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Month: January 2016

Despite Setbacks, The Fight To Stop TPP Spills Into 2016

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

A new year brings new challenges and new opportunities for the international movement opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a controversial trade deal that activists say threatens to allow corporate power to overrule democracy.

Despite widespread opposition and controversy, President Barack Obama and other world leaders are expected to sign the agreement in Auckland, New Zealand, in early February, according to a Jan. 12 report from the New Zealand Herald.

Opposition to the TPP comes from many fronts. There are concerns about how the deal undermines food safety, the local food movement and consumer rights, as well as its potentially devastating effects on intellectual property laws and the price of prescription drugs.

Saudi Arabia Takes Proxy War With Iran To Nigeria As Shias Are Brutalized

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

On Dec. 12, Nigerian government forces carried out a brutal massacre against the country’s minority Muslim Shia population, with some media reporting over 1,000 killed, after the military imprisoned and tortured the group’s important dissident leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky.

The news of the slaughter of a minority religious group emerges as Nigeria announced it is considering joining Saudi Arabia in the fight against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the group commonly known in the West as ISIS), linking two nations known for repression and repeated, disturbing human rights violations. Saudi Arabia, in turn, has a history of promoting the extremist religious ideology of Wahhabism that inspires terrorist groups like Nigeria’s own Boko Haram, the terrorist group that the country is still struggling to control, and even al-Qaida and Daesh.

And Zakzaky isn’t the only activist to face imprisonment in recent months — Nigeria has a reputation for quashing political dissent no matter where it’s source. However, the arrest and crackdown came just months after Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army general, successfully won election on a promise to restore order to the country.

‘Bring Your Cat To Stratfor Day’ Spreads Awareness Of Anonymous Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond’s Birthday

Posted in Austin, Journalism, MintPress News, and Occupy Wall Street

In what’s become an annual tradition, activists gathered in downtown Austin on Friday to celebrate the birthday of a political prisoner and hacktivist nearly forgotten and ignored by the mainstream media: Jeremy Hammond.

In 2012, Hammond, along with other members of the Anonymous-associated group Lulzsec, hacked millions of emails from the servers of the Strategic Forecasting, also known as Stratfor, a private intelligence corporation located in the city, and leaked them to WikiLeaks, where they became known as the “Global Intelligence Files.” Among other revelations contained in the emails, the files showed that Stratfor had been spying on activists on behalf of corporations like Dow Chemical and working with the Texas State Troopers to infiltrate Occupy Austin.

For Leah Burris, an organizer from Prison Abolition and Prison Support (PAPS), an Austin-based group which organized the protest on Hammond’s birthday, the worst thing about Stratfor is that they are supported by our tax dollars in addition to their corporate clients. “What I wish people know most about them is that basically our government is giving Stratfor money that we give them to spy on us.”

Clemency Is Not Enough: Thousands Still Imprisoned For Nonviolent Marijuana Crimes

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Two men serving life sentences for marijuana-related convictions were among the dozens of nonviolent drug offenders who recently had their sentences commuted by President Barack Obama.

While advocates for reform of the three-decade war on drugs applaud Obama’s efforts to free hundreds from unfair sentences, some also fear the president hasn’t gone far enough to change federal laws that leave thousands more imprisoned, with some still facing life in prison.

“At the federal level there’s not been a significant change in law,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), in an interview with MintPress News.

Poll Finds 37% Of Americans Believe Israel Has Too Much Influence Over US Politics

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Poll results released last month show that Americans are sharply divided over the influence of Israel on U.S. politics, and those divisions often fall along party lines.

On Dec. 4, The Brookings Institution, a highly influential Washington-based think tank, released the results ofa study of American attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East. The report comes after a year in which Israel’s influence on America’s governance and foreign policy received heightened scrutiny, especially following a controversial speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobbying group, also faced increased criticism.

The bulk of the poll was based on the opinions of 875 randomly selected Americans, but the study’s author, Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings’ Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, also polled an additional 863 additional Americans who self-identify as Evangelical or Born-again Christians to determine how their attitudes differed from the average.