While attorneys have subpoenaed all emails and communications
between Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder ® over the ongoing Flint water
crisis, a few details have been released showing what can only be
described as depraved indifference on the part of state workers to the
plight of Flint citizens.
The Republican governor released some staff emails on Jan. 20,
showing that he was well aware that Flint citizens were slowly being
poisoned following a decision by the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality to force them to live with lead-tainted water.
According to the NY Times,
Snyder was informed in one email that a state nurse told one young
mother to not worry about the damage being done to her child when her
son’s blood showed an elevated lead level.
“It is just a few IQ points. … It is not the end of the world,” the nurse reportedly told the worried mom.
According to whistle-blower Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, “If you were
going to put something in a population to keep them down for generations
to come — it would be lead.”
Martin Shkreli on Drug Price Hikes and Playing the World’s Villain
I’ve been skeptical of his villainy because of its quick and unanimous acceptance by the media, and because the evil in question is baked into the system that he is a part of. It is more likely that he is a decoy for the real/greater evil.
A software programmer who went to college in the US happens to be a Muslim Immigrant from Pakistan. He applies for a green card. The FBI gets hold of the application and holds it hostage, asking him to provide names of people he thinks are terrorists, without any evidence of his knowledge of suspicious/terrorist activity. With his green card application on hold for 5 years and his work visa about to expire, he sues the DHS, USCIS & FBI. Soon after, his work visa is revoked.
A.M. got in touch with [Charles] Swift, the lawyer who had fought against military tribunals [and won], who arranged a meeting at the Department of Homeland Security offices in Dallas.
It was there, tucked away in a room in a long, low-slung office building, that the officers pushed A.M. to become a secret informant. “They would want me to wear a wire,” he recalled, “go to my friends in the masjid, the mosque, talk about jihad, encourage them to fight or something, and then ask me to witness against them for provoking them. I can’t do that.”
He said he pleaded with the agents. “Is there something that you know about me? Then tell me. If there is something you think I have done wrong then tell me.” They didn’t answer. Instead, they told him that if he did not agree to their offer, he and his family would no longer be welcome in America.
Swift ended the meeting. Within hours, one of the agents called him and asked which flight his client would be on.
A.M. and his family sold what possessions they could, and two weeks later, they left the country that for 17 years he had called home.
… even though the marginalised groups can access education as it is constitutionally mandated, exclusion manifests in dubious ways. The principle of merit is largely undefined. However, the social and economic worth of individuals and institutions is valued on the basis of this amorphous principle. Any standard definition of merit will again feed the myth of the “family farm” comprising parental background, alma mater, economic occupations, physicality and geographical location. Needless to say, these privileges are available only to a chosen few who are then considered as “meritorious”, “worthy” and the “best”.
In an ongoing study sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on ‘Discrimination and Exclusion in Institutions of Higher Learning in India’, SC/ST students of four universities — Delhi, Mumbai, Madras and Hyderabad — were mapped. A total of 72 respondents were interviewed on various parameters. More than 70 percent of them felt stigmatised by their caste identity within the classrooms, peer group and the academic environment. Unsurprisingly, Rohith wrote in his suicide note, “My birth is my fatal accident.”
There is a myth in this country that in a world where everyone is watched, everyone is watched equally. It’s as if an old and racist J. Edgar Hoover has been replaced by the race-blind magic of computers, mathematicians, and Big Data. The truth is more uncomfortable. Across our history and to this day, people of color have been the disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance; Hoover was no aberration. And while racism has played its ugly part, the justification for this monitoring was the same we hear today: national security.
…
… wiretaps were only the beginning of the government’s violations against King—or the broader civil rights movement. The FBI used information gleaned from taps and secret listening devices to smear King to the press and potential funders, and to engage in repugnant, sexual blackmail. And government surveillance went far beyond King. It extended to Chavez, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Whitney Young of the National Urban League. It extended to their forefathers, DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and countless others who knew that the government was watching—and listening—waiting for them to make a mistake.
During his trip to Silicon Valley in September, Modi was seen hugging a fawning Mark Zuckerberg. Yet, at the same time he was promoting Digital India to Silicon Valley tech-plutocrats, his government turned off the internet in disputed Kashmir for nearly four days.
npr: The U.S. Army has kicked out more than 22,000 soldiers since 2009 for “misconduct,” after they returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with mental health disorders and traumatic brain injuries. That means many of those soldiers are … Continue reading →
I give Uber a PR boost. “Look, we give those poor, poor veterans a way to make money!” they can say. But veterans have experience being exploited, used up, treated as a statistic. As one soldier motto goes, “Suck it up and drive on.”
