There will be a primary election on March 20 to select Republican and Democratic candidates to vie for congressional seats in Illinois and the third district has drawn some interest. On the Republican side, only one person has filed to run in this election, guaranteeing that he will be the party’s candidate. Not having a rival in primaries is not unusual. What is unusual is that this unopposed person has the most appalling views.
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Investigative journalist Robert Parry died last week at the age of 68. Jon Schwarz writes about the qualities that made him a great journalist which, as should not be too surprising, made it hard for him to work for his former employers at the Associated Press and Newsweek that he said tried to suppress his accounts that held the powerful to account, so he started his own news service called ConsortiumNews.
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January 30 was the 50th anniversary of the launch of what is known as the Tet Offensive, Tet being the name of the Vietnamese New Year. The forces of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army launched a concerted attack on US and South Vietnamese all over South Vietnam and even right in the heart of Ho Chi Ming City (then called Saigon), including the headquarters of the South Vietnamese General Staff, the Independence Palace, the US Embassy, the Navy Headquarters, and the National Radio Station.
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Today the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives finally released the so-called Nunes memo, so named after the chair of the committee. I have rarely seen such an extended period of hype over whether the memo would be released or not, with speculation extending for weeks. To be honest, this is the kind of absurd Washington kabuki that I abhor and tend to ignore because it is almost invariably much ado about nothing. If you are interested you can read the four-page memo here and read about it here.
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The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement has as its goal to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.” An overview of its mission states:
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.
That the state of policing in the US is appalling is pretty much a given. Their propensity to use excessive, even lethal, force in situations that do not demand it, especially when they are dealing with poor people or people of color, has been well documented. They then close ranks, aided by prosecutors, to prevent any justice being meted out to the offending officers so that it is big news when a police officer is even fired or indicted, let alone convicted of a crime.
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Jon Schwarz says that Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech last night had a lot of rhetoric that was dangerously similar to that used by George W. Bush in his 2002 and 2003 State of the Union speeches before he launched the criminal and disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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All societies tend to be male dominated in pretty much all walks of life, such as running the government and businesses. Governments that differ widely in ideology are often similar when it comes to the subordinate roles played by women. Given that the world is not in great shape, it is natural to speculate how things might be different if women ran things. Unfortunately there are no models of such structure.
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After Donald Trump’s disgraceful comments about Haiti, the comedian and talk show host decide to go there and share with the people his own sense of revulsion at Trump’s ignorance. He also encounters a crowd of people angry at the way that American journalists report on their country and think that he is just one more of them.
I saw this over at Pharyngula and felt that this video should be viewed widely because under the comedic surface it reflects the disturbing reality about policing in the US.