A federal investigation of a controversial Arizona sheriff known for tough immigration enforcement has intensified in recent days, escalating the conflict between the Obama administration and officials in the border state.
Justice Department officials in Washington have issued a rare threat to sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio if he doesn’t cooperate by Tuesday with their investigation into whether he discriminates against Hispanics. The civil rights probe is one of two targeting the man who calls himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff” — a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining whether Arpaio has used his power to investigate and intimidate political opponents and whether his office misappropriated government funds, sources said.
V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic-book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s about the 1990s. A mysterious revolutionary who calls himself ”V” works to destroy the Totalitarian government, profoundly affecting the people he encounters.
You may have heard the news lately that a deal cut between Google and Verizon is threatening Net Neutrality.
Then, if you’re like most people, you said “what the hell is Net Neutrality?”
“Net Neutrality” is a extremely boring name for a very important concept. It’s like the First Amendment of the internet. It means that no matter what internet provider gets you online, the only one who controls where you go and what you see is you. You can create your own website, you can check your email, read the news, or buy items online, and the company you pay for internet access can’t do a damn thing about it.
Imagine some of the alternatives: you try to visit your favorite website, but the site takes forever to load because they didn’t pay off your internet provider. A website criticizing some corporation is suddenly “not found”. Your online business starts losing sales because an internet company would rather use their bandwidth for wealthy corporations instead of your small enterprise. Or most likely, we could get two internets, separate and unequal: a high-speed, corporate-dominated internet, and a “public” internet, with independent sites that are hard, or impossible to view. It would be like a phone system, where you could barely hear your family or friends when you called, but got a crystal clear connection when you were calling to pay your cable bill. Or a road system where the only paved roads went to big chain stores, and you had to take dirt roads to get anywhere else.
Since the government has been avoiding actually doing anything about net neutrality, internet giants Google and Verizon cut a deal outlining what they plan to do regarding free and open access to the internet. First, they are totally dumping net neutrality for wireless internet. If you’re using Verizon for wireless internet, you can see what they let you see, and that’s it. They say that (for now) they will keep net neutrality for wired internet connections, but with loopholes that could make for the “separate but unequal” internet we mentioned above.
This guy sums it up pretty well:
We really can’t rely on corporations to be good citizens when they make profits by screwing us over. And we can’t rely on the government either, because they seem to want to bury their heads in the sand. So we’ll have to make the government do the right thing.
If you live in Minneapolis, the Federal Communications Commission (the government agency that is SUPPOSED to be regulating on this issue) will be holding a public meeting Thursday, August 19 where you can make your voice heard. Or you can contact the FCC directly by email or phone numbers (remember, be polite, they’re less likely to listen to you if you’re, y’know, calling them names).
Unless we step up, we may lose the freest, most democratic form of media the world has ever known.
“SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court panel ruled on Monday that same-sex couples could not marry in California while the court considers the constitutionality of the state’s ban on gay marriage.
But the panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals set a relatively aggressive schedule for considering the case, with briefings in the fall and a hearing the week of December 6.”
“KARACHI, Pakistan — Even as the government and international relief workers struggle to get food and clean water to millions of Pakistanis devastated by floods, concerns are growing about the enduring toll of the disaster on the nation’s overall economy, food supply and political stability.
More rains battered the country Monday, adding to the worst flooding in memory and confronting Pakistan with a complex array of challenges, government and relief officials warned. Though they ranged over the immediate, medium and long term, nearly all needed to be addressed urgently for Pakistan to avoid lasting calamity. “
This song describes a historical event in America during the Vietnam War. It is about the shootings that took place at Kent State University on May 4, 1970; when the National Guard opened fire on a large group of people and killed four protesters.
Hello all, PATH is having an event in October to celebrate its 25th anniversary and to raise much needed funds to help the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our community. Help us collect items tomorrow for them to sell at the silent auction. We are going to go to the stores of Beverly Hills and West hollywood and get everyone to pitch in.
We will gather in Beverly Hills around two pm so please e-mail me for more details if you are interested in helping:
Two weeks ago, a federal judge in Arizona halted implementation of many of the most draconian elements of Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law, Senate Bill 1070, just hours before these provisions were set to take effect. In doing so, the court echoed a conclusion reached in several other recent court decisions, public opinion polls, and ballot measures on immigration policy around the country: States cannot enact broad and regressive laws that violate the Constitutional rights of residents, regardless of their immigration status.
Protest against the U.S. involvement with the Contras in Nicaragua. All Americans wants to do is dance, while the molotov cocktails, and sales of guns and drugs are going on around her. And the boys (the CIA, NSA, etc.)are making a buck or two.
The drama features Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando, in their first film roles, as two indigenous youths who flee Guatemala in the early 1980s due to ethnic and political persecution. They head north and travel through Mexico to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles, California, after an arduous journey.
Axis of Justice is a non-profit organization formed by Tom Morello and Serj Tankian. Its purpose is to bring together musicians, fans
of music, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice. More
Axis of Justice is a non-profit organization formed by Tom Morello and Serj Tankian. Its purpose is to bring together musicians, fans
of music, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice. 
