This week has been a rough week for the global economy. The stock market fell dramatically. S&P downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating from AAA, its highest rating, to AA+ for the first time in history. The Eurozone continues to be in trouble with Spain and Greece possibly needing a bailout. In addition, London, and other parts of Great Britain, experienced days of violent riots, fueled by grievances over police racism, austerity, inequality, and the growing economic suffering of Britain’s poor and working masses. Certainly not a good week. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Obama’s Debt Deal is Bad
After months of political theater coming across as partisan bickering over raising the debt
ceiling limit to avoid default, the U.S. Congress passed a debt deal that President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday. The deal passed the House 269 to 161 and the Senate 74 to 26.
For weeks, politicians and the media said that the United States was in a massive debt crisis. The narrative started from Republican politicians and became accepted as dogma by the Democrats, particularly Barack Obama. Republicans claimed that the budget deficit was the most urgent problem to deal with. The cause for this deficit was too much government spending. Read the rest of this entry »
Systematic Racism Still Exists
A few days ago, PolicyMic.com published my article on police brutality and systemic racism. Here it is below.
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People protested the killing of Oscar Grant and other acts of police brutality.
On New Year’s Eve 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black male, was shot in Oakland, Calif., by white Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle. Several people witnessed the shooting and it was caught on tape. The police claimed that Grant was resisting arrest and posed a danger to law enforcement. As the video shows, however, Grant was unarmed, lying on the ground, and restrained by another police officer when he was shot — posing very little danger to anyone.
The shooting sparked major public outcry within Oakland and the wider San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the protests turned violent and prompted a trial on Mehserle’s killing of Grant. The trial was eventually moved from Oakland to Los Angeles because of extensive public scrutiny. Mehserle faced three charges: second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter. Mehserle’s primary defense was that he meant to pull out his taser, but accidentally pulled out his gun. The prosecution had to prove that Mehserle intentionally killed Grant, which is typically difficult to prove, especially when the defendant is a police officer. Read the rest of this entry »
Middle East Uprisings Give Palestinians Hope For Future
My latest article in PolicyMic.com was published this past Monday. You can read it here or below.
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Depending on which side you are on, May 15th can either be a day for celebration or mourning. For Israelis, it is the joyous day when Israel became an independent nation-state. For Palestinians, it means something completely different: Nakba Day. “Nakba,” in Arabic, means “catastrophe”. Understanding this interpretation, and the present-day suffering, is important to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Palestinian graffiti reads “The separation will fall”. A sign of optimism among Palestinians.
Israel’s independence in 1948 resulted in the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. Although some left by choice, the majority were forcibly expelled. This expulsion was a systematic policy orchestrated by Zionist political and military leaders, called Plan Dalet (or “Plan D”). The policy’s goal was to create a Jewish-only state in territory that belonged to the native Palestinians for thousands of years. Since the Palestinian Arabs were obviously unwilling to give up their land, Israeli militias forced them out. The refugees then fled to neighboring countries, such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of the world, including the United States and Great Britain. This is the catastrophe that Palestinians mourn on Nakba Day. Read the rest of this entry »
Osama bin Laden’s death does not vindicate the use of torture
My first article for Examiner.com was published on Monday. Read it here or below.
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The death of Osama bin Laden, at the hands of U.S. special operations forces in Pakistan, has reignited the debate about torture. Those who support the use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”), claim that vital evidence which led U.S. special forces to successfully finding and killing bin Laden was produced through torture. The key piece of evidence that led to bin Laden’s death was the nom de guerre of his courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. If the Bush administration did not implement its torture program, they argue, Osama bin Laden would still be alive and inspiring al-Qaeda to commit acts of terrorism. This argument is wrong on multiple levels. Read the rest of this entry »
Palestine Papers and the Sham of the “Peace Process”
In the same way that the Pentagon Papers exposed the lies about the U.S. war in 
Vietnam, the Palestine Papers have exposed the ugly truth of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This past week, Al-Jazeera obtained over 1,600 internal documents which, according the network, detail “the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations”. The documents date between 1999 and 2010. High-level Israeli, American and Palestinian Authority officials were involved in these negotiations. The documents were also shared with the British newspaper the Guardian. What the documents essentially reveal is that Israel, with unconditional support from the U.S., has been able to achieve most, if not all, of its demands, while the Palestinian Authority (PA) appeases them. Read the rest of this entry »
Blues African 