Open Thread – NATO in Chicago
The Mudflats’ Zach Roberts is boots on the ground in Chicago for the NATO protests going on. Here are some of his photos.
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The Mudflats’ Zach Roberts is boots on the ground in Chicago for the NATO protests going on. Here are some of his photos.
As always, Zach’s photos are terrific at capturing the energy and intent of the protesters.
Thanks!
A 56 year old grandmother in Texas received a life sentence because she didn’t know she was being used as a pawn to smuggle drugs:
http://www.care2.com/causes/grandmother-receives-life-in-prison-for-first-time-drug-offense.html
This looks like a flash-back from the Viet Nam protests.
And if we don’t get our President Obama back in office, God only knows how many wars the Reps will get our County into. We haven’t paid for the two wars that Bushy got us into. And I don’t hear Rommney and the Reps mention the price of these wars. They spent all the surplus that was left by the Clinton Admin, and got us into deep debt. And now they are blaming the Democrats?? Whew!
The cost of getting our Military out of Afganistan will be enormous. Keeping on the “good side” of Pakistan will be a factor——in getting our equipment out of the country.
If I rememer—the US left a lot of equipment in Viet Nam .
Great photos!
I wish we could exert pressure on the big oil corporations.
Was just watching the Martin Bashir program on MSNBC. He had the author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power on to discuss how much power the oil corporations have and are exerting in this election.
Essentially, the message was: ExxonMobile is pouring almost all of its political lobbying money into the GOP to ensure the Republicans win the November election across the board because the Obama administration wants to get rid of the money we taxpayers have to pony up to support the oil companies.
I am ordering the book, and encourage everyone to at least check it out from the library. From the discussion I heard, it is an important expose of how Congress has been bought and how Congress ensures the oil companies get to dictate policy – on many issues.
I think we all here pretty much have issues with ExxonMobile and other Big Oil corps, but if we really knew how much power they have, we’d be totally stunned. Time for us to educate ourselves and find ways to limit their power.
Steven Coll, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is the author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
As his bio on amazon states: “Coll received a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding international print reporting and the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best magazine reporting from abroad. Ghost Wars, published in 2004, received the Pulitzer for general nonfiction and the Arthur Ross award for the best book on international affairs.” Therefore, I think we can put some faith in what he writes.
Sorry I forgot his name above.
I think if I ever read that book, I would have problems sleeping for weeks.
The Founding Fathers, who the right wing loves to lionize whenever given the opportunity, would be horrified to know that our government is being bought and sold by big corporations, and the regular American citizen has less and less power each year.
And heart plus brain is greater than $$$. Yes.
Planet before Profit, indeed.
The police are not the problem – it’s the people guiding the police that have become the problem. We need to turn that mind set around.
Absolutely. It’s been the over reactions of the police that have, unfortunately, curtailed the Occupy movements around the country. The jackboot tactics and mentality need to be addressed.
However, I am not sure emails, phone calls, or letters will do the trick. We need to get those who control the police out of office and make it clear why they lost their elections.
With the Gang of Five controlling the Supreme Court these days, I have little hope in lawsuits settling the abuse.
Everyone needs to generate interest in the November election and the importance of re-electing President Obama, keeping the Senate and taking the House because the next Justices to be nominated and confirmed will determine the path of the Court for generations. Should any of the Five conservative Justices need to be replaced, we could break the far-rights stranglehold on the Court if Obama gets to pick the Justices. The next four years are crucial.
Romney will only bolster the corporate-orientation of the Court. We have to make sure he does not win the election.
Can you imagine if Mittens got to choose the next Supreme Court justice and have that person confirmed by the current Congress? As far as he’s swung to the right-wing-radical end of things in the past year, we’d end up with someone who’d make the current conservative justices look like tie-dye wearing, hippie liberals.
As important as the Presidency and Congress are, their terms are limited, but bad SCOTUS choices can do damage for decades…or longer.
I found the same on CNN. Some comments about protests were just monitored, until one group- and others warned the police ahead of time that it came strictly to cause problems- started attacking police, and then the batons and arrests began.
I dislike the arrests, but I dislike those who want violence instead of peaceful demonstrations more.
Awsome photos by Zach Roberts. It has been a long weekend of live streams and getting news of who got “disappeared” And who got threatened by CPD. One thing i saw was a NBC news cast that got it’s information directly from bloggers. Wonder if they still have their jobs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJyC3to8ODA&feature=youtu.be