Blogs

The United States is going to war with Iran. It's probable that the entry strategy will be through Israel whose gangster government is now being accused of, among other things, having killed an Iranian scientist because the guy was involved in the nuclear research that is central to the country's development program.

Después de ser secuestrado por un comando armado, apareció el cuerpo sin vida del comunero y activista Trinidad de la Cruz. Al momento de su secuestro participaba en una caravana de observación del Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD) y pretendía participar como observador en un proceso de consulta para resolver un conflicto agrario.

In the OMG! category. I mean, we all knew this but its details are particularly scary.

From ABC News On-line:

"In recent weeks, Facebook has been wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission over whether the social media website is violating users' privacy by making public too much of their personal information.

"Far more quietly, another debate is brewing over a different side of online privacy: what Facebook is learning about those who visit its website.

Yeah, I'm being harsh.

The upcoming Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference does, in fact, take on a critically important topic touching on a bunch of critically important themes. The relationship between technology and human rights is at the very center of Internet activism and is usually ignored by most people in the Progressive movement.

Upcoming October 25 and 26 in San Francisco.

Now, the point. Here's the speakers list. Look at it and tell me what you see.

https://www.rightscon.org/speakers/

The recent electoral events in Wisconsin, in which a recall actually managed to replace a couple of the State House's vicious Republicans with popularly-supported Democrats, should be a source of pride for us all and congratulations to the community and labor organizers who put together those campaigns. They would have swept the recall had it not been for something approaching $30 million spent by Republicans to resist removal.

There's been a recent plethora of pundits bemoaning the inability of the Left of this country to formulate a cogent and well-organized response to the rising tide of right-wing government control. Now that borderline fascism has succeeded in defining the parameters of the Congressional discussion about our future during the "debt ceiling debates", and the still influential mass media has exposed itself as little more than a propaganda machine, the need for that action seems greater than ever. So the analysis of why we can't get things going has become more urgent and more frustrated.

The story is actually not surprising but it's disturbing and revealing.

This past week (and one previous) France's government hosted a meeting of political, academic and business leaders from many countries to help shape the agenda concerning technology at the upcoming G8 meeting.

This statement by the World Social Forum's International Council was released and circulated this past week.

----------------------------------

While we are united, as members of the International Council of World Social Forum, in meetings in Paris, we ask for the immediate release of Ameer Makhoul and all Palestinian political prisoners who have been illegally detained and condemned under Israeli military orders.

As many know, I don't get involved in electoral politics. But when a campaign is actually an organizing effort draped in the electoral garb, I can be persuaded.