Twitter Enables Censorship, Boycotts Begin
This article is re-posted from Common Dreams.
Social media website Twitter announced Thursday that it will begin blocking certain messages (tweets) on a country-to-country basis. Twitter has been known as a vehicle for free speech as well as a source for social and political organizing — notably during the protests in 2011 from the Egyptian uprising to Occupy Wall Street. Governments will now request Twitter to take down certain ‘illegal’ tweets, which will be blocked from its citizens but may still be visible by users outside of the censored country. Many have now raised concerns that this will open the door for repressive governmental censorship, in some ways defeating the benefits of Twitter all together.
This is a sudden reverse in policy for Twitter who has previously boasted its capacity for free speech.
Users across the world are beginning the protest and a Twitter boycott has been planned for tomorrow.
The UK Independent reports:
In a statement published online the San Francisco-based company told users that it could now “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country.” Twitter defended the technology as a way of ensuring the maximum possible audience could view its content whilst adhering to specific laws in different countries.
Previously when Twitter was forced to delete a tweet it would be taken down worldwide. Now individual tweets can be blocked in specific countries with Twitter promising to flag when a comment is taken offline.
An example Twitter gave was Germany where glorification of Nazism or publishing Hitler’s Mein Kampf, for example, is illegal. If a tweet broke German law, Twitter could block users in Germany from reading the tweet but continue to allow others worldwide to see it. [...]
Free speech advocates expressed concerns that the new technology would encourage repressive governments to insist that Twitter take down critical content especially given the website’s role in helping to organize mass protests during last year’s Arab Spring.
“Whilst censoring tweets that break the law in individual countries is preferable to taking down the content altogether, we’re going to be monitoring this very closely to ensure that Twitter’s commitment to free speech isn’t watered down,” said Mike Harris, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship.
UK’s Sky News reports:
The move to censor certain tweets is a significant change from its position during the Arab Spring in 2011, where protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere used Twitter to co-ordinate demonstrations.
As the protests gathered momentum last January, Twitter signaled it would take a hands-off approach to censoring content in a blog post entitled The Tweets Must Flow.
“We do not remove tweets on the basis of their content,” the blog post read.
It added: “Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users’ right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed.”
But now a new blog post by Twitter said: “Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world.”
A boycott of Twitter has now been planned and will go into affect tomorrow. Huffington Post writes:
Twitterers have a message: Tomorrow, turn off the tweets.
Users of the social media site are planning a Twitter boycott to protest the company’s new ability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis. [...]
Some users are calling on fellow Twitterers to silence their tweets on January 28 as a way of expressing their opposition to Twitter’s plan. They are using the hashtag #TwitterBlackout to organize the boycott, and tweets tagged with the hashtag are rolling in at a clip of about 12 per minute. The tweets span a range of languages, including English, German, Spanish and Arabic.
The protest follows less than two weeks after thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, protested two controversial anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, by shutting down or posting notices outlining the downsides of the proposed legislation. Google alone managed to secure more than 7 million signatures for an online petition opposing the bills, and tweets about SOPA and PIPA numbered in the hundreds of thousands the day of the protest.
Yet this online protest, and others like it, have relied on Twitter as a means of communicating between protestors and buttressing support for their movements.
This article by Roger Bybee is re-posted from Common Dreams.
The Occupy movement forcefully injected a long-taboo topic—America’s appalling “banana republic”-level economic disparities—into the mainstream political debate.
That inequality has immense implications, from falling wages, to deteriorating healthcare coverage, the overgrown financial sector, and the decline of America’s productive base. Such sweeping inequality, deeply rooted in our economic and political system of legal payoffs and policy paybacks, has been intensified by union-busting and globalization.
But even many of America’s most liberal mainstream politicians and pundits have narrowed the debate over inequality, perhaps out of a desire to shield President Obama from any pressure coming from his left. The issue of tax inequities has soared in importance, exposing the privileged status enjoyed by CEOs and hedge fund and private equity executives like Mitt Romney. But other crucial dimensions of inequality painfully experienced by ordinary Americans have been crowded out.
For example, the liberal and likable Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word, declares in a TV ad that all the talk about “class war” amounts to a battle over a proposed 4 percent increase in tax rates for the super-rich. Really, Lawrence?
The richest 1 percent did not triple their share of the nation’s income during the last three decades—to the current 24 percent—simply through the tax system alone. Nor did the tax system allow the wealthiest 1 percent to capture nearly 9/10 of productivity gains in recent years, representing a $3 billion upward shift in income.
American media employ a disproportionately large share of pundits who either deny or defend the riches accruing to America’s “job creators”—ranging from the outraged George Will to the sly discounting of the problem by NPR’s Adam Davidson. They are accompanied by a chorus of leading voices—Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria, to name just two, who gloss over the inequities caused by global corporate supremacy.
Even the supposedly liberal pundits—E.J. Dionne, Howard Fineman, Jonathan Alter, Ezra Klein and Richard Wolffe, among others—are remarkably confined in their discussions of inequality. They almost never refer to the 35-year campaign of union-busting by Corporate America, in which 90 percent of union organizing drives are greeted with high-pressure resistance from management, according to Christopher Martin’s 2003 book on media coverage of labor, Framed!.
The crucial fact that 31,358 workers get fired in a typical year while trying to unionize their workplace, according to author Philip Dine, is almost uniformly omitted from liberal pundits’ explanations of U.S. inequality. Only in their coverage of public-employee battles in Wisconsin did MSNBC hosts like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz discuss union-busting and its role in pushing down wages and eliminating workers’ voice on the job.
The other central weapon in the class war against workers—the threat or actual relocation of production to brutal low-wage conditions found in Mexico and China—has been almost entirely absent from the comments of MSNBC hosts and guests.
John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s and author of the superb 2000 book on NAFTA,“The Selling of Free Trade, believes that too many liberal and progressive commentators and pundits have been afraid of criticizing President Obama on a fundamental issue of loyalty to working-class interests. “The so-called liberal media and even its leftish fringe are almost all in the bag for Obama,” said MacArthur, whose book extensively details the almost-unanimous endorsement of NAFTA by the US press corps in 1992 and 1993.
“Obama has been terrible on these issues of globalization,” says MacArthur, pointing to his abandonment of his promise to re-negotiate NAFTA. (The President has even failed to enforce the weak side agreements on labor and environmental issues, following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush).
Yet the liberal politicians and media voices who should be challenging the role of free-trade and union-busting in driving down wages and increasing inequality have almost uniformly remained silent. While liberal on a wide variety of issues, pundits like Dionne and Wolffe continue to adhere to the free-trade faith without examining its consequences in lost jobs, depressed wages and devastated factory towns.
Others seem to be operating from the notion that any criticism of Obama will weaken his chances for re-election. “Meanwhile, Obama’s raising money from all the corporate interests who benefit [from free trade],” MacArthur notes. “People who should be speaking out—like Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio]—are just not doing it.”
Auto bailout far from ideal
To be a bit more specific: Obama’s “bailout” of the auto industry has been portrayed by liberals, especially Ed Schultz, as an unalloyed success. Led by Wall Street financier Steven Rattner, the program caused tens of thousands of GM and Chrysler workers to lose their jobs; federal funds allowed a Chrysler engine-production unit to be shifted from Kenosha, Wis. to Saltillo, Mexico; the number of GM cars imported into the country from Mexico, China, and elsewhere is almost doubled; and no vacant plants were converted to the domestic manufacturing of mass transit equipment.
The valid criticisms of the bailout, raised by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, auto industry expert Prof. Harley Shaiken and others have been borne out, but nonetheless almost entirely forgotten. In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama highlighted the auto industry bailout as one of his signature achievements.
MacArthur notes that when Obama aide David Axelrod was interviewed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, she asked him how the auto bailout was different from what Mitt Romney had done at Bain Capital, a private-equity firm that laid off workers and shut down plants. “Axelrod was really left fumbling for an answer,” he said.
The point is not to sink Obama with a fusillade of criticism about the off-shoring of jobs promoted by the free trade agreements he pushed through Congress, but to hold him at least minimally accountable on issues that are crucial to workers so that we do not see an electoral re-run of 2010 this year, when alienated blue-collar workers stay at home, and some vote Republican.
“Here we have the right wing attacking Romney about Bain Capital plundering companies and shutting down plants and moving jobs overseas. The left wing ought to be making a similar critique of Obama,” MacArthur says.
Without any audible and visible pressure to aggressively move to lift wages and control the export of jobs, Obama will simply fall back on pleading with executives to engage in “insourcing” jobs, and then exaggerate the importance of a minor, perhaps inconsequential, trend.
But most of the public, wary of free-trade agreements, knows that the trickle of jobs returning to the U.S. is far smaller than the torrent headed to China and Mexico, a torrent that continues to decimate the families and communities that were once part of the nation’s strong industrial base.
Kent GOP hosted event promoted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate
Last night about 40 people sat in the Eternal Word Church on Wilson near 44th street to hear speakers at an event that was billed as “Living Under Sharia Law.”
The event was initially to feature State Representative Dave Agema, but Agema is on a speaking tour with “former terrorist” Kamal Saleem. Filling in for Agema was State Representative Tom Hooker from the 77th District of Byron Center. Hooker has co-sponsored the anti-Sharia Law bills, along with Agema. Hooker spoke about the legislation and how Agema had invited Saleem to a rally in Lansing (pictured together here) this past fall talking about the evils of Islam. According to a story by reporter Todd Hetwood, Kamal Saleem is a fraud and is just being used to promote anti-Muslim and anti-illegal immigration ideology that both Agema and Hooker are behind.
Rep. Hooker next provided some background on the legislation piece. “Our American Constitutional rights must be preserved. The US laws and political system do not exist in countries living under Sharia Law,” said Hooker. Hooker also claimed that there are at least 50 court cases that are challenging Constitutional law to introduce or use Shari Law around the country.
The American Laws for American Courts Act, known as HB 4769, does not specifically say it is anti-Islamic, since to target a specific religion is unconstitutional, according to Hooker. The Byron Center legislator then tells the crowd that the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and MI Farm Bureau are blocking this legislation at the State level. This statement has the crowd puzzled, since most GOP voters are used to supporting the policies of the Chamber of Commerce. Hooker also states that 95% of the illegal immigrants in the US are not working in the farm sector, even though he provides no evidence to support such a claim.
In addressing his anti-immigration position, Hooker tells unfounded stories to support his draconian positions. Hooker says that some people who work at the US Border Patrol are members of al Qaeda and are allowing other terrorists to enter. Hooker mentions another bill that he and Agema co-sponsored, HB 4305, which is legislation to not allow communities to be sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are communities that have publicly declared they would be a safe space for those who are undocumented.
The keynote speaker for the event, a former Pakistani military leader, named Emmanuel Joshua, followed Rep. Hooker. He begins by saying that he has spoken in Lansing on the legislation bills that Rep. Hooker and Agema have co-sponsored. He implored the crowd to support these legislative proposals since there are “so many undocumented people from the Middle East who are entering the US.”
Joshua said that for years it was so easy for people in Pakistan to get a visitor visa to the US, which resulted in thousands of Pakistanis coming to the US and then overstaying their visit.
He then spoke about the threats of Shari Laws in the US. “If Shari Law comes to the US you can say goodbye to liberty and freedom. It’s like keeping a cobra as a pet. It has taken this country 200 years to make this country what it is, but it will take only 2 years for Shari Law to destroy it. I would trust a snake sooner than he would trust an Islamist.” The speaker said he was one of the few Christian officers in the Pakistani military, which means he was around a lot of Muslims.
Joshua said he supports stricter immigration laws. “I am saying this and I am an immigrant. The majority of those in favor of weaker immigration laws are Muslims crossing the US border from Mexico, passing as Mexicans.” Like Rep. Hooker, the keynote speaker provided to evidence to support his claims.
The speaker then asked people what they knew about the religion of Islam and said that most people think of the 77 virgins. “Terrorism is the tactic that Islamicists are using against democracy and the US. You can’t fight terrorism until you get to the root cause of terrorism. You have to fight the ideology that supports terrorism, which is Jihad. From 9/11 to today there have been more that 50,000 acts of terrorism and everyone of them has been committed by Islamic terrorists.”
“People who say that Islam is a religion of peace are just ignorant fools,” according to Emmanuel Joshua. This statement elicited applause from the audience.
Joshua also said the groups that are carrying out these acts of terrorism, they are not marginalized groups, rather they are part of mainstream Islam. The speaker then talks about the Koran and picks out certain texts that he says justifies the acts of terrorists. Joshua said throughout his talk that, “some people will say that we are preaching hate here, but I say we are just presenting facts.”
This writer would certainly say that hatred towards Muslims and immigrants were promoted at this event, by both the speakers and the literature that was handed out. The minister from the church where this event was held gave out sheets of paper that explained how one can convert a Muslim into a Christian. Another handout provided biblical prophecy on the evils of Islam, a handout based on the work of Joel Rosenberg. Rosenberg writes novels that promote an anti-Islamic worldview.
In addition, there were glossy handouts with the heading Patriots for Christ that were calling people to action. Patriots for Christ is mostly a Midwestern Christian movement that makes as a focus the preservation of religious freedom under the US Constitution. However, this group seems to think that this right belongs to Christians and no other religious groups.
Kellogg’s now partnering with US milk cartel in new ad campaign
For years we have all seen the “Got Milk” ads, where some one has a milk mustache in the ad. This ad campaign has featured numerous celebrities from the sports world, cultural entertainment world and even the political world.
Now the Got Milk campaign is using commercial icons that will be targeting children. The breakfast cereal giant Kellogg’s is partnering with the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board to promote milk with breakfast cereal, particularly over-sweetened breakfast cereals such as Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispies.
The ad campaign partnership was announced this week through MIBiz in their weekly e-newsletter. Actually, MiBiz did not announce the campaign, they just provided a hyper-link to a Media Release by Kellogg’s. The Media Release states in part:
“At Kellogg’s, we know that a bowl of cereal and milk is a great, nutritious way to start your day,” said Doug VanDeVelde, Kellogg SVP of marketing and innovation-ready-to-eat cereal. “So, it just made sense to bring our two brands together in a fun way while continuing to engage moms about the many nutritional benefits of cereal with milk. In fact, this dynamic duo delivers 10 important nutrients to kid’s diets.”
Despite the rather benign notion of breakfast cereals and milk, this ad campaign should certainly be scrutinized by parents and citizens alike.
Using cartoon characters like Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle & Pop, is a decades-long strategy to market food-stuff to children. This tactic of marketing highly sweetened cereals to children was supported by recent reports from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Much of this research and that noted by the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood notes that this kind of marketing to children has contributed to the current epidemic of childhood obesity.
In addition, the campaign continues to cover up what the function of the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board. This board oversees the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program, which came about as a result of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act of 1990. This federal act essentially was a mechanism to provide funding for generic advertising for milk in order to expand the market…….ie, it was a way for milk producers/processors to make more money.
The expanding of markets for the milk industry has had a major impact in how milk is produced. With the push for increased milk production the industry created rBGH, a bovine growth hormone that has created serious consequences for the cows that are injected with the hormone and for humans who consume rBGH milk. The US FDA allows rBGH milk to be sold in the US, but Europe has banned rBGH milk from the US because of the human health risks of its consumption. Monsanto developed rBGH and went to great lengths to keep the human health risks hidden from the public.
At the Kings’ Command: Snyder Gets His Marching Orders for 2012
On January 24, MLive posted two stories about a “2012 Turnaround Plan” for Michigan that was being presented by the Business Leaders for Michigan. GRIID did a story previously on this gang of robber barons, and showed how they were using the DeVos-funded Mackinac Center as a resource for the group’s recommendations. The connected groups are powered by the wealthiest Michigan capitalists. The BLM, which we called “The Kings of Michigan,” appears to be running the state—and also Snyder, who they hand-picked and who is now following their orders. Don’t believe that? Just compare his campaign platform to an identical plan created by the Mackinac Policy Center and transferred to the BLM in 2009. Snyder had been prepped with their own “ten-point plan” to derail democracy in the state and place it in their hungry hands. Everything he’s done since has been on the wish list of the BLM.
And now the kings have issued their demands for Snyder’s 2012 legislative focus. Jim Harger’s article is little more than a rephrasing of the BLM’s press release. Melissa Anders’ story, while still short and completely uncritical, offers a few more details.
I was going to fault the reporters for paper-thin content until I went to the BLM site to see the kings’ commandments for myself. The plan was nearly impossible to find—buried beneath layers of lists of hollow buzz words and catchphrases and colorful charts that explained nothing. This was the same hide-the-real-message tactic that they had Snyder use during his campaign so he could pose as a moderate and get elected.
When I finally found the details, it was clear that the group had finessed their original 2009 plan, created before they selected Snyder as our next governor. But the 2012 version offers some new information that will undoubtedly set the agenda in Lansing for the coming year. Since a lot of it is in capitalist-speak, I’ll offer translations of some of the group’s major agenda points:
Become the Gateway to the Midwest.
Translation: Pour money into the Detroit airports and turn them into an “Aerotropolis”; build another bridge to Canada.
Develop a Life Sciences Hub.
Translation: Focus on health care as a major “industry” here. Attract more big pharma companies to the state. This makes sense when you look at the list of BLM members, which include executives from Dow Chemical, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Perrigo.
Take Advantage of Michigan’s Natural Resources.
Translation: Rape the state by selling off water rights, permit timberland destruction, promote shale oil drilling, etc. This step also mentions our “agricultural know-how” and how it can be married to destructive, monster-sized agri-businesses (called “high-yield agriculture” in the plan).
Make Michigan a Global Engineering Village.
Translation: Close down factories with living-wage jobs for the working class and get rid of those nagging unions. Skim off our “engineering expertise,” people with specialized degrees, and sell their skills on the world market.
Make Michigan More Attractive to Out-of-State Businesses.
Translation: Continue to weaken union power by taking away collective bargaining, workers’ compensation rights, and lowering or eliminating business taxes all together (something already being discussed in Lansing; Snyder eliminated the Michigan Business Tax in 2011). Improve the “regulatory climate” by reducing or eliminating regulations on business and industry. Eliminate the personal property tax. (This step is called out plainly instead of being hedged with buzz words, so it’s clearly Priority One. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce has also called for this step).
Ask yourself: Can Michigan as a right-to-work state be far behind?
Make Urban Centers More Attractive to Knowledge Workers.
Translation: Can anyone say “gentrification”? Can anyone say “Art Prize”? Can anyone say, “We want more hipsters here?”
Efficiently and Effectively Provide Public Services.
Translation: This step has privatization and power-grabbing measures such as One Kent written all over it. It will shift the higher costs of these types of services to the citizens of Michigan, and at the same time will open up fat-cat contracts for various businesses.
Efficiently and Effectively Provide State Services.
Translation: Lower wages and take away benefits from state workers. Privatize prison management. Privatize road and infrastructure care. Snyder achieved some of these steps in 2011.
Efficiently and Effectively Provide School Services.
Translation: This step mentions the high pay of teachers and the unnecessary number of schools, along with too little accountability for performance. In other words, charter schools, charter schools, charter schools…Dick and Betsy DeVos’s dream come true. Snyder drove in the thin edge of the wedge on this issue in 2011 with Senate Bill 618.
Apparently what Snyder will be doing in 2012 is more of what he’s done in 2011: take away the power of citizens’ votes…impoverish working class and elderly citizens to hand over millions of dollars to corporations…bust unions…privatize public services…and create a climate that allows the Kings of Michigan and their peers to double, triple, quadruple their personal wealth at the cost of working citizens.
All this wrapped up in a nice little package that claims it will “turn around” Michigan for all of us, with touching photos on the front and back covers of the brochure. Is anyone still buying this?
The Business Leaders for Michigan. Get to know their names. Look at their companies. These are the people who must be dethroned if we are going to save our state from plutocracy.
With US Military Bases surrounding Iran, Who is threatening Who?
This article by Margaret Kimberley is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
The United States has already declared a de facto war on Iran. The partners in crime in the European Union and the NATO alliance have joined in, and are ganging up on Iran as instructed by Washington. The EU voted to ban imports of Iranian oil and the Obama administration is attempting to extract similar promises from Asian nations.
Obama has succeeded in doing what George Bush never could. For the second time in less than one year he has managed to get nearly all western nations on board with his plans for conquest. Regime change in Libya has not been without complications for the west, but Gaddafi was not just overthrown, he was killed, and as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out, Washington could not have been happier with that outcome.
The writing is on the wall, and Americans can expect to see a presidential address within the next few months, announcing bombings, drone attacks or an outright invasion with ground troops against Iran. The thought of this crime is enough to make any conscious individual sick with anger, but with no power in the world capable of stopping the United States, the die are cast.
When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, millions of people around the world took to the streets. Bush was discredited because of his fraudulent election and his ham-fisted treatment of even allied nations. Obama is hampered by none of these complications. He is loved by Democrats who hated Bush and was likewise welcomed by people around the world who shared that antipathy to his predecessor. He was awarded a Nobel peace prize merely on the basis of having been elected president. Such accolades give him a protective Teflon coating that would have made Ronald Reagan jealous.
After claiming that an Iranian used car salesman hatched a bizarre assassination plot, and lying about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and threatening that nation for pledging to defend itself, the question is not whether there will be an attack, but when. The other question is what the people of this country and this world will say and do when that occurs. Iran has been demonized so thoroughly that only the most ardent peace activists will come to its defense, but defend it they must.
Iran has done nothing to warrant the enmity expressed by the west and its people have the right to live free from yet another American attack on their nation and on their lives. Thirty years ago another American president, Ronald Reagan, supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. This sorry episode has been largely forgotten, but it should be pointed out that more than one million people died in the decade long conflict which would not have taken place without America’s arms and money.
Who in America will speak up for the Iranian people and their government? There should be no hesitancy and no wavering. America’s violence and wars of aggressions should be condemned, and individual opinions about the nation in question should not keep anyone who marched in the streets in 2003 from doing the same thing again in 2012.
It doesn’t matter if president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that “there are no gay people in Iran” or that Islamic law restricts women’s legal rights. Any short-comings we may observe in that society don’t give Americans the right to commit war crimes and kill thousands of people. Lest we forget, Iran had a secular and democratically elected government sixty years ago and that government was destroyed by the United States and Great Britain, who are once again working hand in had to deny other nations the right to self-determination.
There should be no qualifications because of phony stories about “wiping Israel off the map.” That canard has long been discredited and in any case it is Israel that has a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping Iran off the map. It doesn’t matter who won the disputed election in 2009. The United States does not have the right to kill people based on another country’s internal disputes. We must also remember that undemocratic and even oppressive rule have never been obstacles to winning American support if the right interests want that to happen.
Libya has been laid waste because of tall tales perpetrated by the West. Tales of civilian slaughter in Benghazi are Obama’s WMD, that is to say outright falsehoods. There will be more such story telling in the coming weeks and months, but it should not matter to anyone who claims to want peace.
Peace makers must defend Iran and condemn the American government when it launches its violence. Such actions will be the true determination of who is civilized and who is not. Our government is definitely uncivilized and we shall see how many of its people also fit that description.
More than Just a Game: A conversation on sports and politics with Dave Zirin and John Carlos
Next Thursday, the Women’s Resource Center, the LGBT Resource Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs will host left sportswriter Dave Zirin and 1968 Olympic athlete John Carlos.
John Carlos, along with Tommy Smith, was part of an organizing effort called the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). This campaign involved numerous athletes who were attempting to draw global attention to racism and other human rights violations.
The OPHR was not only protesting South African apartheid, they were demanding the re-instatement of boxer Muhammad Ali and condemning the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City that took place just prior to the 1968 Olympics.
This was the backdrop to the action that John Carlos and Tommy Smith took, when they raise their fists demonstrating Black Power.
More than four decades later Carlos, along with sportswriter Dave Zirin have written an autobiography entitled the John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World. Carlos and Zirin bring their message of how sports and politics have always intersected to the downtown campus of GVSU, where Carlos will tell his life story and Zirin will talk about his most recent film, Not Just a Game: Power, Politics and American Sports.
This event is free and open to the public.
Not Just a Game: Politics and Power in American Sports
Dave Zirin & John Carlos
Thursday, February 2
4:00PM
Grand River Room, Kirkhof Center
GVSU Allendale Campus
Kids Count Michigan data shows an increase in child poverty, but no one is asking why?
Just a few days ago the annual Michigan Kids Count report was released to the news media. The annual report is produced by the Michigan League for Human Services and highlights several social indicators for children.
As could be expected all the major daily news sources in West Michigan reported on the Kids Count report. MLive was the first, reporting the data in a story early this morning, with an emphasis on the increase in numbers of children living in poverty. They report that 32,000 children in Kent County live in poverty.
The local TV stations also reported on the new data with WOOD TV 8 emphasizing the increase in child abuse and neglect in their headlines over poverty. WZZM 13 led with an emphasis on the increase of child poverty, as did WXMI 17. WOOD radio, with the shortest story of all local news media cited, focused on child abuse and neglect.
Most of the local news agencies sourced a representative from the Michigan League for Human Services, but only MLive used additional sources such as a spokesperson from the groups Family Futures, Michigan’s Children and the Great State Collaborative in Ottawa and Allegan County.
In a few of the stories there is mention from the Michigan League for Human Services spokesperson that the increase in poverty has resulted from cuts in public spending. The MLive story states:
“The banks were bailed out, but now when we have budget talks it’s all about how we can’t afford to have these (social support) programs go on forever,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count in Michigan director. “Instead of helping families we are actually hindering families from meeting the needs of their children in times of economic crisis.
“If we don’t provide a solid socioeconomic foundation for children, they’re going to have 50 years of not being productive adults.”
None of the other news agencies provided any commentary or bothered to ask WHY so many children are living in poverty. Certainly, the huge cuts to welfare, unemployment benefits and the austerity measures put in place in recent years, beginning under Gov. Granholm and continuing under Gov. Snyder are significant. However, the point that the spokesperson for the Michigan League for Human Services made about bailing out the Banks is more relevant to what is at issue.
Children live in poverty because of policy and priorities. The federal government, at the urging of the financial sector, bailed out the banks with billions of dollars. Some sources put the number at $800 billion dollars, while others put it as high as $12.8 Trillion. This all happens, we are told, to save the economy. At the same time the Pentagon budget increases and the federal government siphons off billions to pay for war and militarism.
However, when it comes to paying for unemployment benefits, domestic partner benefits, children’s educational programs, child poverty programs and children’s health, we are told there are not sufficient funds. From some circles on the far right we are told that you just can’t throw money at poverty to solve the problem, but these same sources didn’t have a problem with the federal government throwing money at the banks.
So while it is important that the new Kids Count Michigan data has been reported on, the local news agencies do all of us a disservice by not asking why so many children in Michigan are living in poverty.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sherry Wolf Interview: Lessons Learned from the Occupy Movement
While Sherry Wolf was in Grand Rapids we had an opportunity to sit down with her and do an interview.
During our 30 minute interview we talked about the early days of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and its connection to an encampment of activists last summer protesting Mayor Bloomberg’s policies in New York.
We also talked about some of the challenges of the Occupy movement, both in New York and around the country…….danger of being co-opted, connection to other struggles, the need for demands, the role it can play in an election year and its relationship to international struggles, particularly the Arab Spring.
Sherry also addressed the importance of having revolutionary patience and the great possibilities that the Occupy Movement can have for real revolutionary change in the US.
Egyptians prepare for one year anniversary of uprising
This video is re-posted from The Real News Network.
Millions of Egyptians are preparing to commemorate the one year anniversary of their uprising, which led to the overthrow of the three-decade dictatorship of Mubarak.
In the video below by The Real News Network, viewers will learn about the ongoing organizing being done, the role of youth, women and how the Egyptians are resisting the current military regime in their country.
This video also addresses the role of Indy media in Egypt and the vital role it plays in the ongoing push for liberation.
