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Old 04-24-2013, 4:22am   #1
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Default Attention forum liberals

Well, forum liberal.

Post something stupid. You know, find some "article" written by an op-Ed on a liberal biased website that can't even stand up to a fifth-grader's close scrutiny.

It's getting boring in here again.

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Old 04-24-2013, 7:35am   #2
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I'm sure there's someone out there who will say your post is Bush's fault, and racist.
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Old 04-24-2013, 7:48am   #3
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I'm sure there's someone out there who will say your post is Bush's fault, and racist.
Your post is Bush's fault and it's racist.
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Old 04-24-2013, 11:34am   #4
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Well, I'm not a liberal, but then again, I'm not an IT guy, and I participated in that thread. So anyway, here's an article I dragged from HuffPo.


How the Drug War Destroyed My Community and Why It Must End Posted: 04/04/2013 6:05 pm

Our nation is making a treacherous tradeoff: wasteful spending on an ineffective "War on Drugs" at the expense of the youth, families, and working folks who are the engine of a thriving economy.

It's a timely topic on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, given his fight against what he called the "twin injustices" of segregation and poverty.

Today, legal segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration, which disproportionately affects Blacks and Latinos and worsens poverty.

The almost $70 billion a year we're squandering to imprison hundreds of thousands of people in prisons, immigrant detention facilities, and juvenile lockup is a shackle that's holding our country back.

What makes it worse, though, is that our shameful distinction as the world leader in incarceration doesn't guarantee our communities are any safer.

How could it, when the Drug War- what the New York Times editorial board calls the "mandatory sentencing craze that gripped the country four decades ago" - turns neighbors and even families against one another just when we need each other most?

40 Years of Destroying Families and Communities
Growing up in Oakland, California in the 70s and 80s, I was an eyewitness to the ways the Drug War destroyed the communities it was supposed to save.

In my early childhood, I used to call my mom the Black Betty Crocker - we had handmade costumes for Halloween, homemade cakes for every birthday, and themed parties for every holiday.

When I got home from school, if my mother wasn't home, I knew that there were other caring adults nearby. I could go to Ms. Pat's house, or, if she wasn't home, to Ms. Beverly's, or Jim's, and so on down a list of neighbors I thought of as my family. My working class, multi-racial community truly was a village raising me.

In the early eighties, my community changed fast. I remember vividly the beginning of the crack epidemic. Neighbors stopped talking to each other. Family friends started losing their jobs and homes. Some teenagers suddenly had more money than many of us had ever seen.

My parents started using crack in my early teens. By the time I was sixteen, I spent my first winter without heat. Soon, we lost our house and moved into a two-bedroom apartment behind a gas station where I shared a room with my three younger brothers.

Not only did I lose my extended family, relationships in my own family fell apart. My brothers and I lost the ability to count on our parents and family. My parents stopped talking to our neighbors and relatives. The adults around me lost trust in each other.

The crack epidemic devastated my family and community. But what added insult to injury was our government's response.

40 Years of Adding Damage to Damage
Our community needed help. Instead, police began using military strategies and weapons as part of the War on Drugs. They swarmed communities, intensifying fear, making the drug trade more profitable and violent, and turning some blocks into war zones. The violence in the streets escalated. Every day brought a new story of someone getting locked up or killed.

At the same time, racialized hysteria over crack swept the media and legislative chambers across the country. Extreme sentencing laws and the funding required to enforce them added fuel to the fire.

District attorneys prosecuted addicts. Instead of treating them as people suffering from a disease and in need of treatment, they were criminals. Their addictions worsened as they cycled in and out of jail, often losing everything from the custody of their kids to their health and self-respect.

Addicts and their families - like mine - struggled to find help and hope in a criminal justice system that did not see us as human beings.

40 Years of Using a Health Crisis as an Excuse for a War
One of the most devastating results of this government warfare in response to a severe health crisis is how it turned our community against itself.

Some of the fiercest guardians of civil rights became silent collaborators, joining with lawmakers and police to call for tougher sentencing and more enforcement. Police power grew, police abuse became rampant, and Black and Brown youth became viewed as the biggest problem of all.

I have been in community meetings where Black grandmothers, who themselves lived through Jim Crow segregation and were staunch civil rights advocates, begged police officers to start arresting Black youth for "loitering" on the youth's own front porches.

Unfortunately, this isn't just my story - it's a story that's all too familiar in communities nationwide.

While the Drug War devastated communities like mine first and worst, Oakland as a whole suffered from the shift of public resources towards prisons and punishment instead of schools, jobs training and creation, and vital programs that strengthen families and communities.

The same holds true for the state of California, and for our entire nation. But we can find our way out and turn this four-decade mistake around.

Using Our Power As Citizens to End the Drug War
Performing music and joining youth activist groups became my way out. In my twenties, I found the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California. Five years ago, I became the organization's Executive Director.

The Ella Baker Center is named for an unsung hero of the civil rights movement, Ms. Ella Jo Baker, who gave people the skills and opportunities to work together for strong communities where everyone can thrive.

When asked about her part in historic civil rights struggles, Ms. Baker reflected that, "The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use."

The Ella Baker Center gave voice to what I had experienced growing up and what I had within my power to use to change it.

We said, and still say, "there are no throwaway youth and there are no throwaway communities."

This principle is non-negotiable for us, because a system that sees any people or communities as "throwaway" has the potential to see all people and communities as "throwaway."

Instead of criminalizing addicts, dividing communities, and turning streets into war zones while spending more and more on prisons and jails, we call on government to invest in health, treatment, education, jobs, and true community safety.

Of course, the voice of one organization isn't going to shift our country's priorities. For that, we need you.

Insisting on Different Priorities
More and more people are agreeing that it's time to stop wasteful spending on bloated prisons and trying to incarcerate our way out of every problem.

They're standing against the Drug War and calling for a new government strategy for safety. Traditional civil rights organizations are taking on the issues of mass incarceration, and even conservatives are starting to push for alternatives.

This kind of cross-sector, bi-partisan support, combined with the voices of impacted communities like mine, is what we need to end the tradeoff we're making as a nation.

Because when we can spend 40 years and $1 trillion or more on a failed Drug War, it's clear there's enough money - what's needed is the political will and pressure from citizens to insist on putting families and communities first.

What's within your power to use to change our nation's priorities? Visit the Ella Baker Center online to learn more, take action, and connect with other citizens answering that question in extraordinary ways.

Follow Jakada Imani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jakada_imani
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Old 04-24-2013, 12:47pm   #5
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I actually happen to agree with that post.

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Old 04-24-2013, 1:32pm   #6
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Originally Posted by Sea Six View Post
I actually happen to agree with that post.

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Old 04-24-2013, 1:39pm   #7
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Default Also from HuffPo

It's Time to Reconsider U.S. Policies That Create Terrorists

Posted: 04/24/2013 1:11 pm

There is one change that the United States could make in response to the terrorism threat that is never discussed. That is to consider the part U.S. policies have played in creating and sustaining it.

I understand that we are not supposed to say this, as if discussing why we are hated justifies the unjustifiable: the targeting of innocent Americans because of the perceived sins of their government.

But nothing justifies terrorism. Period. That does not mean that nothing causes it.

Acts of terror do not come at us out of the blue. Nor are they directed at us, as President George W. Bush famously said, because the terrorists "hate our freedom." If that was the case, terrorists would be equally or more inclined to hit countries at least as free as the United States, those in northern Europe, for instance.

No, terrorists (in this case Muslim terrorists) target the United States because they perceive us as their enemy.

And with good reason.

We have been at war with the people of various Muslim countries for decades, since perhaps as early as 1953 when we engineered Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's overthrow in Iran after he nationalized the oil industry.

Since then the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, on a pretext that was shown to be phony, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. That war came after over a decade of U.S.-sponsored sanctions that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, including more than a half million children due to malnutrition and diseases caused by the lack of clean water and medicine.

Then there are the current sanctions against Iran, ostensibly to deter its government from developing nuclear weapons but, in practice, punishing the Iranian people by degrading their quality of life as well as their health. (Just one example: the Iranian civilian airline has experienced a major spike in air crash deaths since sanctions have prevented it from purchasing parts needed to replace worn and outmoded machinery).

Then there are the drone attacks. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February that, as of then, U.S. drone attacks had killed 4,700 men, women and children (including, he notes, "innocent people") in Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan.

And, of course, our Israel policy is based on the premise, so often stated by Vice President Joe Biden, that there must be "no daylight, no daylight" between Israeli policies and our own. That statement has proven true on matters large and small -- from Congressional promises to join Israel if it decides to attack Iran's nuclear reactor, to supporting Israel's policies on the West Bank and Gaza, to opposing any form of Palestinian representation at the United Nations. Muslims do not imagine that we view the Middle East almost entirely through Israeli eyes. We do.

In short, the aphorism often used to describe the effect of drone attacks can be applied to U.S. policy in the Muslim world in general: for every enemy we kill, we create dozens or hundreds more. And some of those enemies turn up here as terrorists.

So my question is this: Why can't the likelihood of blow-back at home be part of the calculation when policymakers decide to take a particular action or make a particular statement relating to the Middle East or the Muslim world in general?

Obviously the United States is not going to consider this factor as it decides on policies unambiguously affecting the fundamental security of the American people. No one would argue that we should not take out a terrorist cell poised to attack American targets out of fear of inflaming its sympathizers.

But few of the actions that so enrage (and radicalize) people in the Middle East are directly connected to the security of Americans at all: not the excessive number of drone attacks or Iran sanctions or our backing of the post-1967 Israeli occupation. Looking back at the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it is difficult to argue that they did more to enhance the security of Americans than they did to damage it.

This is not to say that the United States should not have responded with force to the heinous 9/11 attacks. The successful effort to degrade the capabilities of Al Qaeda has, no doubt, made us safer. And some of our enemies hate us not because of anything we do but because they are driven by religious or political zealotry. And some are just monsters. But not all, and not most.

Not every threat is Al Qaeda. In fact, not every group we deem as terrorist is an enemy of the United States at all. Some are engaged in local wars or insurgencies that have nothing to do with us, at least not before we jump in to assume the role 1960's folk singer Phil Ochs referred to as "cops of the world."

Because if this is what we are going to be, we are going to feel it here, not only in the form of terrorism but in the form of the loss of our own freedoms here at home. At the rate we are going, the restrictions we have become accustomed to when trying to board an airplane will become a metaphor for the loss of the freedom we once thought of as encapsulating the American way of life.

The next threat to that freedom looms as the Obama administration considers whether it will permit (or even back) an Israeli attack on Iran. During his trip to Israel this week, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told the Israelis that the United States believes that "in dealing with Iran, every option must be on the table." That "every option" formulation, of course, refers to the possibility of war.

Can anyone doubt that an Israeli attack on Iran backed by the United States would have terrible repercussions here at home and that they would continue for a long, long time? Is that what we want? Is that something we can even tolerate?

With the Boston Marathon horror still fresh in our memory, I think it is safe to say that we cannot. Nor should we. But it's our decision. Pursuing policies that enrage much of the world endangers Americans here. In Boston, New York, Washington and, ultimately, elsewhere as well.

Is it too much to ask that policy makers keep that in mind when making their calculations about where next to show the flag? Their primary responsibility is to protect Americans. It is time for them to stop endangering them.

Follow MJ Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjayrosenberg


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-ros...b_3146845.html
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Old 04-24-2013, 4:42pm   #8
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Originally Posted by Doug28450 View Post
Your post is Bush's fault and it's racist.
I admit, I do like bush
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Old 04-30-2013, 4:55am   #9
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Thanks, Z06PDQ.

That's the kind of stuff I was looking for.
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Old 04-30-2013, 12:45pm   #10
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Thanks, Z06PDQ.

That's the kind of stuff I was looking for.
can't refute it huh? I thought so. and you guys wonder why there's no libs in here.
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Old 04-30-2013, 2:18pm   #11
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