angry-hippo:

kenobi-wan-obi:

nbcnews:

Meet Alex, first ‘Sesame’ Muppet to have a dad in jail

(Photo: TODAY)

Those friendly, fuzzy Muppets from “Sesame Street” have helped kids open up about all sorts of serious subjects, from hunger and divorce to military deployment.

But they’re now tackling a much more unexpected issue: incarceration.

Continue reading

Just to let you know how bad the incarceration rate has gotten, it’s now a sesame street issue.

I posted about this a few days ago, and was surprised how many people messaged me to say that they grew up with a father or mother who had done time. 

I know that we all have our blind spots, the little things we don’t so much ignore as fail to see because our own experience has yet to open our eyes. Very few people in the United States think about Incarceration, and if they do, they generally put it right back out of their minds by dismissing those inside as being deserving of their fate. As silly as it sounds, I hope that the media attention on this Sesame Street character leads to a new generation that understands the humanity of those behind bars, the impact of incarceration on families and our broader society, and how casually and callously this imperialist power that seeks to govern us will take away a person’s freedom. Remember, we live in a country where people are doing time for defending themselves from rapists, for smoking pot, for feeding themselves after capitalism stole their other means to do so, and for fighting back against animal abusers, earth destroyers, corporate rule, and police brutality. Before you ignore the plight of the incarcerated and their families, consider that with incarceration (and poverty) rates rapidly increasing, it may not be long before you no longer have the privilege of turning a blind eye.

(via satanic-capitalist)

motherjones:

Edward Snowden’s leaks have prompted many questions about government surveillance activity in the US, including this one: How often do tech firms turn over user data to the feds?

(via satanic-capitalist)

turkeylivefeeds:

04.16: [Ankara] The moment the news about the police attacks was spread out, the parliament member Aylin Nazliaka (CHP) wrote on twitter:” I am at Kugulu. They were hitting the youngsters badly. Now I am bringing two young people to the hospital”.

via #gezipark

turkeylivefeeds:

04.49: [Istanbul] At Taksim Square a number of protesters gathering with the “standing man”, who has been standing on the square for hours silently, increased. In Istanbul neighbourhoods the “standing protest” has been spreading. Please click here for more information about the “standing protests”.

via #gezipark

turkeylivefeeds:

08.34: [Ankara] The police operation in Ankara started to become a manhunt. Police have conducted raids to houses and started to arrests. The number of people under arrest is currently unknown.

via #gezipark

anonymissexpress:

via @Stmanfr #solidarity #occupygezi #opbigbrother #indect #france #paris

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

A Colombian guerrilla group is trying to draw Ottawa into its battle with a Toronto-based mining company which is quietly trying to secure the release of one of its executives who has been held hostage since January.

The Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) kidnapped Gernot Wober, 47, on Jan. 18, during an attack on the Snow Mine camp in Bolivar state, which sits in the northern part of the country. The guerrilla group kidnapped five other people, including three Colombians and two Peruvians, who have all since been released.

The guerilla group says that Wober, the vice-president of Toronto-based Braeval Mining Corp, won’t be released until the company gives up gold mining concessions in the San Lucas mountain range which the ELN claims were initially given to local miners who live in the area.

In a statement issued Wednesday and posted on the guerilla group’s website, the ELN took aim at the Canadian government.

“The Canadian government should at least be concerned about whether its anti-corruption laws are being followed by Canadian companies in their foreign operations,” said the ELN. “Neither the Colombian nor Canadian governments have bothered to investigate our accusations about the dispossession of four mining concessions held by communities in the southern part of Bolivar (state) by the Northern American company Braeval Mining Corporation.”

(via anarcho-queer)

will-potter:

New documents reveal TransCanada is secretly instructing police how to handle Keystone XL protesters, and urging terrorism prosecutions for non-violent activists.

Please REBLOG if you stand with the pipeline protesters!

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/transcanada-police-presentation-on-protests/7094/

climateadaptation:

Interesting oil spill. The state owned pipeline broke from a landslide caused by heavy rain (and, I presume, a very poor site assessment - the line is on the side of an active, landslide vulnerable volcano, which abuts a major river used for drinking water and agriculture. Brilliant.). 

Oil spilled from Petroecuador’s Trans-Ecuador pipeline after a May31 landslide in the Andean foothills has reached the Peruvian Amazon.

The landslide that destroyed a 330-foot section of the pipeline is blamed on heavy rain in the province of Sucumbios near the El Reventador Volcano, one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes.

The broken pipeline spilled some 11,000 barrels, or 420,000 gallons, of crude oil into the Quijos River, a well-known whitewater adventure river on the eastern slopes of the Andes.

The oil was carried east into the River Coca, a tributary of the Napo River, which flows into the Amazon River.

The oil has polluted drinking water in the city of Puerto Francisco de Orellana, also known as Coca, a city of 80,000 and the capital of Orellana Province. Clean water is being supplied by tanker truck.

Petroecuador has also distributed food rations and cans of drinking water to the residents of 13 other Ecuadorean communities affected by the spill.

rightsider:

I wanted to say something intelligent about this and all I can think of is frightening. It’s astounding to me that this is still even in question. That there is so much energy being spent on both sides that there is not proper mapping of the pipeline’s route. They obviously don’t want the impacted communities to know their potential fate. How short sighted (or bought off) can Obama and the State Department leaders really be? Apparently there is severe division within the administration over this issue. Bloomberg reports that, “The Obama world’s split on Keystone is so deep that it even divides White House aides who’ve left the administration.” And that, ‘The internal divisions among Obama supporters driven by Keystone threaten to sap dollars and volunteer enthusiasm from Organizing for Action, the policy group born out of Obama’s re-election campaign that raised $4.9 million in the first three months of this year. The split may hurt OFA’s ability to build support for the president’s other initiatives, such as immigration and revising the tax code.”

Here’s the piece by Beth Buczynski for Earth Techling

While we know the proposed Keystone XL pipeline expansion will travel the entire length of the country, the exact path has been somewhat unclear. Since neither TransCanada Corporation nor the U.S. Department of State has been willing to give Americans an exact map of where the tar sands pipeline will be installed, author and photographer Thomas Bachand decided to tackle it himself.

Bachand is the founder of the Keystone Mapping Project (KMP) a nationally recognized multimedia and photography project examining land use and climate change in America through an exploration of the Keystone XL. He’s been fighting tooth and nail to hammer out an actual map of the pipeline’s proposed route, so that we can see just how close to our backyards, schools, and water supplies it will run.

Image via KMP

It’s incredible that a project as massive and with such potentially sweeping consequences as the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would lack  something as simple as a map for public inspection–but according to Bachand, that’s the sad truth.

“Prior to the Keystone Mapping Project, only rudimentary maps of the pipeline were available,” Bachand explained in an email. “The maps issued with the FEIS [Final Environmental Impact Statement] have been stripped of all lat/long information. The FEIS is also missing key location information, including milepost markers and waterbody crossings. Without this information, it is impossible to conduct any meaningful analysis of the pipeline, let alone determine its environmental impacts.”

Making that information available, for landowners, communities, non-profits fighting the pipeline, and journalists trying to unravel the forces pushing for its approval, has been the biggest impact of Bachand’s project thus far.

Combining satellite imagery with custom mapping features, the images depict a hypothetical voluntary evacuation zone should an oil spill occur. Individually, the panels examine the interplay of physical and human geography. In series the photography reveals broader patterns and larger questions.

Image via Thomas Bachand

“Larger questions” are probably whythe Federal Government isn’t very eager for the KMP to succeed. Blog posts on Bachand’s website detail many months of slashing through red tape in an attempt to obtain the comprehensive GIS data set that should accompany the FEIS.

“Currently, I am using data acquired from state agencies, others’ FOIA requests, and my own independent analysis,” said Bachand. “I can only speculate as to why the GIS data remains a secret, as neither TransCanada nor the DOS will provide me with a credible answer. The objective seems to be to forestall independent and detailed analysis.”

Follow Bachand’s progress and support the KMP here.

Thanks to TB for forwarding this post.