I'm just here to read some news.

Right-wing funders and business industrialists David and Charles Koch may purchase the Tribune Company newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times. The brothers are “interested in the clout they could gain through the Times’ editorial pages,” the Hollywood Reporter notes. Responding to the report, a spokesperson for Koch told the website that the brothers are “constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors”

….

The Koch brothers own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in America, and fund a network of right-wing think tanks and organizations. In 2012, the brothers had pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama and even sent mailers to employees urging them to support Mitt Romney and other conservative candidates.

You should be scared. And this is why:

• The Koch brothers funds and supports an organization which thinks the Violence Against Women Act is “unconstitutional”.
• The same organization, called The Heritage Foundation, is known for being anti-gay and climate change denying, among other bigoted and delusional stands.  
• Last year, Koch Industries Warned 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans.
• Koch Industries is one of top five corporate air polluters in the U.S. 
• The Koch brothers have been accused of backing public school segregation, in 2009.
• The Koch brothers have no respect for Native American rights or lands.
• The Koch brothers also sympathize and help fund Tea Party rallies. 
• ALEC, which is Koch funded, is responsible for drafting strict voter ID laws that have been known to exclude students, People of Color, the elderly, and low income citizens from the voting process.
• The Koch brothers are basically at war with Social Security.

sinidentidades:

Among many of the partisan battles set to resurface in the 113th Congress is the fight over the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Initially enacted in 1994 and reauthorized with little controversy in 2000 and 2005, VAWA fell victim to a potent mix of partisanship, preoccupation with the “fiscal cliff” and what many advocates say is the sexist and racist exclusion of immigrant, indigenous, LGBT and other groups who would have benefited from new protections in S1925, the expanded VAWA reauthorization bill the Senate passed in April, 68-to-31.

All 15 Republican women senators voted for the bill, but House Republican leadership refused to allow a vote on it. The House GOP put forth their own version without the expanded provisions. VAWA, whose protections apply to women and men who are victims of domestic or dating violence, sexual violence and stalking, expired on January 2. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) is expected to reintroduce VAWA in 2013.

“I saw the writing on the wall a while ago,” said Mara Keisling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. That message has been scrawled in a number of political languages.

House Speaker John Boehner used a procedural technicality to stall a vote on the Senate’s reauthorization bill. When the House passed its own version in May, he appointed eight Republicans to a conference committee to reconcile the two bills. The problem was, the Senate had never agreed to convene for reconciliation talks.

Native leaders worked with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office on developing VAWA’s tribal provisions at least as recently as mid-December, but a December 20 letter from the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) revealed frustrations deep enough to cast doubt on whether Cantor’s office was collaborating in good faith.

Tribal leaders were seeking more power for tribal courts and tribal law enforcement to protect Native American women, whose only recourse when they are assaulted by non-Native men is to seek federal intervention - a process fraught with geographical, cultural and other barriers.

The NCAI letter to Cantor objected to a late draft of some of the tribal provisions, saying it “would bolster the ability of abusers to game the criminal justice system, the very problem we are now trying to solve.” It cited numerous jurisdictional and constitutional problems that apparently ignored or overlooked existing federal Indian law.

The House bill also included similarly regressive counterparts to the Senate’s expanded protections for immigrant women. “Their legislation would have immigration agents tipping off violent abusers when victims try to leave,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-California), a former rape crisis counselor, told Truthout.

Critics have blamed racism and sexism on the part of House GOP members for the Senate-passed VAWA’s demise. Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart on a recent talk show about threats to the tribal protections remarked, “It’s as if they’re protecting white men from prosecution.”

(vía randomactsofchaos)

An independent MP has called for a crackdown on firearms in Greece amid allegations that a growing number of politicians are carrying weapons.

Reports of pistol-carrying deputies entering parliament have added to the febrile mood in a 300-member chamber in which hardcore Marxists sit with fascists, eurocommunists, rightwing populists, conservatives, socialists and an array of independent dissidents.

The MP, Nikos Nikolopoulos, told the Guardian he was “deeply worried” by the dramatic rise in requests for weapons licenses by parliamentarians.

(vía pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

brosephstalin:

Sorry, college students. President Obama hascutyour access toPell Grantsby 33%; he just forgot to mention it before Election Day.

During the recent campaign,President Obama claimed credit for increasing funding to the Pell Grant program, which provides college funds, free from repayment, to millions of students. However, an email sent out Tuesday to some Dallas college students is revealing a detail the President forgot to mention: the time a student can receive a Pell Grant has been cut, by as much as three years. With Pell Grants for the fall semester now dispersed, colleges are informing students of their options, bringing the cuts to light.

The email, sent out by the Dallas County Community College District, informed students of the changes to the Pell Grant program. It revealed that the number of semesters a student could receive a Pell Grant had been cut from 18 semesters down to 12. It is a detail likely unknown to most students; in fact, the cut in grants has gone largely unreported by the media.

The email states that the cut in eligibility was part of an education bill President Obama signed into law in 2011. “On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-74). This new federal law states that the amount of Federal Pell Grant funds a student may receive over his or her LIFETIME will be reduced to the duration of a student’s eligibility from 18 semesters (or its equivalent) to 12 semesters (or its equivalent). This new law applies to ALL Federal Pell Grant eligible students effective with the 2012-2013 award year beginning July 1, 2012. (DCL-GEN-12-01)”

The cut in grant eligibility has serious ramifications for non-traditional students. Part-time students who do not receive a full semester grant may lose out on funds if they do not earn an undergraduate degree within 12 semesters. Adults who go back to school, including retraining for a new career, will also have limited access to grants.

(Read More)

This is fucking bullshit.

and I present you your savior, liberals.

(vía brosephstalin-deactivated201212)

(vía pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:

UK Prime Minister David Cameron says he would back offering President Bashar al-Assad safe passage out of Syria if it ended the bloodshed there.

(vía pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:

A new video from the Syria conflict that circulated via the Internet on Thursday showed antigovernment fighters armed with rifles kicking and summarily executing a group of prisoners, apparently soldiers or militiamen, in what human rights activists called evidence of a war crime and another indication that both sides were increasingly committing atrocities.

The video, which could not be authenticated independently but still attracted the attention of Amnesty International and other rights groups, appeared to have been made in Saraqeb, a town in Idlib Province in northern Syria that has been the scene of particularly brutal fighting between rebels and loyalists in the 20-month-old conflict.

In the video, 10 prisoners are shown being forced by their captors to lie next to or atop one another in what remained of a largely destroyed structure that may have been a military checkpoint. The antigovernment fighters, whose precise identity or affiliation were not clear, yell “Allah Akhbar!” or “God is great!” as they kick and herd the prisoners into a pile. Then they open fire.

[Read More]

(vía pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)