative impacts on their capacity to implement the kind of climate policies we need to stay within 1.5 degrees.


Greenpeace also notes that while going "[w]idely unnoticed by the public, TISA could be finalized by the end of this year."

"We now know that TISA will undermine COP21, further deregulate the financial sector, stop failed privatizations being brought back into public hands, and undermine data privacy laws," commented Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary of Public Service International. "What else are our governments keeping secret from us?"

http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...isa-trade-deal
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Old 09-22-2016, 12:59 PM   #3603
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Huffington Post refers to Glenn Reynolds the USA Today columnist and University of Texas law professor who tweeted for people to run down protesters blocking a highway in North Carolina as a conservative, but he identifies as a libertarian. People are protesting the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. It seems kind of drastic to advocate running people down for exercising their first amendment rights.

Here is the article in Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0e80b1ba06a85

USA Today Columnist Urges Motorists To ‘Run Down’ Protesters On North Carolina Highway
Twitter suspended the account of Glenn Reynolds after the inflammatory comment.

Conservative USA Today columnist and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds caused an uproar on Twitter when he urged motorists to drive over protesters blocking a highway in North Carolina.

“Run them down,” Reynolds, who also produces the Instapundit website, tweeted late Wednesday with an image of the protesters on I-277.

Twitter suspended the account, but The Huffington Post preserved a screenshot of the tweet:
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Old 10-15-2016, 05:27 PM   #3604
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Filmmaker Faces 45 Years in Prison for Reporting on Dakota Access Protests

In an ominous sign for press freedom, documentary filmmaker and journalist Deia Schlosberg was arrested and charged with felonies carrying a whopping maximum sentence of up to 45 years in prison—simply for reporting on the ongoing Indigenous protests against fossil fuel infrastructure.

Schlosberg was arrested in Walhalla, North Dakota on Tuesday for filming activists shutting down a tar sands pipeline, part of a nationwide solidarity action organized on behalf of those battling the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The filmmaker was held without access to a lawyer for 48 hours, her colleague Josh Fox wrote in the Nation, and her footage was confiscated by the police.

Schlosberg was then charged Friday with three felonies, the Huffington Post reported: "conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service. Together, the charges carry 45 years in maximum prison sentences."

"They have in my view violated the First Amendment," Fox told the Huffington Post, referring to the state's Pembina County Sheriff's Department. “It’s fucking scary, it knocks the wind of your sails, it throws you for a loop. They threw the book at Deia for being a journalist."

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden observed that Schlosberg faces more years in prison than he does for leaking secret documents about the NSA's mass surveillance program in 2013.

"Deia isn't alone," observed Fox in an op-ed in the Nation. "The arrest of journalists, filmmakers, and others witnessing and reporting on citizen protests against fossil-fuel infrastructure amid climate change is part of a worrisome and growing pattern."

Indeed, the news of Schlosberg's arrest followed Democracy Now's Amy Goodman announcement earlier this week that she will return to North Dakota to combat charges she faces as a result of reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline protest last month.

"Goodman, whose camera crew filmed a private security team attacking peaceful Native American protesters with dogs and pepper spray, faces charges of criminal trespassing—which many have said amounts to an assault on press freedom," as Common Dreams reported.

It also emerged late Saturday that a North Dakota state prosecutor has dropped the trespassing charge and is seeking instead to charge Goodman with participating in a "riot," Democracy Now reported.

"I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting," said Goodman. "I wasn't trespassing, I wasn't engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters."

A warrant for Goodman's arrest was issued September 8.

Meanwhile, actor Shailene Woodley was arrested Monday while live-streaming a prayer action at a Dakota Access construction site. "She was singled out, the police told her, because she was well-known and had 40,000 people watching live on her Facebook page," Fox wrote. "Other filmmakers shooting protest actions along the pipeline have also been arrested."

"Journalism is not a crime; it is a responsibility," Fox said in a press statement about this pattern of arrests. "The actions of the North Dakota Police force are not just a violation of the climate, but a violation of the constitution."

Supporters have created a petition calling on the authorities in North Dakota to drop charges against Schlosberg, Goodman, and other journalists arrested for doing their work and reporting on the protests against Dakota Access.

Neil Young, Mark Ruffalo, Daryl Hannah, and other celebrities have also signed an open letter to President Barack Obama and North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, calling on the leaders to intervene and for Schlosberg's charges to be dropped. The charges were "unfair, unjust, and illegal," the letter said, according to Reuters.

"This is not only about reporting on the climate-change movement," Fox argued in the Nation. "Journalists have also been arrested reporting on Black Lives Matter, the movement for Native rights, and many other important movements the corporate media fails to cover. The First Amendment and the Constitution are at stake in this case. If we lose it, we lose America too."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...ccess-protests
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Old 11-30-2016, 04:35 AM   #3605
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Default Supreme Court To Consider How Long Immigrants May Be Detained Without Bond Hearing

The U.S. Supreme Court takes up important immigration questions Wednesday, even as President-elect Donald Trump talks of pushing for more deportations. The legal issue before the court tests whether people who are detained for more than six months have a right to a bond hearing.

These are not the usual deportation cases, where facts are cut and dried and people are deported within a month or two of their detention. Rather, these are people legally in the U.S., lawful permanent residents who the government is trying to deport because they committed a crime. Or some cases involve people who turn themselves in at the border seeking asylum because they claim a reasonable fear of persecution.

When their cases are ultimately decided, these individuals have a good chance of prevailing. Forty percent of the lawful permanent residents and 70 percent of the asylum seekers eventually win and remain here legally.

The problem is that their cases take a long time, on average 13 months. And while detention may sound benign, it is not, said Ahilan Arulanantham, the ACLU lawyer who will argue the immigrants' case Wednesday.

"If you walk into a detention center, you would think you were in a prison," Arulanantham said.

He notes that detainees wear colored jumpsuits and live in cells or dorm-style barracks. Their movement is strictly controlled by guards.

"If you want to go visit your family member," Arulanantham added, "you can't touch them. You have to talk to them usually through a phone with a glass pane separating you."

Two federal appeals courts have ruled that after six months detention, these detainees are entitled to a hearing to determine if they are a safety or flight risk. If they are not, the lower courts said, they should be allowed temporary release after posting a money bond, or agreeing to electronic monitoring, or both.

The Obama administration is challenging those decisions, arguing that the lower courts exceeded their authority.

Lawyers for the immigrants make their argument through examples. The lead plaintiff in the case, for instance, is Alejandro Rodriguez, a 39-year-old lawful permanent resident of the U.S. who was brought to the country when he was an infant. He was working as a dental assistant when he was picked up and detained for deportation based on a 1998 conviction for joyriding—not a deportable offense—and a later conviction for drug possession, which is a deportable offense, at the discretion of the immigration court.

Rodriguez was detained for three years and ultimately prevailed in keeping his status as a lawful permanent resident.

The ACLU says Rodriguez's case is hardly unique. It points to hundreds of other lawful permanent residents convicted of relatively minor offenses, often committed when they were teenagers, who now face detention, potentially for years, while they fight deportation.

The other category of people before the court on Wednesday are asylum seekers. These are people who have been judged to have a credible case of fear of persecution back home. The ACLU points, for example, to the case of an Ethiopian asylum seeker who fled his homeland after he was abducted and then held in captivity and subjected to "horrific acts of torture" for over a year. When he fled to the U.S. seeking asylum, he was detained without any chance for release after a Department of Homeland Security officer concluded that he was not dangerous but mistakenly thought he was from Somalia and, therefore, had insufficient proof of identity.

ACLU lawyers argue that if this individual had been afforded a hearing, he could have pointed out the error and provided his Ethiopian government ID. Instead, in the end, he remained in detention for nine months, and was finally granted asylum.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that detention, imprisonment, and other forms of physical restraint lie "at the heart of liberty" protected by the Constitution, but two years later, it upheld detention for brief periods without requiring individualized custody hearings. In Wednesday's case, immigration lawyers, who are representing between 6,000 to 8,000 people, contend that detentions that average 13 months are not brief, and that detainees are entitled to a bond hearing after six months.

The Obama administration countered that these arguments are all beside the point, because, in the government's view, the executive and legislative branches traditionally have the power to control immigration matters free from any judicial oversight. In short, the government argues that if Congress or the president wants to change the law or immigration regulations, either can do so. But the courts have no business meddling in such matters.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/30/503658..._campaign=news

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Old 12-05-2016, 09:09 AM   #3606
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People want answers': Criminal probe of Oakland fire launched as death toll hits 36

Phil Willon, Paige St. John and Soumya KarlamanglaContact Reporters

The grim search for bodies in the ruins of the Oakland warehouse fire entered its third day Monday as criminal investigators began to examine who is to blame for one of the worst fires in modern California history.

Thirty-six bodies have been recovered, but officials halted recovery operations overnight due to the unstable condition of the warehouse. As of Monday morning, about 70% of the building had been searched, officials said.

“We absolutely believe the number of fire fatalities will increase,” Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton said Monday.

Alameda County authorities released the names of seven people who died: Cash Askew, 22; David Cline, 23; Travis Hough, 35; and Donna Kellogg, 32, of Oakland; Sara Hoda, 30, of Walnut Creek; Brandon Chase Wittenauer, 32, of Hayward; and Nick Gomez-Hall, 25, of Coronado. The name of one minor was withheld.

Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, said the majority of the victims were in their 20s and 30s, but that some were teenagers.

Kelly said the district attorney’s office has sent a team of criminal investigators to work alongside the sheriff’s arson task force and the Oakland Police Department. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has also sent representatives to help in the investigation, providing resources, forensics and laboratory work.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...205-story.html
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Old 12-05-2016, 06:59 PM   #3607
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MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — "Yet another anti-Muslim hate crime was reported within the NYC public transit system during the Monday morning commute, when a uniformed Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) worker wearing a hijab, or headscarf, was attacked on her way to work in Midtown by a male subway rider, according to police.

The 45-year-old woman was aboard a 7 train around 6:20 a.m., headed to Grand Central Terminal, when "a person approached her, called her a terrorist and said she should not be working with the city," an NYPD spokesman said.

The attack turned violent when the woman exited the train at Grand Central, police said.

Her attacker — who cops believe to be a Hispanic man around 5 feet, 10 inches tall, wearing a black jacket — followed her into the station and pushed her down a flight of stairs, injuring her ankle and her knee, police said.

"I wish a speedy recovery for the victim, and want to let her know we are seeking justice for her and for all New Yorkers," New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement issued Monday.

This latest assault feeds into a 35 percent spike in city hate crimes this year, police said — and marks at least the third attack of its kind against a Muslim woman in NYC over the past week.

In particular, the city saw "a huge spike" in hate crimes "right after the election" of Donald Trump on Nov. 8, part of a troubling national trend, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a Monday press conference on recent crime rates in NYC." (Scroll down for video.)...


http://patch.com/new-york/midtown-ny...yc-hate-crimes
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Old 12-06-2016, 01:47 PM   #3608
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Default A New Wave of Popular Fury Could Hit Europe in 2017

PARIS — For Europe, 2016 has brought a series of political shocks: near-record numbers of immigrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa; a vote by Britain to leave the European Union and renewed threats by Russia to meddle on the continent.

But 2017 could be even bumpier. There will be at least three elections in Europe next year: in Germany, France and the Netherlands for sure, and now perhaps in Italy, too. Just about everywhere, political establishments are being blamed for tepid growth, for too few jobs and for favoring global financial markets over the common citizen.

The latest indicator of popular discontent was Italy’s referendum on Sunday, when voters rejected constitutional changes proposed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That result was a stinging blow to Mr. Renzi, who said he would resign.

Coming after Britain’s vote this year to leave the European Union, the Italian outcome was taken as yet another rebuke to decades of efforts to forge a closer union of the bloc’s 28 countries. And it raised new doubts about whether that union would hold in the years ahead.

“This is a crisis that strikes at the absolute core of the European Union in a way even ‘Brexit’ does not,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy.

“The U.K. was always one foot in and one foot out,” he said. “Italy is a founding member state, fully integrated into the union’s political and economic structure. This is existential for the E.U.”

The Italian electorate rejected a constitutional overhaul that, among other changes, would have increased the power of the prime minister by reducing the number of senators and decreasing their power. The political impact of the rejection lies less in any direct effect on policies than in the opening it provides for the populist Five Star movement, which campaigned against the constitutional changes. It also brought the resignation of Mr. Renzi, a strong supporter of the European Union who was working hard to stabilize some of Italy’s shakiest banks.

The popular anger has turned what are normally routine elections into what François Heisbourg, a former French defense official and the chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, described as moments of “volatility and inscrutability.”

That is especially so with yes-or-no referendums — first in Britain, now in Italy — where a populist rejection of the political establishment can, by extension, also be a chance to send a message to the unelected officials in Brussels who work closely with European government leaders.

In that context, Mr. Heisbourg said, the anti-European Union sentiment “is just a handle for the sense of a loss of control, a loss of agency” that people feel.

“In Britain, one of the campaign slogans for Brexit was ‘Vote Leave, Take Control,’” he noted. “The idea was the E.U. was preventing Britons from doing that. The E.U. is the piñata for populism.”

The motivation for voters in Britain and Italy was much the same as that for American voters who backed Donald J. Trump: to drive home to the elite that the status quo was unacceptable.

Compounding the frustration on both continents, and especially in Europe, are the lingering effects of the global recession of 2008, from which many European countries never fully recovered.

“The social contract that we, the West, signed up to — Europe, the United States — no longer adds up,” for people, said Xenia Wickett, who oversees the United States and the Americas program for the research institution Chatham House.

“The population is aging, we have far more older people relying on the younger ones for support, productivity is slowing, we haven’t been investing in our infrastructure and education,” Ms. Wickett said. “You have the disenfranchised saying, ‘That doesn’t work for us.’”

In France, for example, economic growth barely reached 1 percent last year. Youth unemployment there still hovers near 25 percent. (In Italy, Spain and Greece, it is even higher.) Older and less educated workers feel overwhelmed by an economy that seems to have left them behind.

“The Rust Belt isn’t just in America — there’s a Rust Belt in the north of France,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund. “They feel they are the dispossessed, dispossessed of their country’s sovereignty and of their economy.”

Far from easing those anxieties, membership in the European Union is blamed for exacerbating them. And the austerity regime that Brussels officials and international lenders have demanded, especially across southern Europe, has fueled anger still more.

The Italian vote will probably widen the gulf between the northern eurozone countries, led by Germany, and those in the south, said Pawel Tokarski, a senior researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

Many in Germany and other northern countries, he said, will take the vote as a sign of unwillingness in Italy to overhaul its economy the way Brussels wants.

“Definitely, this vote is going to strengthen the anti-E.U. voices,” Mr. Tokarski said.

Those voices have been building for more than 25 years, as the union expanded, the Brussels bureaucracy grew and many people began to feel that the union’s regulations and requirements were more trouble than they were worth.

Tensions were apparent as early as 1992, when the Maastricht treaty, which was meant to bring Europe closer together, barely won approval in Denmark and France.

Today, anti-European Union positions are part of the platform of almost every populist party, including Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France; Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands; and the Five Star Movement in Italy, led by Beppe Grillo.

The political demise of Mr. Renzi, the Italian prime minister, and his reform agenda removes an unabashedly pro-European leader who had hoped to ignite economic growth by ending an era of crippling budget austerity. Instead, he may be remembered for creating an opening for politicians who are openly hostile to Europe and the euro.

“The way Washington is perceived by many American people is the way many French or Germans or Italians perceive Brussels,” Ms. de Hoop Scheffer said. “They perceive Brussels as almost an illegitimate entity.”

The old center-right and center-left parties that divided power in a number of countries and kept Europe stable for decades are being swept aside by new and unpredictable forces nearly across the board. Politicians who play on nationalism and worries about economic disenfranchisement are on the rise. Animosity toward the European Union is of a piece with this feeling.

“Right versus left doesn’t exist any more,” Mr. Wilders, who is regularly rated as the most popular politician in the Netherlands, said in an interview.

Many voters on both sides of the Atlantic seem fed up with the old political names and faces, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush in the United States.

In France, the list includes the former president Nicolas Sarkozy and another center-right figure, Alain Juppé, who are both out of the 2017 presidential race, as well as the current Socialist president, François Hollande, who decided not to seek a second term because his approval ratings were so poor.

With so many major elections on the way and so few of the big questions settled, Europe seems destined to continue to be subject to political tremors — and vulnerable to stronger forces that risk fracturing the European Union altogether.

“What we want is to bring back the values, the identity, the culture and the money, and put forward again national interests,” Mr. Wilders said.

Whether such changes are possible is hard to know, but Europe’s populists would clearly like to project an air of inevitability.

“I’m telling you, the genie will not go back into the bottle,” Mr. Wilders said. “The process will continue, and will change Europe forever.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/wo...ttom-well&_r=0

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Bernie was right about one thing - there is a revolution coming. It is a world wide one. And the issues are remarkably the same all over. Meckle is living on borrow time.
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Old 01-11-2017, 03:35 AM   #3609
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She pleaded no contest, but is using her mental illness as an excuse, smh.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...cid=spartanntp
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Old 02-05-2017, 10:31 AM   #3610
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Default Airline Stewardess stops human trafficking

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Old 02-09-2017, 04:47 PM   #3611
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Will Trump kill the open internet? FCC could be on the verge of ending net neutrality

Donald Trump wants to build another wall. Not a physical wall to keep out illegal immigrants, like his proposed Mexican border project, but a virtual wall around the internet. And just as with Mexico, he wants the people behind the wall to pay for it.

President Trump seems to want to dismantle the main internet policy of his predecessor, that of ensuring net neutrality, also known as the “open internet”. To do this, he has appointed the most vocal Republican critic of President Obama’s internet policies, Ajit Pai, as chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the largest and most powerful internet regulatory body in the world.

Net neutrality is the principle that telecoms providers that connect you to the internet should not throttle your access depending on what services and content you use. For example, your mobile phone company should not be able to reduce your use of Skype or WhatsApp by reducing the speed of those services so that you use their calling and messaging functions instead. Without net neutrality, certain services and websites would be able to pay internet providers so that customers can access them with faster speeds, disadvantaging those companies without such a deal.

Telecoms providers’ attempts to do this led to a growing international consensus among governments on net neutrality. From 2009, many European and Latin American countries introduced regulations and laws to promote or guarantee net neutrality. In the US, opposition from big telecoms and cable corporations in the courts meant it took six years of Obama’s presidency to begin to effectively implement net neutrality rules.

To get around net neutrality rules, some telecoms companies have more recently begun using a “zero rating” approach of offering customers a preferential bundle of certain services that do not use up data allowances. These “sponsored data” plans don’t prevent access to any other site or service. But they still disadvantage smaller content providers, including the likes of the BBC and Wikipedia, that cannot afford to negotiate inclusion in sponsored data plans as the likes of Facebook and Google can.

By the end of 2016, regulators in the EU and India had produced further guidelines banning zero-rating plans. And the FCC under Obama was challenging companies using the zero-rating strategy. All those other national regulators are in the midst of their investigations – which is why they are susceptible to the FCC’s do-nothing.

But, in the US at least, that is now history as we enter the Trump era. The new FCC chairman has argued the net neutrality rules over-regulate innovation, even quoting the Emperor from Star Wars to invoke his opposition. He prefers deregulation to allow companies to compete without explicit consumer protection rules to guarantee an open internet.

Since his appointment, Pai has closed the inquiry that was implementing Obama’s policy, and he is highly unlikely to agree to another one. Pai will most probably continue to act towards net neutrality by exercising masterly inactivity, failing to enforce the regulations.

Behind the wall

That will allow the big US telecoms and cable companies to erect paywalls around their content, giving customers free access to affiliated services but making them pay for rival content, especially high definition video. That means lower costs for video services affiliated to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast but higher costs for independent providers such as Netflix.

Who else is affected by an end to US net neutrality? In short, those innovators unable to strike a deal to get inside the telecoms and cable companies’ paywalls. Facebook’s deals with mobile operators have enabled it to offer zero-rated content in many countries. They may now hope the US approval for zero rating will help their arguments in India, Brazil and other huge developing markets. Google and and even NetFlix may be big enough to look after their interests, too.

But small innovators will have no guaranteed minimum service level to design new services. That could impact the development of the Internet of Things, 5G mobile networks and cloud computing services. Having to ask permission to run your service on the internet is a major issue for start-ups that are effectively three engineers in a garage (as Google and Facebook once were). And this may affect new companies’ decisions on where to start their innovations.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/will...et-neutrality/
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Old 03-24-2017, 02:07 PM   #3612
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Just heard on CNN, Trump asked to pull the bill!!

Ryan says:

"Time to move on and put healthcare behind us".

IDIOTS!!

Right-wingers could not win over the moderates.

They put us through nail biters for days!

Now the Republicans will tear each other apart with blame.

I personally will believe that it really and truly is dead as time goes on.
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"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

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Old 03-24-2017, 02:43 PM   #3613
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Fart of the Deal.

Pull back if you are going to lose

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Old 03-30-2017, 03:17 PM   #3614
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LGBTQ Advocates Say Trump’s New Executive Order Makes Them Vulnerable to Discrimination

by MARY EMILY O'HARA

With little fanfare on Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that LGBTQ advocates say rolls back lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and breaks a promise to that community not to make such changes to existing policy.

The executive order revokes key components of the Obama administration's previous executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or identity, gay rights advocates say...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...s-them-n740301
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Old 03-30-2017, 04:55 PM   #3615
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That's how fascism takes hold and grows in society: it gains traction by playing upon the fears of people; it keeps chipping away at long held and hard won battles for civil rights and social protections that include minority members of society (cultural, religious, sexual minority, poor, weak, disabled, children...).

Here's an oped which was featured in Economic Sociology and Political Economy, authored by Oleg Komlik, on January 22, 2017; based on the writings of Karl Polanyi's -- The Great Transformation (excerpt from the article and link, provided below):
"...the movement would come when both economic and political systems were threatened by complete paralysis. Fear would grip the people, and leadership would be thrust upon those who offered the easiest way out, at whatsoever ultimate price. The time was right for fascism," -- Karl Polanyi (p. 236, The Great Transformation).

I think Komlik has identified critical aspects of how fascism takes hold in society via critical sociological and political exploration of such problematic issues affecting current modern day issues in American society.

LINK (to article): https://economicsociology.org/2017/0...arket-economy/
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Old 03-30-2017, 08:27 PM   #3616
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Default When will Trump voters begin to believe facts instead of ideology? Indictment?

POLITICS NATIONAL SECURITY

Mike Flynn Willing to Testify in Return for Immunity

Frank Throp V

Former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn has told the Senate Intelligence Committee he is willing to testify about the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia in return for immunity from prosecution, a Congressional official told NBC News.

Flynn, a retired Lt. Gen. who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency before being pushed out by the Obama administration, advised the Trump campaign beginning in 2015. He served as President Trump's national security advisor for three weeks before resigning for what the Trump administration said was misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/30/mike-...-immunity.html
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"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

UN Human Rights commissioner

Last edited by *Anya*; 03-30-2017 at 08:30 PM. Reason: Added
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Old 04-04-2017, 07:13 PM   #3617
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A Federal Appeals Court just ruled that LGBTQI persons are protected in the workplace by the Civil Rights act!

So, employers may no longer fire or discriminate against someone because they are LGBTQI, even if a state does not protect us.

A huge victory that will probably wind up with the SCOTUS, but a victory nonetheless.
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Old 04-04-2017, 07:26 PM   #3618
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MsTinkerbelly View Post
A Federal Appeals Court just ruled that LGBTQI persons are protected in the workplace by the Civil Rights act!

So, employers may no longer fire or discriminate against someone because they are LGBTQI, even if a state does not protect us.

A huge victory that will probably wind up with the SCOTUS, but a victory nonetheless.
Thank you for posting this!

Here is some more on the ruiling and that it was the 7th Circuit:


LGBT employees protected from workplace discrimination, appeals court rules

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter

Updated 9:03 PM ET, Tue April 4, 2017


(CNN)The Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination against LGBT employees, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

"We conclude today that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination," Judge Diane Wood wrote for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling is a victory for Kimberly Hively, who sued Ivy Tech Community College, arguing that the school violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it denied her employment.

"Any discomfort, disapproval, or job decision based on the fact that the complainant -- woman or man -- dresses differently, speaks differently, or dates or marries a same-sex partner, is a reaction purely and simply based on sex," Wood wrote.

"That means that it falls within Title VII's prohibition against sex discrimination, if it affects employment in one of the specified ways," Wood added.

"This decision is (a) game-changer for lesbian and gay employees facing discrimination in the workplace and sends a clear message to employers: it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation," said Greg Nevin of Lambda Legal, the group that brought the case.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/politi...appeals-court/
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"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

UN Human Rights commissioner
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Old 05-01-2017, 03:46 PM   #3619
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US Supreme Court refused to listen to a challenge to California's Supreme Court ruling that banned gay conversion therapy.

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/artic...-ban-challenge
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Old 05-09-2017, 01:08 PM   #3620
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Default Emergency declared at US Hanford nuclear waste site after tunnel collapse

RICHLAND, Wash. — Hundreds of workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation were evacuated Tuesday after part of a tunnel, which stores rail cars filled with radioactive waste, collapsed.

Officials detected no radiation release, and no workers were in the tunnel when it caved in, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. Around 11 a.m. PT, a robot was being used to sample contamination in the air and on the ground.

Hanford contractors working nearby were removed from the area while those farther away on the the 586-square-mile site were told to remain indoors, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The complex, about half the size of Rhode Island and located along the Columbia River, has more than 9,000 employees.

A manager sent a message to all personnel telling them to "secure ventilation in your building" and "refrain from eating or drinking."

he tunnel, which is hundreds of feet long and covered with about 8 feet of soil, contains highly contaminated materials such as trains that transported nuclear fuel rods. It connects to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, known at the site as PUREX.

The 20-foot-by-20-foot collapse occurred at one of two rail tunnels under the PUREX site, Bradbury said. In the past, rail cars full of radioactive waste were driven into the tunnels and buried.

The closed PUREX plant was part of the nation’s nuclear weapons production complex.

Hanford — about 20 miles northwest of Richland, 150 miles southeast of Seattle and less than 50 miles from the Oregon border — was built during World War II and made the plutonium for most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. For decades afterward, workers made plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Hanford's emergency operations center was activated at 8:26 a.m., and long-time workers think it may be the first time it was opened for a possible radioactive release. Oregon's Department of Energy also activated its own emergency operations center.

“Hanford is 35 miles away from Oregon,” said Rachel Wray, Oregon Energy Department spokeswoman. “We are concerned about Oregonians’ health and that concerns the food we eat.”

Today the site contains 56 million gallons of radioactive waste and is the largest depository of radioactive waste from the Defense Department. Contractors are in the midst of a decades-long process of cleanup.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nel/314555001/
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