We Speak For Earth
-
ikenbot CWL -
mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
realcleverscience Real Clever Science -
socialuprooting Social Uprooting -
abstractnerd Abstract Nerd -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Colbert Report:
AmericansElect.org CEO Elliot Ackerman believes that individuals should have the power and tools to draft and directly nominate their own presidential candidate.
This sounds awesome but I really need to look into it more. If anyone has any info or opinions about it, shoot me a message!
Creative protesting; you’re doin it right.January 11, 2013
On the 11th Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, 100’s show up in DC to send a message to Barack Obama.
(via inspirement)
Bill Moyers asks Yale climate scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, “What would you say to Obama about climate change?” Leiserowitz’s response is interesting. It’s clear and friendly. Hopeful and optimistic.
It’s also pure fantasy.
Why is Obama the right guy to ask? He’s skipped the last three climate conventions. He’s eliminated climate change from his agenda, except during campaign speeches.
From an environmentalist’s point of view, Obama has an abysmal track record on the environment. Countless enviro-poltical watchers are appalled by his anti-science, anti-environment policies. For a sampling, see HuffPo, LATimes, Minnesota Public Radio, Legal Planet,and even the Jewish Policy Center.
I commend Leiserowitz. But I fear Obama doesn’t have the guts, nor political pressure to act.
Thoughts?
Via Upworthy
At times it feels and looks like Obama’s sense of care for the environment is well.. non existent. Just check the policies if you doubt that. If you want to stay up to date with all things climate adaptation with a reasonable tone do check out climateadaptation for more.
It has been quite a lackluster 4 years in American foreign policy. This isn’t counting the numerous foreign policy crises that have cropped up, because those are obviously events outside of this country’s control (more or less).
The famed pivot to Asia has stalled, the Middle East has gotten neither the support nor the clear denial of sympathies the region deserves, and all in all there has been a lot of administrative waffling.
Will the next 4 years be any better? Well, that’s entirely up to Obama…
“Letting peple like Susan Rice or Chuck Hagel twist in the political wind is, well, cruel. So I hope that in its second term, the White House cares enough about foreign policy to actually engage Congress rather than throw up their hands and say, “crazy Republicans, what can you do?” Actually, President Obama, you could do one whole hell of a lot if you made an effort.”
The Obama administration has established an undeniably harsh record on immigration and border enforcement, including:
- Record-breaking deportations of more than 1.5 million individuals in his first term (more than in any other single presidential term), almost half of whom had no criminal records, leaving hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children without parents and in foster care
- Unprecedented detention levels of immigrants (429,000 in the last fiscal year), using a record number of detention beds (34,000) – without individualized assessment of who requires jail-like detention – at a wasteful cost of $2 billion annually
- Nationwide deployment of the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, despite opposition of many state and local leaders based on damage to community policing and public safety, rising fear among victims and witnesses of crime, and racial profiling.
- Continuation of the controversial DHS 287(g) program that deputizes state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws when immigration enforcement is a federal matter, as the litigation against Arizona’s racial profiling law SB 1070 reinforced.
- Historically high enforcement resources along the Southwest border, leading to manifold abuses by Customs and Border Protection including a series of fatal shootings
- Record spending on border and interior enforcement such that Rep. Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, identified a “mini industrial complex” of bloated border spending
The ACLU has strongly criticized the administration’s record in this area, including our full-page New York Times ad published following the president’s re-election. As a result of the administration’s harsh enforcement policies, immigrant communities nationwide have suffered permanent deportation and family separation.
This has occurred despite these policies being unnecessary – unauthorized immigration rates and border apprehensions have plummeted to the lowest level in 40 years, and new census data released last week confirm a sustained drop in unauthorized immigration. Furthermore, as we highlighted in an earlier post, these enforcement policies are fiscally irresponsible.
It’s important that we all understand the truth about the administration’s record on immigration enforcement and call on it to end its abusive, discriminatory, and wasteful programs.
(via ikenbot)
![pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:
What Happens When Counter-Cyberterrorism Leaves Cyberspace?
These are exigent times. In order to bring into clear view the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves in, we must first illuminate the legal framework that allows our dire circumstances to exist. Let us first go back to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists law signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11 that, upon ratification, ushered in an era of permanent semi-global war. However, the heart of the law is the power detailed in Section 2 in which
…the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which was upheld by a federal appeals court), under the guise of clarification, expands the persons covered under the AUMF into ambiguous territory to include
[a] person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
It is this expansion of covered persons that is used as justification for the indefinite detention of anyone by the US military. Furthermore, in conjunction with Title VIII of the USA PATRIOT Act, not only can persons deemed to possess any ties or relations (no matter how tenuous the auxiliary relationship is) with organizations the President deems as a terrorist organization, but if a person has provided material support to or harbored a member of a terrorist organization (especially if the death of a person occurs), then they are subject to life in prison. Of course, the modus operandi of distributing “justice” pursuant to these statutes is a system of secret military courts formally established in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which effectively extends military tribunals to the aforementioned covered persons.However, recent revelations concerning Presidential Policy Directive 20, first reported on in the Washington Post, a secret directive President Obama signed in mid-October, has sparked fears that the directive paves the way for boots on the ground on the homefront in the name of cybersecurity. While the Pentagon considers cyberspace a domain in its purview, it has yet to establish concrete rules of engagement for cyberspace– it is for this reason that PPD20 was signed in order to
finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.
However, the lack of concrete specifics had not hindered the Pentagon from declaring that a cyberattack can constitute as an act of war. While federal law prohibits the military from being deployed on US soil without an act of legislation beforehand, the possibility of the deployment of US military on american soil without the immediate forewarning of legislation has become a reality with section 1021 of NDAA 2012.The question that then lies before us is what happens if (perhaps more appropriately when) Anonymous or groups like or associated with it are declared a terrorist organization and how many degrees of separation will save us?
(photo: Source)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me12owCfsR1qapl6zo1_500.jpg)
What Happens When Counter-Cyberterrorism Leaves Cyberspace?
These are exigent times. In order to bring into clear view the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves in, we must first illuminate the legal framework that allows our dire circumstances to exist. Let us first go back to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists law signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11 that, upon ratification, ushered in an era of permanent semi-global war. However, the heart of the law is the power detailed in Section 2 in which
…the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which was upheld by a federal appeals court), under the guise of clarification, expands the persons covered under the AUMF into ambiguous territory to include
[a] person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.It is this expansion of covered persons that is used as justification for the indefinite detention of anyone by the US military. Furthermore, in conjunction with Title VIII of the USA PATRIOT Act, not only can persons deemed to possess any ties or relations (no matter how tenuous the auxiliary relationship is) with organizations the President deems as a terrorist organization, but if a person has provided material support to or harbored a member of a terrorist organization (especially if the death of a person occurs), then they are subject to life in prison. Of course, the modus operandi of distributing “justice” pursuant to these statutes is a system of secret military courts formally established in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which effectively extends military tribunals to the aforementioned covered persons.
However, recent revelations concerning Presidential Policy Directive 20, first reported on in the Washington Post, a secret directive President Obama signed in mid-October, has sparked fears that the directive paves the way for boots on the ground on the homefront in the name of cybersecurity. While the Pentagon considers cyberspace a domain in its purview, it has yet to establish concrete rules of engagement for cyberspace– it is for this reason that PPD20 was signed in order tofinalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.However, the lack of concrete specifics had not hindered the Pentagon from declaring that a cyberattack can constitute as an act of war. While federal law prohibits the military from being deployed on US soil without an act of legislation beforehand, the possibility of the deployment of US military on american soil without the immediate forewarning of legislation has become a reality with section 1021 of NDAA 2012.
The question that then lies before us is what happens if (perhaps more appropriately when) Anonymous or groups like or associated with it are declared a terrorist organization and how many degrees of separation will save us?(photo: Source)
(via ikenbot)
Obama needs to face climate change, reject Keystone pipeline
Climate activist Bill McKibben says now is the time for the administration to stand up to the richest industry on Earth.
The Places Where America’s Drones Are Striking, Now on Instagram
Technology has countervailing effects. We can send a battle by air to a land we have never set foot in, laying previously unimaginable distance between us and our wars. But at the same time we can see on a device in our pocket a satellite picture of these places so remote. Maybe, Bridle writes, the instant connectivity of our world can be a platform not just for faster information, but for deeper empathy for people who live a world away.
See more. [Images: Dronestagram]
I’m not sure this writer for The Atlantic understands the nature of Washington’s drone warfare and this blatant promotion of the ‘Dronestagram’ product frightens me.
The reality is murder is inflicted predominantly onto people whose names don’t exist on any lists as suspects of legitimate crimes or potential threats to security, which would not excuse murder if it even were the case. Victims of drones are completely unknown to those sent to kill them. The U.S. military kills people in multiple regions across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, which you empathetically deem ‘another world’, based on monitored “patterns of activity”. This vague data is believed to signal possible intent to conduct terrorist activity somewhere, onto someone, maybe someday sometime. The lives of thousands of people and their entire communities are in the hands of Americans staring at computer screens while wielding joysticks that turn human beings into “bug splatter”, as they call them, with the touch of a button. If the soldiers who order these murders can do so without having any empathy, what the hell makes you think the most privileged members of American society looking at maps will develop this emotion?
(via ikenbot)
Harlem, New York: On the 11th anniversary of the war on Afghanistan, a protest was held at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Building calling for the U.S. to stop drone attacks and sanctions on Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, hands off Syria, Iran and Venezuela, no to racism, raids and repression at home. October 7, 2012
Photos by Brenda Sandburg
