Directed by the Fine Brothers, the Emmy-winning creators of the Kids React video series, this clever clip for "Dirty Money" follows Muppet-like characters through the aftermath of the financial crisis. Antibalas lead singer Amayo looks down from a helicopter as the band delivers some intensely limber grooves.

The tirelessly funky Afrobeat evangelizers of Antibalas have played at Carnegie Hall and Rikers Island. They've played, individually or as a group, with Amy Winehouse, TV on the Radio, Iron and Wine, Mark Ronson, the Roots, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Angelique Kidjo, David Byrne, Ornette Coleman. Their trombonist, Aaron Johnson, oversees the music for the hit Broadway musical Fela!. As the band preps its upcoming self-titled album, due out August 7 via Daptone Records, they're only just now releasing their first official video.

It's more than 20 years since a recording of police violence sparked riots in Los Angeles. The beating of Rodney King was caught on video and the footage shocked the world.

But two decades later how much has changed?

To discuss this, Inside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, is joined by guests: Jumana Musa, a human rights lawyer who is deputy director of the Rights Working Group; Gustavo Arellano, the editor of the OC Weekly, a newspaper that has been covering the shootings; and Raymond Lewis, a retired Philadelphia police captain who was arrested by New York police while taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protests last year.

On Saturday, police in the Californian city of Anaheim shot and killed Manuel Diaz, an unarmed man who they said was running from them, hitting him in the leg and the back of the head.

Police said he and another young man shot dead the following day were both gang members. But local residents say the Latino men were victims of racial profiling and an overly aggressive police force.

Continue reading »

Good morning, today is Friday, July 27, 2012...TGIF!

On this date in:

1694 The Bank of England received a royal charter as a commercial institution.

1789 Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the Department of State.

1861 Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac.

1866 After two failures, Cyrus W. Field succeeded in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe.

1940 Bugs Bunny made his official debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon ''A Wild Hare.''

1967 In the wake of urban rioting, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence. The same day, black militant H. Rap Brown said violence was ''as American as cherry pie.''

1974 The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend President Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a ''course of conduct'' designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.

1992 Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis died after collapsing on a Brandeis University basketball court during practice; he was 27.

1995 The Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., by President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam.

1996 Terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at the public Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring more than 100.

[Probably not suitable for work.]

This is your Moment of Clarity #157: Offended by bad words? Well, let me ask you - What exactly is a bad word? Watch this video and please let me know - which ones are truly offensive?

Keep fighting,

Lee

[more at lee camp.net]

Key Senate Staffer on Military Issues Got Big Payout From Lockheed Martin

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, July 26, 2012, 5 p.m.

Lockheed Martin has big business in Washington, with Defense Department contracts representing more than half of the company's $46.5 billion in net sales last year. And now, Lockheed has a former top lobbyist in a key position on Capitol Hill overseeing the company.

Former Lockheed vice president Ann Elise Sauer was hired by Sen. John McCain in February as the top Republican staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The revolving door swings regularly in Washington, but the size of the compensation package Sauer received from Lockheed when she left the company is notable. A financial disclosure form shows the defense giant gave Sauer $1.6 million in compensation around the time she took a buyout in January 2011.

At the moment, the stakes for Lockheed in Washington are even higher than usual, with the company leading the military contracting industry's charge to convince Congress to avoid a $492 billion, 9-year cut in military spending set to be triggered in January.

Lockheed CEO Robert Stevens was on the Hill this month warning that the company would have to lay off 10,000 employees if Congress does not make a deal. "Most tragically, we feel we will be unable to provide the equipment and support needed by our military forces," Stevens told the House.

As staff director for the minority on the Senate committee, Sauer has an important role in the battle over the possible military budget cuts. The committee regularly makes decisions that determine the fate of Lockheed's business.

There is no law barring lobbyists from entering public service on Capitol Hill. But Ben Freeman, national security investigator at the Project on Government Oversight who wrote about Sauer Thursday, says that the presence of a former Lockheed executive in a key position overseeing the company is cause for concern.

"Some of the biggest issues in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee right now deal directly with Lockheed Martin programs," Freeman says. "These are big-dollar programs that are going through some troubles and need some oversight."

One example is Lockheed's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has been plagued by cost overruns and other problems.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for McCain, said in a statement that the senator made an "unsolicited offer of employment" to Sauer and that she accepted the offer "on a stop-gap, temporary one-year basis."

"When Ms. Sauer accepted Senator McCain's offer to lead his Armed Services Committee staff, she did so at her own financial detriment, as she was required to liquidate all remaining Lockheed stock and options in compliance with Senate Ethics Committee guidelines," Rogers said. (See the full statement.)

Sauer, who has spent much of her career on Capitol Hill in various capacities, is a specialist on the federal budget. She spent 23 years as a Senate staffer, including 14 years with the armed services committee, and a stint as McCain's legislative director. She left Capitol Hill to join Lockheed in 2000. (Sauer did not respond to a request for comment.)

Sauer spent a decade at the company, rising to be Lockheed's Washington-based vice president for acquisition policy, logistics, and budget. For most of the time, she was a registered lobbyist who lobbied in the Senate and elsewhere, according to disclosure filings.

"She was the corporation's federal budget expert," according to her bio posted on the site of the group Women in Defense, "responsible for tracking and analyzing the federal budget, both defense and non-defense. At various times, she was responsible for managing the corporation's senior-level interfaces with senior Executive and Legislative Branch officials on a wide array of programs and policy issues."

She briefly started a military consulting firm specializing in "federal budget and fiscal policy information and insights." Sauer's financial disclosure, which is required of senior congressional staffers, lists $55,000 in consulting fees paid by another defense giant, BAE Systems.

Her financial disclosure forms show her final payments from Lockheed included $660,000 in salary and bonus, $769,000 in deferred compensation, and $232,000 in "retired pay."

Rogers, the McCain spokesman, said that Sauer's compensation was made up of pay from the buyout program, "normal annual incentive compensation" and "significant deferred compensation."

Lockheed declined to comment.

Sauer's case has a precedent. Last year, the House Armed Services Committee hired Thomas MacKenzie, a Northrop Grumman lobbyist who received a large bonus from the company before starting his job on the Hill.

Video: A young girl suffers a seizure after NYPD raid Zuccotti Park on March 17, 2012.

A new report by the Protest and Assembly Rights Project, which includes civil liberties experts from law clinics at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford, has determined what anyone paying attention already knows: The NYPD went way overboard with seemingly random protesters, and media personnel (Even innocent bystanders in multiple instances) during Occupy Wall Street. But the group's findings, compiled in Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street, detail many incidents beyond the extreme few that got the most media play, counting 130 examples of extreme force in all, on top of "a complex mapping of protest suppression."

Most of the police misconduct cited in the report comes from video footage, reputable journalists, legal observers, and firsthand accounts from authors of the study. Here are but a few:

One widely reported incident occurred on March 17, when a woman appeared to suffer a
seizure when arrested. Numerous videos show her convulsing on the ground while handcuffed. One witness described feeling “dumbfounded” as he watched her head bang against the ground repeatedly as officers did nothing; he said that he called out repeatedly for the officers to place something under head. Individuals on the scene who said that they were EMTs and offered to assist were not permitted to do so by police. Estimates varied asto the length of time it took for an ambulance to arrive, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes.
While the general legal obligation of officers to secure timely medical assistance is clear, this obligation is heightened where officers plan a major and aggressive law-enforcement operation to a large number of protesters from an area.

This injury I don't recall hearing about at all:

Then on May 30, during a student march, a member of the Research Team witnessed a particularly violent arrest. A protester was observed lying on the ground, with a number of officers standing near. The protester stated that his shoulder had just been dislocated; the officers stated that they had called an ambulance, and were not going to handcuff the protester because of his injury. However, moments later, a second group of officers rushed in and aggressively handcuffed the protester. He screamed out in pain repeatedly and told the officers about his injury, asking them to be gentle. The officers responded by stating the he was “a liar,” and they repeatedly intentionally pushed and pulled his injured shoulder. When EMTs did subsequently arrive, they inspected his shoulder, immediately removed the handcuffs, and put him in an ambulance for treatment. The individual’s lawyer later stated that the protester in fact had suffered a broken clavicle, an extremely painful and serious injury.

There's also a section on weapons use, including batons, scooters, and pepper spray, which was used in seven separate cases, according to the report.

The report concludes that the department could possibly use an inspector general (as has been suggested repeatedly) and maybe even a city review of the police tactics used throughout the protests. If not, the report suggests that the Department of Justice might be interested in their findings. However, thus far, there's been "near-complete impunity for alleged abuses."

.

The above Youtube video contains the audio of a 911 call that the New York Police Department tried to keep secret.

After over a year of requests, The Associated Press finally received access to a 911 tape the New York Police Department has tried to keep from the public. The recording details a confused New Brunswick, N.J. building superintendent’s discovery of an NYPD safe house, used while conducting undercover surveillance on Muslims outside of their jurisdiction. Following the 911 call, in which the dispatcher was just as confused as the superintendent calling, the New Brunswick police and FBI rushed to the apartment, having no idea the NYPD had been in town spying on the city’s Muslim citizens. Embarrassed, the NYPD demanded its materials back from the FBI, tried to keep the 911 tape a secret, and still will not discuss the New Jersey mission. Yet the tape offers details into the investigation, as the man on the phone describes a furniture-less apartment filled with two computers, New York City Police Department radios, dozens of boxes, photographs of "terrorists" and local buildings, as well as literature on Islam.

DOWNLOADS: (589)

PLAYS: (10182)

Embed

Jon Stewart laid waste to Mitt Romney and his deceptive campaign ad, taking President Obama out of context for his "you didn't build that" remarks. His cohort on Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert did not disappoint with his take on the subject and his failed attempt to prove that he didn't need to rely on any of his staff to do his show.

Colbert followed this segment up by "rehiring" his supposedly fired staff and asking that no one ever speak of it again. Gotta' love it. It's a sad day when our comedians have to be the ones pointing out how utterly ridiculous the Romney campaign attacks are with the whole it takes a village and no one made it on their own nonsense and the right's pathetic response to someone saying something that is actually true.

Unless you're living in some hut out in the woods apart from the rest of civilized society, you've relied on your fellow citizens for that civil society existing and have benefited from it. The fact that we don't have more calling out Romney for his hypocrisy as we saw from Colbert and Stewart this Wednesday is just further proof that our so-called fourth estate in America for the most part is dead. It's still on life support with some glimmers of hope out there, but we've got a long way to go with doing something about the amount of propaganda most Americans are exposed to on a daily basis if they turn on their television set.

I'm eternally grateful for someone like Colbert and his ability to make me laugh instead of cry about it.

DOWNLOADS: (738)

PLAYS: (10490)

Embed

After a week or so of watching the right wing and pundits on television either make excuses for the Romney campaign taking President Obama's "you didn't build that" comment out of context, or as Jon Stewart showed in this segment, going out of their way to repeat the distortion, it was nice to see them get taken to the woodshed again on The Daily Show.

Last night it was Lewis Black ripping up the Romney campaign, and tonight it was Stewart's turn.

After showing a compilation of some of the various talking heads out there, with Erick Erickson calling President Obama's remarks "grade school Marxism," Stewart responded:

STEWART: Yes! Grade school Marxism... or, as your second grade teacher might have referred to it... sharing.

Stewart went on to show the hacks over at Fox & Friends doing their best to make things worse as Media Matters clipped here: Fox Claims To Offer "Context" For Obama Comments -- Then Airs Another Deceptively Edited Clip and we brought you here: Kilmeade Asks Little Girls if Government Built Their Lemonade Stand .

He followed that up with these remarks:

STEWART: Look, the campaigns all like to have fun with gaffes, making it a big deal out of a misstatement is a great way to win a news cycle. [...] but this ain't a gaffe. And Mitt Romney's not having a little fun with it. This deliberate misstating and misrepresentation of his position is now the centerpiece or Romney's entire campaign. He's got signage, T-shirts, and this unrelenting ad. [...]

Mr. Romney, hanging your attack on a person's slight grammatical misstep is what people do in an argument when they're completely f**ked and they know they have no argument.

I know you, Mitt Romney would like this election to be a stark choice to the American people and to Obama's vision of a Marxist state-run oligarchy and your simple and your simple ode to the freedom our Founders envisioned, because given that choice, you would... come really close. But, you're not running against this guy, Straw-Man Johnson.

Stewart wrapped things up with a mashup of Romney repeating all of the same lines as President Obama on the need for infrastructure and the fact that no one makes it on their own.

Anonymous hacktivists are targeting Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait and the Anaheim Police Department in an action dubbed “Operation Anaheim.”

In a YouTube video published July 24, Anonymous calls for “the citizens of the United States to rise up in unison” and protest the police brutality in Anaheim.

Violence in Anaheim began Saturday, July 21, with the deadly police shooting of Manuel Diaz, who was unarmed, and according to reports had dropped to his knees before he was shot in the back of the head by police.

Transcript:

Citizens of the World,

We are Anonymous.

The purpose of this video is clear.

We want to inform the citizens of the world, that the United States is setting the flames of revolution. In Anaheim, police shot protesters and bystanders including kids who did nothing wrong. We, Anonymous, are calling yet again to the citizens of the United States, to rise up in unison, and defeat this government which values no lives nor freedom.

Do it for the safety of your families, your homes, and your future generations.

The fate of America is in your hands. Do you wish to be oppressed further, or do you wish to obtain freedom and peace?

The choice is yours. Let beat the drums of war.

Operation Anaheim, engaged.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.