We Are Change

NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 2: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives at a rally at the Javits Center on March 2, 2016 in New York City. The former secretary of state won seven states in yesterday’s Super Tuesday. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke with CNBC Friday afternoon to discuss the race as it currently stands.

Clinton briefly addressed the economy, praising President Barack Obama’s policies for keeping the nation afloat and making her own economic case for the presidency.
“I think a lot of Americans are really worried that it’s not going to get better, and that’s why I’m running on specifics, on policies, on what I think I can do,” Clinton said.

The former secretary of state also answered questions regarding the federal investigation of her private email server and responded to popular claims that her candidacy could buckle depending on what the agencies in charge of the case uncover.

Clinton asserted that worries of a potential prosecution against her are “not at all” justified.

“This is the same security review that has been going on since last spring,” she said. “I’m happy that everybody now has been cooperating and giving information because I think that will finally end this and show that only appropriate steps were taken.”

“I know that the Republicans were engaging in a lot of wishful thinking, but this is not anything people should be worried about,” she added.

When questioned about the emails that officials found on her personal server, she assured that “there wasn’t a single one of those that was marked ‘classified.’” Clinton even said that her call to make her records public qualifies her as “the most transparent public official in modern times — as far as I know.”
Clinton is currently leading the Democratic race against Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in their party’s delegate count — 1,031 to 429, according to NBC News. In order to become the Democratic standard-bearer, a candidate would need to secure 2,383 delegates.

Although Sanders still has a chance of winning the Democratic nomination, many have suggested that after the March 1 “Super Tuesday” contests, in which Clinton won 7 of 11 states, the only thing that could stop her from coming out on top would be a criminal charge.

Read More

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/05/the-reason-hillary-clinton-thinks-shes-the-most-transparent-public-official-in-modern-times-as-far-as-i-know/

The post The Reason Hillary Clinton Thinks She’s the ‘Most Transparent Public Official in Modern Times appeared first on We Are Change.

We Are Change

Hillary Clinton will be good for women. Ask Berta Cáceres. But you can’t. She’s dead. Gunned down yesterday, March 2, at midnight, in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca, in Honduras.
Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot, and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.

Despite the fact that he was a rural patriarch, Zelaya as president was remarkably supportive of “intersectionality” (that is, a left politics not reducible to class or political economy): He tried to make the morning-after pill legal. (After Zelaya’s ouster, Honduras’s coup congress—the one legitimated by Hillary Clinton—passed an “absolute ban on emergency contraception,” criminalizing “the sale, distribution, and use of the ‘morning-after pill’—imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.”) He supported gay and transgender rights. (Read this. Among the first to be murdered was Vicky Hernandez Castillo, a transgendered activist in San Pedro Sula. Hernandez left her home on the night of the coup, apparently unaware that the new government had decreed a curfew. She was found dead the next morning, shot in the eye and strangled; Sentidog, an LGBT monitoring group, writes that 168 LGBT people were killed in Honduras between the coup and 2014.) Zelaya apologized for a policy of “social cleansing”—that is, the murder and disappearance of street children and gang members—executed by his predecessors. And he backed rural peasant and indigenous movements, such as the one Cáceres led, in the fight against land dispossession, mining, and biofuels. Zelaya, as president, was by no means perfect. But he was slowly trying to use the power of the state on behalf of the best people in Honduras, including Berta Cáceres.
Since Zelaya’s ouster, there’s been an all-out assault on these decent people—torture, murder, militarization of the countryside, repressive laws, such as the absolute ban on the morning-after pill, the rise of paramilitary security forces, and the wholesale deliverance of the country’s land and resources to transnational pillagers. That’s not to mention libertarian fantasies, promoted by billionaires such as PayPal’s Peter Thiel and Milton Friedman’s grandson (can’t make this shit up), of turning the country into some kind of Year-Zero stateless utopia. (Watch this excellent documentary by Jesse Freeston on La Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguán Valley.)

Such is the nature of the “unity government” Clinton helped institutionalize. In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton holds up her Honduran settlement as a proud example of her trademark clear-eyed, “pragmatic” foreign policy approach.

Berta Cáceres gave her life to fight that government. She was the general coordinator of the COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras), a group that has had many of its leadership murdered in the last few years. Last year, Cáceres was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work opposing a major dam project:

Since the 2009 coup, Honduras has witnessed an explosive growth in environmentally destructive megaprojects that would displace indigenous communities. Almost 30 percent of the country’s land was earmarked for mining concessions, creating a demand for cheap energy to power future mining operations. To meet this need, the government approved hundreds of dam projects around the country, privatizing rivers, land, and uprooting communities. Among them was the Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Agua Zarca, slated for construction on the sacred Gualcarque River, was pushed through without consulting the indigenous Lenca people—a violation of international treaties governing indigenous peoples’ rights. The dam would cut off the supply of water, food and medicine for hundreds of Lenca people and violate their right to sustainably manage and live off their land.

Berta Cáceres, a Lenca woman, grew up during the violence that swept through Central America in the 1980s. Her mother, a midwife and social activist, took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, teaching her young children the value of standing up for disenfranchised people. Cáceres grew up to become a student activist and in 1993, she co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) to address the growing threats posed to Lenca communities by illegal logging, fight for their territorial rights and improve their livelihoods. In 2006, community members from Rio Blanco came to COPINH asking for help. They had witnessed an influx of machinery and construction equipment coming into their town. They had no idea what the construction was for or who was behind the project. What they knew was that an aggression against the river—a place of spiritual importance to the Lenca people—was an act against the community, its free will, and its autonomy.

(You can also read this Jeff Conant profile on her from last year, titled, “Berta Cáceres Is Still Alive.”)

The names of Cáceres’s murderers are yet unknown. But we know who killed her.

According to one email circulating about her death: “Berta Cáceres and COPINH have been accompanying various land struggles throughout western Honduras. In the last few weeks, violence and repression towards Berta, COPINH, and the communities they support had escalated. In Rio Blanco on February 20th, Berta, COPINH, and the community of Rio Blanco faced threats and repression as they carried out a peaceful action to protect the River Gualcarque against the construction of a hydroelectric dam by the internationally financed Honduran company DESA. As a result of COPINH’s work supporting the Rio Blanco struggle, Berta had received countless threats against her life and was granted precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. On February 25th, another Lenca community supported by COPINH in Guise, Intibuca, was violently evicted and destroyed.”

(Here’s Telesur’s report on the killing.)

I’m tempted to end this post with a call on Bernie bros and sisters to hold Hillary Clinton responsible and to ask, when possible in town halls and meet and greets, if she ever met Cáceres, or if she is still proud of the hell she helped routinize in Honduras. But, really, Cáceres’s assassination shouldn’t be reduced to the idiocy of American electoral politics.

All people of goodwill should ask Hillary Clinton those questions.

Read More

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-clinton-backed-honduran-regime-is-picking-off-indigenous-leaders/

The post The Clinton Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous Leaders appeared first on We Are Change.

We Are Change

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WIAT) — An Alabama lawmaker has a plan to permanently and physically punish someone convicted of certain sex offenses against children.

The bill, known as HB 365, would make those sex offenders have to get surgically castrated before they leave prison.

HB 365 was introduced by State Representative Steve Hurst, R-Calhoun County.

He said the bill will be for sex offenders over the age of 21 that committed sex offenses against children 12 years old and younger.

“They have marked this child for life and the punishment should fit the crime,” said Hurst.

This is not Hurst’s first time introducing the bill.

“I had people call me in the past when I introduced it and said don’t you think this is inhumane? I asked them what’s more inhumane than when you take a little infant child, and you sexually molest that infant child when the child cannot defend themselves or get away, and they have to go through all the things they have to go through. If you want to talk about inhumane–that’s inhumane,” said Hurst.

Hurst is hoping this would make sex offenders think twice.

“If we do something of this nature it would deter something like this happening again in Alabama and maybe reduce the numbers,” said Hurst.

Residents have some mixed emotions about it.

“Somebody that wants to mess with a little girl or little boy that age should be castrated, and they should not be able to mess with any other kids,” said Keith Dison.

“I understand prison and going to prison for a long time for some kind of crime like that, but to physical mutilate someone…that’s a little out there…it’s crazy,” Jessica George said.

The bill will have to pass the judiciary committee before it’s heard by the Alabama House and Senate.

The post Alabama lawmakers introduce sex offenders castration bill appeared first on We Are Change.

My Comment:  Great news-hope it passes!  For Jessica George:  “you have absolutely no clue as to how sexual abuse to a child ruins that child’s life and we have a HOLOCAUST of Sexually abused children who don’t live long even if they do reach adulthood.