Connect The Dots – The River Protector – 11.29.17

Listen to Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper and leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the only citizen action organization that works the entire length and breadth of the Delaware River and its watershed, speaking and working for both its protection and its restoration — in conversation with Alison Rose Levy.   Download this episode (right click and save)

Rebecca Gordon – There Oughta Be a Law… Should Prison Really Be the American Way?

You’ve heard of distracted driving? It causes quite a few auto accidents and it’s illegal in a majority of states. Well, this year, a brave New Jersey state senator, a Democrat, took on the pernicious problem of distracted walking. Faced with the fact that some people can’t tear themselves away from their smartphones long enough to get across a street in safety, Pamela Lampitt …

11 Things Other Countries Do Way Better Than America By Larry Schwartz

America! Land of the free, home of the brave, and the greatest country on the face of the planet, right? A country with seemingly limitless natural resources, and according to many politicians, anointed by God herself to lead the world out of the wilderness and into a bright new age of liberty and justice for all. Too bad the road …

The Superpower Conundrum: The Rise and Fall of Just About Everything By Tom Engelhardt

The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries.  It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet.  So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled the “sole superpower,” “the last superpower,” or even the global “hyperpower” and now, …

Obama, Master of Diversion, Proposes Bogus Reforms of Militarized Police – Glen Ford

President Obama’s “ban” on certain military hardware and gear is both fraudulent and a diversion from the real issue: the oppressive mission of the police in Black America. The cops who killed Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and countless others “weren’t wearing battlefield outfits, firing automatic rifles, or riding around in tanks. They murder quite efficiently with handguns, batons and …

Obama ban on police military gear falls short as critics say it’s a ‘publicity stunt’ – Tom McCarthy & Lauren Gambino

It has become an emblematic image of police militarization: a half-dozen heavily outfitted officers, assault rifles drawn, advancing on an African American man in a T-shirt with his hands way up. The police – photographed in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer – are wearing helmets and goggles and knee pads and gas masks. The man is wearing a cap from Cabela’s, the …

Obama’s paramilitary police – Andre Damon

On Monday, US President Barack Obama travelled to Camden, New Jersey, America’s poorest city, to praise it’s brutal police department and reaffirm his support for federal programs that have transferred billions of dollars in military hardware to local police departments. Reports of police brutality by Camden cops have nearly doubled since 2011, and last year Camden had substantially more reported …

Obama Just Called This “Rotting, Decaying Hellhole” A Symbol Of “Promise For The Nation”

All over America, formerly prosperous communities are being transformed into crime-infested wastelands of poverty and despair.  Of course the most famous example of this is Detroit.  At one time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country.  But now it has become a rotting, decaying hellhole that …