Political/News/Debate Thread

[steve]

^then well all be stuck eating farmed or GM fish and with that comes heaps of nutritional and medical problems.

The water thing is more serious than youd think though, if anyones seen Ventura's Conspiracy Theory, i know, he did a good episode on the water mongers.

 More than anything the point he was making is why these business men can buy aquifers and other sources, drain them which in turn drains lakes, ponds, rivers, and sell that water to the very people it belongs to. There have been numerous docs and shows that cover this and people who have tried to sue or take legal action against these firms like PEPSI and COKE and have had no major success.

As far as a lot of comments people are posting go, a lot of it isn't actually water shortage related, it's neoliberalism. They don't actually drain the lakes though.
The most famous example of that is when Bechtel inc. (Based in San Francisco, CA) bought the water system from Bolivia, jacked up the prices to ridiculous levels, and made it a crime to harvest rainwater for drinking. There was a pretty rad anticorporate revolt called the cochabamba protest or something that actually drove them out.
here's a link to it:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/

I actually have this poster up in my classroom about it:


The thing about it is, with that situation its actually more about the insanely fucked up balance of power in the world. These powerful multinational corporations go into countries with the backing of the WTO and exploit the shit out of them for profit, then force them into debt (or often times, more debt) so that they are forced to live in a never ending debt cycle, which all of the groups that went in profit off of. That's what made Cochabamba so radical (see what I did there?).

there's been a lot of debate over the truthfulness of the book "confessions of an economic hit man" but regardless of Perkin's truthfulness it digs into the surface of shit like this and references Bechtel often.

[grimcity]

So is the guy I saw at the gas station wearing this.

Aw man, Slap's the only secret club I'm a part of!

[Bob Loblaw]

On a different note, has anybody else heard anything about H.R. 347? There is definitely some questionable language in the bill,which has passed in congress, over our right to assemble and practice free speech.

Here's a link that does a pretty good job outlining what it contains:

http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/03/imprecise-language-and-the-risks-of-h-r-347/

[David]

Lifting the Veil

[chockfullofthat]

All I ever hear from conservatives, besides the archaic social policies, is how government spending is out of control and how it's Obama's fault.  It's like their mantra: balance the budget, reduce the defecit.  I'm trying to understand why this may or may not be Obama's fault, but I figure that it isn't.  I'm looking for some evidence that will help me argue this point. 

I have a feeling that a lot of the spending that Obama-bashers claim he is doing was unavoidable.  Such as spending on wars he inherited, flawed entitlement programs he would fix if he could, and absolutely necessary Great-Depression-part-II-avoiding stimulus money that either made sense or that he inherited from Paulson and Bush (which were caused by conservative policies on the market in the first place).

I also have a feeling that the point of proposing a budget is to reduce government spending, so when it doesn't get passed it's both parties fault.  Maybe I'm way off, but I'm slowly learning to trust the left on nearly everything. 

[Beer Keg Peg Leg]

you don't even need to make that argument. basic economics dictates that reducing government spending during a recession is absolutely retarded.

[chockfullofthat]

Well to my credit, I did know that.  But I guess what I would expect they would say, if they even admitted that point, is that the economy hasn't recovered quickly enough so he is just wasting.  Which is a hard claim to back.

[David]

Obama and habeas corpus

...the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Timess Charlie Savage put it, that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush's legal team.  Remember:  these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield.   Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country  abducted from their homes and workplaces  and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned.   Indeed, the Bagram detainees in the particular case in which the Obama DOJ filed its brief were Yemenis and Tunisians captured outside of Afghanistan (in Thailand or the UAE, for instance) and then flown to Bagram and locked away there as much as six years without any charges.
http://www.salon.com/2009/04/11/bagram_3/singleton/


TOPICS:BARACK OBAMA, WAR ON TERROR

Obama's dismal civil liberties record

We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national security state, Jack Balkin, a liberal Yale University Law School professor.

The major defining feature of the Obama administration on this issue is the eagerness with which it embraced the stunning evisceration of civil rights and liberties that was a hallmark of the Bush administration, and then deepened those outrageous programs, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who is an attorney representing many Occupy protesters swept up in last fall's mass arrests. He has successfully counted on the acquiescent silence of the liberals.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/obamas_dismal_civil_liberties_record/singleton/