tagged w/ Modern Day Slavery
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A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”
Read More: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2011/04/peasants-need-pitchforks.htmlA “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title,... more
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On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.
This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American. On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long... more
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Three words: modern day slavery.
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Every year thousands of people come to the U.K. to work for wealthy families -- but their passports are taken away when they arrive, and they are kept as slaves.Every year thousands of people come to the U.K. to work for wealthy families -- but... more
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Marijuana Arrests at Record Level
Figures released by the FBI the week of September 20, 2006 showed marijuana arrests are at an all time high. More than seven-hundred eighty thousand people were arrested in 2005 for marijuana violations. That?s over forty percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Almost nine in ten were arrested for possession. Allen St. Pierre of NORML - The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said: "Arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans who smoke marijuana responsibly needlessly destroys the lives of otherwise law abiding citizens? It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals for their use of a substance that poses no greater health risks than alcohol or tobacco.?
And people wonder why we can't afford the art department at their local school. Imagine if we invested all the money we waste on the WAR ON DRUGS in our schools, our hospitals and other essential services.
We don't just fight the WAR ON DRUGS in America, we do it all over the world. CAMP in Jamaica and our soldiers in the jungles of Columbia are just two examples. Hello, tap tap. Is this thing on? Is anyone else getting it? Am I wrong?
I'm reminded of a poem:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
No more wars period.Marijuana Arrests at Record Level
Figures released by the FBI the week of September... more
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