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The TerryReport

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Doug Terry

 

FORMER COLLEAGUE SLAMS BILL O’REILLY

WalMart Minimum Wage Raised

LESLEY GORE DIES

BOB SIMON OF CBS NEWS

BRIAN WILLIAMS’ PROBLEMS

TRAVELING TO CUBA NOW

RECENT POSTS: late ‘14, early ‘15

LATE 2014 posts

The Next President: who has a chance?

Obama Not in France

Police Strike

Wash. Monument

Greg Mort, Painter

Car Hype?

Obama’s Statement

Ben’s Chili Bowl

Cuba Vacation

Cuban Exiles: No

TSA Changes

Street Protests

Rolling Stone Mess

Prosperity Now

Campus Rapes

1 World Trade Center

Who Caused Riots?

Ferguson Updates

Ferguson Live Vid

MARION BARRY DIES

Marion Barry Gone

GOP Plays Nice?

(Some) 2014 posts

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

DEMOCRATS LOSE

ROCKET EXPLOSION

EBOLA PAGES

GONZALO CAM

Ebola Breaking Pt.

Ebola Panic!

Blood Moon

Kirk Counsins Rises

Personal Data: No!

White House Security

REDKINS NAME

Petty Fines in Ferguson, Mo

Police Stealing

Rick Perry Prays

Book Festival

SPEED CAMERAS

NATIVE AMERICANS?

PHILLY RIOTS

Hamas/Israel

Arrest Ferguson

Police Armies

Police Threat

Mistaken Police

Ferguson, Mo.

Ferguson2

LOWER WAGES

REAL ISSUE IN Missouri

Perry’s Mouth

Robin Williams

Tony Stewart

Israel/Gaza

People in Deep Debt

Ft. Hood Security

Paintball Gun

Ukraine Crash

Robert Teich/wealth

Supermoon 2013

Student Loans

Perry’s Joke

Personal Freedom

Challenge to Democracy

Murrieta Demonstrations

NASA/Arthur

WHY POOR?

CITIZEN’S WEALTH FUND

REAL AMERICA?

NTSB REPORT

Interstate Driving

OBAMA/Iraq

NO AIR TRAVEL

Iraq Plans

Obama’s Fault?

SICKNESS and poverty

LICENSE PLATE READERS

“On the day you least expect it, Cuba is going to be free.”

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.

OPENING WITH CUBA PAGE HERE

“DEAR CUBAN EXILES, I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT NEW RELATIONS WITH THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT” (an open letter)

Q&A: DO DRIVERLESS CARS REPRESENT MORE PR THAN REALITY?  PREDICTION: CARS THAT CAN DRIVE THEMSELVES, YES, AUTONOMOUS CARS, NO!

A TerryReport comment at this link

CHANGE OF ATTITUDE AND TONE, BIG TIME, FOR THE HEAD OF THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

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:

“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.

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.

HERE IS A LINK to the Washington Post article

A walk in the park, Ellicott City, Maryland, fall, 2014 (copyright, Doug Terry)

A RETURN TO “HARVEST OF SHAME”?

Salomon Sarita Sanchez works in a crew of strawberry pickers, made up of indigenous Mixtec immigrants from Oaxaca.

photo credit: the Beacon Broadside.com

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.

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.

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.

CLICK ON THIS LINK to read the full story and series in the LA Times

Meanwhile, the Beacon Broadside has a report on horrid conditions for workers in the US

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)

7 things you didn't read today (but should have)

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.

The 119 detainees held in secret CIA prisons - Washington Post

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...

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....

A MAJOR NEW NATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE  IS BEING BORN. THOUGHTS AND DETAILS

The Rolling Stone magazine rape story is worse than useless, it will have to be totally repudiated and the debate about rape and sexual assault on campus restarted. Soon.

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.

ATTENTION BEING PAID TO RAPE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES COULD HAVE BENEFITS

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to go to recent posts, nearly 300 pages of news and comments filed during the first nine months of 2013 and during the critical election year of 2012.

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