“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Heather Digby Parton: “Something is very, very wrong”: Why Ferguson exposes our system of justice
Like Rodney King and Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown’s treatment is now a symbol of America’s deepest failings
I remember the night the Rodney King video first surfaced on Los Angeles television like it was yesterday. In those days you didn’t see videos of police beatings unless a news camera happened to catch it – video cameras were bulky items that people didn’t carry around with them. That footage of those police beating a man mercilessly, grainy and distant as it was, sent a shock wave though this city and in a very short period that shock wave was felt around the world. But at the time I think that most of white America probably either thought that this man must have “deserved” what he got or, if they were appalled by what they saw, believed the justice system could not ignore such vivid evidence and would have to punish these officers. Black America knew better, of course, but they too held out hope that the video proved what they had been saying for years.
We all know how that turned out. [..]
The Michael Brown case is different. And it is because of the way the authorities have responded. From the disrespectful way they left the body of the victim lying in the street to the way the police released the video of Michael Brown in the convenience store as a way to tar his character, to the full military-style response to the protests, they have demeaned the feelings and concerns of the African-American community in Ferguson.
Brittney Cooper: I am utterly undone: My struggle with black rage and fear after Ferguson
I woke up in black skin today — and felt its scourge. After Ferguson, here’s what “rule of law” means to me now
If I have to begin by convincing you that Black Lives Matter, we have all already lost, haven’t we? So let’s not begin there. Let’s begin at the end. At the end there is only Michael Brown Jr.’s dead body, no justice, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For his parents, there is only grief.
They are undone. We are undone. I am undone. This is what American democracy coming apart at the seams looks like. Our frayed, tattered edges are showing. The emperors are the only ones who can’t see it. Where can we begin so that we don’t end up here?
Is anyone else tired of wandering in this wilderness? Surely this land of broken promises isn’t what Dr. King had in mind for us. Hopefully, from the fiery furnace of Ferguson, the floating embers will spark and spread and blaze us a new trail – up out of this madness.
In recent days, the press has reported that President Obama signed an order (or on second thought, maybe it’s just an unsigned decision that can’t be FOIAed, so don’t start anything, Jason Leopold) basically halting and partly reversing his plans for withdrawal. [..]
Virtually simultaneously with the decision to permit American forces to be more involved with the Afghan government, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has reversed Hamid Karzai’s ban on night raids – and also renamed them “night operations.” [..]
And now that Obama has made it clear he will spend his Lame Duck continuing – escalating, even – both forever wars he got elected to end, he has fired forced the resignation of the Secretary of Defense he hired to make peace. [..]
Some great reporting from the NYT, getting all three scoops about Obama’s pivot to war.
I’m just hoping someone is reporting out the really important questions: who will be paying for the resumption of the forever war, and how it will be any more successful than the last 13 years?
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Rethinking the Cost of Western Intervention in Ukraine
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, recently cautioned Americans against intervention fatigue: “I think there is too much of ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought’…. one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons.” Say what? Given the calamities wrought in Iraq, Libya and now Ukraine, one would think that a fundamental rethinking and learning of lessons is long overdue. The United States needs a sober look at the actual costs of supposed good intentions divorced from realism.
Power’s comments come as Ukraine marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Maidan Square demonstrations in Kiev, surely an occasion for rethinking and changing course. One year after the United States and Europe celebrated the February coup that ousted the corrupt but constitutionally elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, liberal and neoconservative interventionists have much to answer for. Crimea has been annexed by Russia. More than 4,000 people have lost their lives in the civil war in Ukraine, with more than 9,000 wounded and nearly a million displaced. This month, the Kiev government acknowledged the de facto partition of Ukraine by announcing it was ending all funding for government services and social benefits including pensions and freezing all bank accounts in the eastern districts that are in revolt. The Ukrainian economy is near collapse with nowhere near the billions needed to rebuild it at hand. How Kiev or the cut-off eastern regions will provide heating and electricity to their beleaguered people as winter approaches remains to be seen.
Zoë Carpenter: This Is the Next Big Fight Between Progressives and the Wall Street Dems
If Burger King has its way, the company will soon leave its Miami headquarters for Canada and enter the coffee-and-donut business. When the fast-food giant announced its intention to buy the Canadian company Tim Hortons in August, it stressed the coffee-and-donuts part of the deal-or, rather, the opportunities for “growth” and “expansion.” But the chance to move to a country with lower corporate tax rates was undoubtedly part of the appeal. Since 2003, more than thirty-five American companies have dodged taxes through similar deals, which are known as “corporate inversions.”
Now the Burger King move is implicated in a fight brewing between some Senate Democrats and President Obama, a clash that throws into relief the split between the party’s Wall Street wing and its progressives. One of the people involved in the deal was Antonio Weiss, a major Democratic fundraiser, the publisher of The Paris Review, and the global head of investment banking at Lazard Ltd, a firm that has put together several major inversion deals. As of November 12, he’s also President Obama’s pick to oversee the domestic financial system-including the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act, and consumer protection-at the Treasury.
Andrea Palframan: Can a First Nations-led Movement Stop Big Oil?
Can a First Nations-led, people-driven movement really have the power to stop Big Oil?
The folks behind the Pull Together campaign think so. The Pull Together initiative supports First Nations in B.C. who are taking to the courts to stop Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project.
Led by the Gitxaala, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Nadleh Whut’en, Nak’azdli and Haida — nations united in their fierce opposition to tar sands oil endangering their traditional territories — Pull Together’s involvement synchronized with a very active movement against tar sands pipelines in B.C. and community-based opposition Enbridge in particular. The campaign is using a new model of online fundraising that, combined with real-world, grassroots organizing, is delivering solid results.
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