Pepe Escobar – Does China hold key to the Afghan puzzle?

Just like Lazarus, there were reasons to believe the Afghan peace process might have stood a chance of being resurrected this past Monday in Islamabad, as four major players – Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China – sat together at the same table. The final communiqué though was not exactly ground breaking: “The participants emphasized the immediate need for direct …

Valerie Tarico – God as the Original Terrorist: How the Bible Condones Atrocious Acts of Terror

Last fall, Dutch pranksters put a cover from a Quran over a Bible and then asked passersby [3] to read aloud homophobic, violent or sexist passages that violate modern moral sensibilities. The texts shocked people who had never immersed themselves in the Iron Age world of the Bible writers, a world in which daughters can be sold as sexual slaves [4] …

China Not Facing ‘Cataclysmic’ Economic Slow Down, Says Stiglitz

China isn’t facing a “cataclysmic” economic slowdown and last week’s market turmoil was more about badly designed stock market circuit breakers, said Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The circuit breakers, which caused local exchanges to close early on two days last week after stocks plunged to a 7 percent limit, weren’t as well designed as they could be, Stiglitz, a professor …

Stories that force us to think about our deepest values activate a region of the brain once thought to be its autopilot

Everyone has at least a few non-negotiable values. These are the things that, no matter what the circumstance, you’d never compromise for any reason – such as “I’d never hurt a child,” or “I’m against the death penalty.”  Real-time brain scans show that when people read stories that deal with these core, protected values, the “default mode network” in their …

Outrage Follows Saudi Arabia’s Execution of Nearly 50 Prisoners

Saudi Arabia—recently chosen to to head a key United Nations human rights panel—on Saturday executed 47 people convicted of “terrorism,” including at least four convicted of offenses related to political protest. According to Reuters, the executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, with four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading. Among those killed was prominent Shiite …

Leid Stories – 12.08.15

Justice Department Probes Chicago Police, But for ‘Reform,’ Not Justice

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch yesterday announced a Justice Department probe of the Chicago Police Department’s “patterns and practices,” especially regarding its police officers’ use of force, use of lethal force and racial disparities in both. The DOJ investigation comes almost two weeks after Officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on first-degree-murder charges for killing Laquan McDonald, 17, in a hail of 16 bullets on Oct. 20, 2014, and on the same day that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that there will be no indictment of Officer George Hernandez, who shot and killed Ronald Johnson, 25, eight days prior to the McDonald shooting. Leid Stories discusses the DOJ investigation.

Leid Stories – 12.01.15

Prosecuting Egregious Police Crimes: When the Law Is Out of Order
(Part 2: The Laquan McDonald Case)
Indicted last week on first-degree murder charges more than a year after he fired 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald, 17, Chicago Policer Jason Van Dyke sprang himself from a Cook County jail yesterday after posting bail.
Following yesterday’s discussion of the legal complexities of the Freddie Gray case currently being litigated in Baltimore, “Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr. looks at major legal challenges in prosecuting the police killing of McDonald.

This Can’t Be Happening – 11.04.15

Host Dave Lindorff and guest Linn Washington, a Philly-based investigative reporter and colleague of Dave’s on the news site thiscantbehapppening.net, discuss Tuesday’s election results in Pennsylvania and recent comments by Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Scalia, all suggesting that a historic moment has arrived in which the US death penalty obsession may finally be ended. Lindorff notes that in Pennsylvania voters elected three new state supreme court judges, all liberal Democrats who owe their win in considerable part to black and other minority voters in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other urban areas of the state. Washington, who has written extensively about the state’s racist death penalty system, withthe fourth-largest death row in the nation, and says that with Democrats now in a 5-2 majority on the formerly Republican high court, and with the new Democratic governor already having imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, it could be that the death penalty could be ruled unconstitutional under the state’s constitution. Meanwhile Justice Breyer has virtually called for a test case to be brought to the Supreme Court this year, and Justice Scalia, a staunch backer of execution, has stated publicly that he thinks the votes are there now to declare the death penalty in the US unconstitutional.

Ask Beatty – 11.02.15

What would our society look like if we developed a kinder and gentler attitude toward one another? Listen to what research has found when the most violent of prisoners in the United States are given the opportunity to receive an education and treatment. What do we need to do to get our politicians to care?

Are you OK with hook-up sex? Are you and your partner on the same page? Listen to what Beatty is asking you to consider in order to keep you emotionally and physically safe.

JOSEPH NATOLI – Psychotic Shooters on the Open Frontier of Profit

“Each of the Republican candidates for the presidency declared last week that we should deal with school shootings by providing aggressive treatment of people with mental illness — not to alleviate the suffering of the mentally ill, but to protect other people from the mentally ill.” Andrew Solomon, “The Myth of the `Autistic Shooter,’ The New York Delusions are the belief in …