Friday, May 04, 2007

Democracy Now!

If you want to get an honest round up of news around the world regarding democracy and human rights, this daily hour long news program from America is a great start. I've heard so many important things in the first fifteen minutes I felt I should write about a few of them here.



  • On wednesday there were protest marches around America in Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit demonstrating for more rights for immigrants. In Los Angeles thousands of people were shot with rubber bullets and tear gas, the police claim the protestors "threw plastic bottles at them." Yeah, plastic bottles: rubber bullets and tear gas, very proportional response. Angelica Salas from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights who organised the protest said there was no warning, families and children were shot at, and some members of the media were hit and actually had to go to hospital. All these people were innocent.

    (UPDATE): More coverage of this here from Boing Boing.



    "Anonymous friend of Carl Stein tells BoingBoing, "He spoke to the photo editor at [one major US newspaper which ran this photo] the day of the incident and explained that the photo depicted the cops beating him to the ground. Interestingly, when the paper went to press, the caption reads that the cops are helping him to get up. WTF?"

    Oh dear.
  • Fourth anniversary of Bush announcing "victory in Iraq"! Good job there aren't still dozens of people - Iraqi civilians, US and UK troops - dying every day.
  • Rupert Murdoch tried to buy the Dow Jones, which runs the US stock market system and owns the Wall Street Journal. It was denied in the end by the Senate or something.
  • Now this one's pretty messed up. In Alabama the police busted a plot to attack groups of Mexicans in a nearby town. Six members of the group, called the "Alabama Free Militia". The police seized truckloads of guns and weapons, including and improvised rocket launcher, thousands of rounds of amunition, and one hundred and thirty hand grenades. Obviously, as the criminals are white, this isn't "Terrorism", they're being charged with "conspiracy to make a firearm". Yeah, so that's the worst part of it, "making a gun", not planning to racially attack Mexicans in a complex widespread plot.

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