Afghanistan War drags into 13th year

BlackListedNews

Monday marks 12 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and for a conflict that’s been seemingly forgotten by most Americans who’ve grown weary of war, it seems fitting that the anniversary should be overshadowed by a domestic story: the federal government shutdown.

Members Of Congress Seen Partying, Drinking On Capitol Hill All Week During Shutdown

The World Bank is admitting that so-called economic growth in Africa is not benefiting the vast majority of the continent's people

BlacklistedNews

Africa's so-called growth is heavily dependent on exports of goods like oil, which siphon wealth out of the country

The World Bank is admitting that so-called economic growth in Africa, rooted in privatization and resource extraction by foreign companies, is not benefiting the vast majority of the continent's people.

This comes from an institution has been widely criticized for pushing these very policies of 'growth.'

Despite Africa's much-vaunted 'growth' over the past decade, deep poverty and inequality are “unacceptably high and the pace of reduction unacceptably slow,” reads Africa's Pulse, an analysis released Monday by the World Bank. "Almost one out of every two Africans lives in extreme poverty today," and by the year 2030, a vast majority of the world's poor will be located in Africa, the report finds.

Francisco Ferreira, Acting Chief Economist for the World Bank Africa Region, states, "Africa grew faster in the last decade than most other regions," with a steadily climbing GDP noted in the report. Yet, this so-called growth is highly dependent on relatively few commodities sold for export, including oil, metals, and minerals. "Nearly three-quarters of countries rely on three commodities for 50 percent or more of export earnings," the report reads, with countries like Angola and Nigeria depending on oil for up to 97 percent of all exports.

"[H]igh dependence on one or a few commodities makes Africa’s resource-rich countries vulnerable to sharp movements in prices of these commodities,” explains Punam Chuhan-Pole, Lead Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region and author of Africa’s Pulse.

Furthermore, this wealth is siphoned off to foreign investors, with 2012 exports to the EU and U.S. reaching $148 billion, and exports to BRIC countries reaching $144 billion that same year.

Overall privatization is skyrocketing, with Gross fixed capital formation rising from 16.4% of GDP in 2000 to 20.4% in 2011, indicating the expansion of business assets.

"Higher economic growth does not automatically translate into higher poverty reduction," the report states.

"[The report's Findings are] unfortunately pretty typical of what we've seen in global terms, particularly in the global south, where increases in economic growth overlook how citizens are impacted and reinforce the power of elite elements," said leading scholar Stephen Zunes in an interview with Common Dreams. "Economic structures are still rooted in neo-colonial model."

"Historically, the World Bank has pushed big mega-development projects that basically increase the rate at which you take stuff out of country, and increased the push for exports of raw materials and increases in consumer goods that only elites can afford," he added.

"The problems of resource extraction in Africa are many," writes Godwin Uyi Ojo in Pambazuka News. "Collectively, they are bleeding Africa dry."

TIL Teenager protested CIA drone strikes, killed by a drone four days later

Blacklisted News

When tribal elders from the remote Pakistani region of North Waziristan travelled to Islamabad last week to protest against CIA drone strikes, a teenager called Tariq Khan was among them.

A BBC team caught him on camera, sitting near the front of a tribal assembly, or jirga, listening carefully.

Four days later the 16-year-old was dead - killed by one of the drones he was protesting against.

In his final days, Tariq was living in fear, according to Neil Williams from the British legal charity, Reprieve, who met him at the Jirga.

"He was really really petrified," said Mr Williams, "and so were his friends. He didn't want to go home because of the drones. They were all scared."

Tariq carried with him the identity card of his teenage cousin, Asmar Ullah, who was killed by a drone. On Monday he shared his fate.

Tariq's family say he was hit by two missiles as he was driving near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

Read More...

Poll: US Congressional Approval at 5 Percent - (Boycott by not paying your mortgage!)

CitizensforLegit

With no end to the U.S. fiscal crisis in sight, a new poll indicates only 5 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job. The poll also found 62 percent of the 1,200 surveyed blame Republicans for the partial U.S. government shutdown. The Associated Press/GfK poll also found 37 percent approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing.

Even though the people being spied on are often totally innocent, the government stores their information for a very long time

TheAtlantic

The U.S. surveillance debate is constantly distorted by the fact that national-security officials hide, obscure, and distort so much of what they do. Occasionally a journalist is able to expand the store of publicly available information, most recently thanks to Edward Snowden's indispensable NSA leaks. But even public information about government surveillance and data retention is difficult to convey to a mass audience. It involves multiple federal agencies with overlapping roles. The relevant laws and rules are complicated, jargon is ubiquitous, and surveillance advocates often don't play fair: They use words in ways that bear little relation to their generally accepted meaning, make technically accurate statements that are highly misleading, and even outright lie, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did before Congress. 

Their distortions continue in part because no matter how many times President Obama, NSA Director Keith Alexander, Clapper and others egregiously mislead the public in their statements about surveillance, news organizations treat them as honest men and report on subsequent statements as if they're presumptively true. For all these reasons, journalists who take the time to understand the truth and the way government officials are distorting it find that their work has just begun. They need to find comprehensible ways to explain complicated distortions, even as more hard to understand information becomes public each week. Absent this asymmetry, surveillance-state critics would be in a much stronger position. 

Enter a new report published by Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. "What the Government Does With Americans' Data" is the best single attempt I've seen to explain all of the ways that surveillance professionals are collecting, storing, and disseminating private data on U.S. citizens. The report's text and helpful flow-chart illustrations run to roughly 50 pages. Unless you're already one of America's foremost experts on these subjects, it is virtually impossible to read this synthesis without coming away better informed.

The text gives detailed answers to questions like, "What does the NSA do with all the emails and phone calls of American citizens that it collects?" Then the information is summed up in graphics like this one:

Florida Gives Huge Contracts To Prison Health Care Providers Plagued By Lawsuits

HuffPost

The Florida Department of Corrections awarded two massive contracts to a pair of private health care providers to serve the state's prisoners. Both companies have been besieged by medical malpractice lawsuits, according to a report in the Broward Bulldog.

Corizon Prison Health Management inked a five-year, $1.2 billion deal and Wexford Health Sources scored a $240 million contract for the same time period, according to the Bulldog.

The non-profit news site reports that Corizon has been sued 660 times for malpractice over the last half-decade.

Wexford faced 1,092 malpractice claims — "suits, notices of intent to sue and letters from aggrieved inmates" — between 2008 and 2012, according to the report.

"We are not Post-Racial": Duke Professor Discusses the Refinement of White Supremacy

The Darmouth and  FOxNews

Though racism is more covert today, blacks are subject to the same prejudice as they were in the 1960s, Duke University sociology professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argued in a lecture on Thursday. Bonilla-Silva said a new form of racism has emerged, replacing Jim Crow racism.

“We are not post-racial,” he said. “This ideology is suave but deadly.”

Focusing on relations between whites and blacks, Bonilla-Silva said the latter’s current economic status has remained the same in recent decades, even as the forms of subordination and racism have since evolved.

After describing various ways in which this ideology is prevalent in today’s society, Bonilla-Silva presented three main points about color-blind racism: the forms of interpreting racism, rhetorical strategies for articulating racism and stories contextualizing racism.

Bonilla-Silva said whites believe that they are not racist and often use the election of President Barack Obama to support the claim that America has moved beyond its racially tense past.

He said these beliefs are “sincere fictions” and countered that blacks and other racial minorities are still behind whites in society, receiving inferior education in “so-called integrated” schools and colleges.

Despite evidence of inequality, Bonilla-Silva said racism is largely overlooked because discrimination presents itself in abstract ways. The societal tendency to “naturalize” racism by calling social constructs natural occurrences is used to justify prejudice against minorities, he said.

Bonilla-Silva defined cultural racism as placing the blame on minorities for their social position.

He said white citizens use rhetoric to express this covert racism: semantic moves, such as saying “some of my best friends are black,” projection, which blames discrimination on the victim and the incomprehensible response to the topic of race. People often argue that they did not personally own slaves or were present at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on Washington to deny their personal prejudice.

“Story lines are socially shared tales that are fable-like and incorporate a common schemata and wording,” Bonilla-Silva said.

People often use a personal, negative interaction with a minority and extrapolate to make widespread claims against the entire race, he said.

Bonilla-Silva presented interviews he had collected as part of his ongoing research to give examples of how racism is expressed.

He said that because the interviews were racially tense and sensitive, the interviewer was consistently the same race as the interviewee.

In response to an audience member’s question, Bonilla-Silva said an increasing number of blacks believed that racism has been eliminated.

Former Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker says he was receiving racist hate mail

Fansided

Earlier this morning, the Cincinnati Reds parted ways with manager Dusty Baker to the shock of many.

The lack of constant playoff success from the Reds certainly was a large reason for the dismissal, though, even Baker suggested that he was a bit stunned by the move.

He also mentioned that the past few weeks were very difficult on him as he was getting a rash amount of racist hate mail, this according to CBS Sports:

“The last couple weeks, I’ve been getting a rash of hate mail, racial mail,” he said. “Maybe it is time to go.”

“This is really ugly,” he said. “There are all sorts of references to Barack Obama. So now I know where they are coming from. I don’t know, maybe people are mad at him, so they don’t like the idea of blacks in authority.”

Connecticut begins to close wide racial gaps in prison population

Sentencing Project

Connecticut has begun to reduce the disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos in its prisons. Since 2008, the numbers of black and Hispanic inmates have fallen by 15 percent each, while the number of white prisoners dropped by a slower 6 percent. The drop is relatively small, but because of policy changes, shifting attitudes and a heightened awareness of racial profiling, state officials expect that the racial and ethnic disparities will continue to shrink. This is significant in a state that has long had wide disparity gap. Connecticut had the dubious distinction of having the nation's highest disparity between Hispanics and whites in the prison population in a 2007 study by The Sentencing Project. The main reason for the shift is policy change and reform aimed at reducing the spiraling prison population, which peaked at 20,000 in Connecticut in 2008.

Black Louisiana Exoneree Discuss His Wrongful Conviction on “Democracy Now”

Innocence Project

Louisiana exoneree Henry James appeared on today’s episode of “Democracy Now” to discuss his 1982 wrongful conviction that lead to three decades behind bars at Louisiana’s Angola Prison before DNA evidence proved his innocence. James was 20 years old when he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the aggravated rape of his neighbor. He was 50 years old when he was freed in October 2011.

 
James, the longest-serving prisoner to be exonerated in Louisiana, was joined by Innocence Project New Orleans Director Emily Maw, who talked about the importance of evidence preservation and how fortunate it was that evidence from James’ case was found so that DNA testing could be performed.
 
James was represented by the Innocence Project, Innocence Project New Orleans and the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
 
Watch the segment.

DOJ sues Ruston public housing, cites racial discrimination

The Republic

The federal government on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Housing Authority for the City of Ruston, alleging it has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against black tenants.

"Access to housing free from racial discrimination is everyone's right, including those who seek public housing assistance," said Jocelyn Samuels, acting assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. "The department will continue its vigorous enforcement of the Fair Housing Act."

The civil complaint, filed in federal court in Monroe, alleges the housing authority maintained a "racially segregated housing authority by steering and assigning applicants to its five complexes based on race, rather than in order of their placement on the Ruston Housing Authority's waiting list."

Obama Doing Nothing for Non-whites: Black and Latino unemployment unchanged

Colorlines

The jobs report underscores the weak state of the U.S. economy as the country considers military action abroad. In August the U.S. added 169,000 jobs. That's below analysts' expectations. The overall unemployment rate barely declined to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent.

Black and Latino unemployment remained virtually unchanged in depression-like territory at 13 percent and over 9 percent respectively. This minuscule decrease in joblessness registered for all the wrong reasons. 

The bottom line is that millions of people have dropped out of the workforce. The decline in those actively looking for work--officially known as the "labor participation rate"--is masking true unemployment.  The number of people who've stopped searching is the highest in almost four decades. As the official unemployment number only measures those "actively" looking for work, the exit of millions from the job force makes the overall jobless situation look better than is actually the case. In fact, if discouraged workers were added to unemployment calculations, then the number of those out of work would be closer to 10 percent. 

Adding to the less than stellar report is that it revised downward the number of official jobs created in June and July. There were 74,000 fewer hirings made during that time frame than were initially reported. Given today's news--with looming critical deadlines in the next four weeks on the budget, debt, health care, and immigration--those concerned about economic justice can only hope that these issues receive top billing alongside the war resolution that's currently up for consideration.

Israel has 80 nuclear warheads, can make 115 to 190 more, report says

CitizensforLegitGov

Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts. In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004. But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal.

Suspected Shooter had Secret security clearance, employer says

CitizensforLegitGov

Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old suspect in Monday's shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, had "Secret" clearance and was assigned to start working there as a civilian contractor with a military-issued ID card, his firm's chief executive told Reuters. "He did have a Secret clearance. And he did have a CAC (Common Access Card)," said Thomas Hoshko, CEO of The Experts Inc, which was helping service the Navy Marine Corps Intranet as a subcontractor for HP Enterprise Services, part of Hewlett-Packard Co. Alexis had previously worked for The Experts in Japan from September 2012 to January 2013, he said. "We had just recently re-hired him. Another background investigation was re-run and cleared through the defense security service in July 2013," Hoshko said. Hoshko said he believed that Alexis's "Secret" security clearance dated back to 2007.

Latino man released after 12 years in prison

Reuters

A Latino man has been released from prison after serving 12 years for a murder that white prosecutors now concede he did not commit.

Charges against David Peralta, 36, were dropped on Thursday.

Peralta was convicted in 2001 of the drive-by shooting that killed his girlfriend, Rebecca Moore, said Tully Blalock, one of his attorneys.

Police arrested Peralta after two men riding in the car with Moore at the time of the gang-related incident identified him as the shooter, Blalock said.

But the men later denied seeing Peralta at the scene, saying they had identified him in a police lineup only because they had seen him in a bar earlier that night, Blalock said.

Also, two of Peralta's fellow prison inmates who told investigators he had confessed to the murder later recanted or refused to repeat the statement, Blalock said.

Eric Burton, a spokesman for the DeKalb County District Attorney's office, said the charges were dismissed because "through subsequent investigation, it was concluded that Peralta was not guilty of the crime and that the victim was fired upon by a rival gang."

In 2006, federal investigators with a gang task force turned over information to Georgia prosecutors indicating that Peralta may not be the killer.

"As far as we know, nothing was done," with the information from federal investigators, said Blalock. "The speed at which this case has progressed really has been frustrating."

It was only after Peralta won a new trial on appeal and prosecutors reopened the investigation that the charges against his client were finally dropped, said Blalock.

His lawyers have told Peralta he now has the option of filing a civil damage suit against authorities.

Chomsky: Obama is worse than Bush and Tony Blair

Witness Speaks Out In Trayvon Martin Case

California governor signs prison housing bill

[JURIST]

California Governor Jerry Brown [official profile] on Thursday signed into law a bill [SB 105, text] that prevents the early release of inmates and allows the state to comply with a federal court order. The order requires the department to achieve a population of 137.5 percent of design capacity no later than December 31, 2013. The bill appropriates $315 million this fiscal year to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation [official website] for inmate housing. The bill explicitly states...

Federal judge rules government does not have to release Guantanamo videotapes - (any white inmates there??)

Jurist

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] ruled [text, PDF] Friday that the US government does not have to release photographs and videotapes taken during the investigation of Mohammed al-Qahtani's connection to the September 11 attacks. Al-Qahtani was held in Guantanamo Bay [JURIST backgrounder] until his charges were eventually dropped. The videotapes depict al-Qahtani's interrogations, something the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) [advocacy website] claims should be public record [complaint,...