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“On the day you least expect it, Cuba is going to be free.”
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Cuban/American Jorge Alonso quoted in the New York Times on the reactions of Cubans living in Miami to the opening with Cuba. At 86, he is from the original generation of Cuban refugees who fled Castro and came to America.
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CHANGE OF ATTITUDE AND TONE, BIG TIME, FOR THE HEAD OF THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
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John Pistole, former FBI man, has not exactly been warm and cuddly as head of the TSA, to put it mildly. He has harshly defended the practices and policies of the TSA, taking a “tough cop” attitude toward complaints about security procedures at airports. That’s changed. He’s leaving the job to become a college president in Indiana. Here is a quote from the Washington Post reflecting his new, current attitude about complaints:
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“I can’t fault them, he said in an interview at TSA’s headquarters in Arlington, “because of the things we were doing, patting down a 95-year-old great-grandmother in a wheelchair with cancer, and a 3-year-old child going to Disney with a teddy bear taken away. I was not happy with that either, and that was one of the driving impetuses for changing from one size fits all.
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The TerryReport has been, well, ranting long and loud about what the TSA has been doing for years, so it is very interesting to see Pistole lighten up a bit, tough cop no more. He’s got a new perspective, it seems, as he leaves the job or he is willing to share a more flexible view that he kept well hidden previously. Regardless, his admission should be yet another reason to question excessive, “let’s put on a big show” security measures.
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A walk in the park, Ellicott City, Maryland, fall, 2014 (copyright, Doug Terry)
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A RETURN TO “HARVEST OF SHAME”?
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The LA TIMES is out with a major investigation of mistreatment of farm workers in Mexico, workers who are involved in growing, harvesting and shipping more than 7 billion dollars in produce to America every year. Here is a key clip from that article with a link to the page.
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TerryReport note: this is an outstanding series of reports in the LA Times. Watch the video and you will get a personal feel for what the workers must endure.
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The Times found:
Lea esta historia en espanol
- Many farm laborers are essentially trapped for months at a time in rat-infested camps, often without beds and sometimes without functioning toilets or a reliable water supply.
- Some camp bosses illegally withhold wages to prevent workers from leaving during peak harvest periods.
- Laborers often go deep in debt paying inflated prices for necessities at company stores. Some are reduced to scavenging for food when their credit is cut off. It's common for laborers to head home penniless at the end of a harvest.
- Those who seek to escape their debts and miserable living conditions have to contend with guards, barbed-wire fences and sometimes threats of violence from camp supervisors.
- Major U.S. companies have done little to enforce social responsibility guidelines that call for basic worker protections such as clean housing and fair pay practices.
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The Washington Post has done a public service by turning the Senate report on CIA torture into a graphic style layout. This helps to breakdown the events described and increases understanding without having to wade through the entire 2,000 page report. (Open links for non-subscribers)
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The first item listed is a link to “20 key findings” in the Senate CIA torture report.
Note: this is unfortunately not an open link, but if you haven’t been to the Post much this month, you should be able to see it without subscribing.
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www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/cia...report/numbers/
18 hours ago - The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's interrogation program listed, for the first time, the names of the 119 detainees who went...
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One of the great things about the world being connected, really, is that we get to share silly/fun things too. Watch this video shot in a German grocery store if you want to get an idea of how the sometimes dreary process of buying groceries can be shattered, in a fun way.. And here we thought the German people were only about serious, dour things....
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GUESS WHAT? Good news: prosperity really is “just around the corner”. If gasoline prices stay this low for a year or more, the boost to the economy could be really significant. So much money is pouring back into the pockets of ordinary citizens that there should be a massive jolt. At the current prices, the lower cost gasoline could allow 260,000,000,000 (that’s 260 billion) dollars to stay with “consumers” and presumably be spent in many different wants and needs. More on this here.
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