The Israel-Palestinian issue in rap

The so-called Middle East ‘Peace Process’, which needs to be relabeled to the more accurate ‘Delay and Deny Palestinian Rights Process’, has been called off for the umpteenth time since the Israeli government objects to the fact that the Palestinian Authority, that governs the Occupied Territories in the West Bank, has applied for recognition from various international agencies and has also arrived at a unity agreement with Hamas that governs Gaza.
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Don’t show emotions if you are a woman politician

The Daily Show uses the absurd fuss over the news of the future birth of Hillary Clinton’s grandchild to examine how differently the media scrutinize male and female politicians. Although the clips are funny, it is not really a laughing matter. Talking of laughing matters, do people recall the time when she was running for president in 2007 and there was a period of intense focus on the way she laughed and whether it was an unbecoming cackle? It was ludicrous.
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Using the ‘no fly’ list as a means of coercion

I have written many times before about how the US government abuses is infamous ‘no fly’ list. People arrive at an airport either within the US or abroad to come to the US and are told that they cannot board the plane. No reasons are given for the denial and the affected people cannot find out why they are on the list or whether they are on the list at all or what they can do to try and get off it. It is as perfect an example of the arbitrary denial of due process as one can think of.
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More on Hillary Clinton as grandmother and the shoe incident

Stephen Colbert returned from his break and used two segments to make fun of the media fuss over the announcement that Hillary Clinton’s daughter is pregnant. Colbert mugs a lot for the camera but in these segments he outdid himself. I was really impressed at how flexible his face is. Watch especially at the 3:24 mark on the first clip and the 1:00 mark on the second.
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Profiting from police abuse of the poor

In the comments to my post on a local physician Syed J. Akhtar-Zaidi whose bank accounts and other assets had been seized by the overzealous US attorney Steven Dettelbach for this area because they claim he was prescribing pain killers indiscriminately to make money, reader jimmyfromchicago gave me a link to a long article in the New Yorker magazine by Sarah Stillman about these civil forfeiture laws. What she describes is shocking, a terrible violation of any kind of due process protections, where law enforcement is able to confiscate people’s belongings without even charging them with any crime.
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