Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/21-6

The president's attacks on America's social safety net are destroying the soul of the Democratic party's platform. In 2005, American liberals achieved one of their most significant political victories of the last decade. It occurred with the resounding rejection of George W Bush's campaign to privatise social security. Bush's scheme would have gutted the crux of that entitlement programme by converting it from what it has been since the 1940s – a universal guarantor of minimally decent living conditions for America's elderly – into a Wall Street casino and bonanza. There will be no taxes on the trillions of dollars stolen by the oil companies, no end to the multy-trillion dollar bank bailouts and no end to the trillions of dollars spent on endless wars and the bloated Pentagon. There will be no end to the trillions spent on corporate welfare, and of course Israel will continue to receive their twenty billion dollar gift each year. But there will be no money for school books, no money for health care, no money to repair roads and bridges, and now they will take your Social Security.

Link: http://www.domasjefferson.com/news/whistleblower-cop-breaks-silence-on-corrupt-police-chief-in-quartzsite-arizona

Welcome to the new American police state

Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jul2011/asbe-j21.shtml

Canada’s Conservative government has prevented asbestos—a notorious carcinogen responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year—from being listed as a hazardous substance under the United Nations’ Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/101east/2011/07/201172183247237880.html

The mail order bride industry is flourishing in Asia, but is it also leading to sex trafficking and domestic violence? 101 East investigates the dramatic increase in South Korean men marrying mail-order brides, up from almost none a decade ago, overturning centuries of prejudice against interracial marriage and creating a wave of cases of divorce and abuse. More than a third of South Korean men in rural areas married foreign brides last year. While some unions are happy, the industry has also led to sex trafficking, domestic violence and murder.

Link: http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/cornel-west-obama-an-extension-of-the-corporate-state/

It is absurd to call President Barack Obama a “socialist” when he is “very much an extension of the corporate state that has been squeezing out the juices of our democracy,” according to Princeton professor and famed black intellectual Cornel West. West, who had been a supporter of Obama, called the president “another black mascot” of “Wall Street oligarchs” on an MSNBC panel in April. He stood by and clarified by those remarks Wednesday on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight.

Link: http://www.truthout.com/republicans-approve-regulation-blocking-coal-bill-alecs-wish-list/1311185463

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to approve legislation on July 13 that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating toxic coal ash wastes from electric power plants and delay the implementation of air quality rules. The Republican-controlled House is expected to pass the bills.

Link: http://www.truthout.com/congratulations-senator-coburn-and-gop-victory-rich/1311274522

The real issues, the rip-off of the poor and elderly

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RspgHsjUTo

The crisis of reality

Link: http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-jersey-city/police-kill-teenage-man-after-shooting-him-5-times-back-and-while-laying-down

San Francisco Police Kill A Teenage Man After Shooting Him 5 Times In Back And While Laying Face Down On The Street After Chasing Him Down For Not Paying $2 Bus Fare! Another splendid example of the American police state. Three different videos report to capture the aftermath of the police brutality. The videos shown here, reportedly show the San Francisco police shooting a non-resisting man in back and while laying face down in the street. The teenager in the video was lethal wounded after being shot 5 times after the police reportedly chased him down for not paying a $2 bus fare.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28645.htm

The five corpses floated disfigured and bloating in the murky bottom of the water tank. Wearing green soldiers' uniforms, the men lay belly down, decomposing in the putrid water. The streaks of blood, smeared along the sides of this impromptu mass grave suggested a rushed operation, a hurried attempt to dispose of the victims. Who the men were and what happened to them, close to the Libyan rebels' western front line town of Al-Qawalish in the Nafusa Mountains, remains unknown. But the evidence of a brutal end were clear. One of the corpses had been cleanly decapitated, while the trousers of another had been ripped down to his ankles, a way of humiliating a dead enemy.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28642.htm

State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents. A coalition of all 50 states' attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28650.htm

In a world where the violence of war can be safely ignored by most of the population because it occurs in faraway lands the need for moral witness has never been greater. When the recipient of the Nobel Peace prize unabashedly claims that the violence of war is sometimes necessary and then pursues a policy dependent on increasing that violence, the need for those who oppose such a philosophy to speak up would seem essential to human survival. When the economy of the world’s richest nation goes into free-fall because it insists on destroying lives and land in at least three different nations under the guise of fighting for their freedom, the need to put one’s life on the line to end those wars and the economy that creates them has never been clearer.

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20968

The wealthiest nation on earth is not actually obliged to starve our senior citizens. We don’t need a military 670% more expensive than the next largest one on earth. We don’t need to fund health insurance corporations instead of healthcare. And we don’t need tax breaks for billionaires. In fact, we don’t need billionaires. That’s the message RootsAction is taking to Congress.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/21

If there was ever a time in the modern history of America that the American people should become engaged in what's going on here in Washington, now is that time. Decisions are being made that will impact not only our generation but the lives of our children and our grandchildren for decades to come, and I fear very much that the decisions being contemplated are not good decisions, are not fair decisions.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/detainee-abuse-photos-fighting-transparency-and-accountability

Yesterday in federal district court in Manhattan, we appeared for the latest round in our long fight for the release of information about the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in facilities throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, we were arguing against the government's suppression of over 2,000 photographs depicting the abuse of detainees. In the face of the government's claim that it could withhold the photographs from the public without any judicial review, we argued that the core principles of transparency and accountability embodied in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) required the court to review the government’s decision. Unfortunately, the judge ruled against us.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/151733/the_unemployed_aren%27t_invisible%3A_washington_and_the_media_just_aren%27t_paying_attention_/

America's 14.1 million unemployed aren't voiceless; it's just that no one is listening, and no one's got a plan to help them. It hits you like a punch in the gut, losing your job. Being laid off. Being fired. It stops you cold in the middle of your day even if you've seen it coming. Even if you hate your job and being out of it will be a relief. If you love your job, it hurts like a bad breakup—it's heartbreaking.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/world/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor/

In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit. There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/2011720161814857291.html

Residents of the world's largest refugee camp are mainly women and children, raising questions about the fate of men. The wind hollers, whipping up dust that scratches at our faces. As I fumble with my notebook, a thorny branch of the drought-resistant Mathenge tree hits me in the face and Yaroy Sirat Muhammed, with an infant in her arm, immediately reaches out to hold the wayward stem so that it doesn't happen again. I thank her sheepishly and urge her not to bother, but she does not let it go. Yaroy is a Somali refugee, temporarily pulled out of a queue of hundreds of others who are waiting to complete the registration process at the IFO camp in the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya, to talk to me.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2011/07/21/standing-for-union-bashing

Adam Sanchez, a teacher in Portland, Ore., investigates the education "reform" group Stand for Children--and its ties to some of the country's richest corporations. IN A rare moment of ruling class honesty, billionaire James Crown and Stand for Children CEO Jonah Edelman revealed the union-bashing corporate agenda behind education reform in a recent speech.

Link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/group-appeals-deas-ruling-that-marijuana-has-no-medicinal-value/

The medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) on Thursday appealed the federal government's decision to keep marijuana classified as a dangerous drug with no medicinal value.