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Gov. Scott Walker became a hero in some conservative circles for helping pass laws that crushed collective bargaining rights for most public workers.

Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled yesterday that the  law violates both the state and U.S. Constitution by prohibiting constitutionally guaranteed rights of association and free speech. The ruling is good news to the public teachers and government employees affected by the new law.

Gov. Walker has accused Judge Colas of being a “liberal  activist.” The Governor has promised to appeal the verdict.

To read more, click here:

http://www.wisn.com/politics/wisconsin-politics/Judge-strikes-down-collective-bargaining-law/-/10057500/16610386/-/y3i5lhz/-/index.html#ixzz26YSZDKm7

http://www.wisn.com/politics/wisconsin-politics/Judge-strikes-down-collective-bargaining-law/-/10057500/16610386/-/y3i5lhz/-/index.html

No sane person would defend the attack on the embassy in Libya. It was a hideous act. But, in the aftermath of that terrible deed, and the murder of our ambassador, we can expect a return to the reoccurring theme that Islam is a religion of violence.  Missing in that narrative will be the little detail that we have been bombing that country for some time which creates its own craziness. Missing in that narrative will be the fact only 7 of the 57 Muslim nations have responded violently to the film mocking Mohammad. Or that all of those countries where violence has occurred have been a living hell for some time.

When we tell the stories of Muslim violence, we do not include anything about having their land stolen, or having puppet dictators imposed by the West, or having their natural resources pilfered while the people languish. Instead we let the actions of a small group of extremists speak for the masses. The amazing thing is how peacefully most of Islam has dealt with Western exploitation.

No objective person would use the KKK to represent Christianity, although many hate groups identify themselves as representing Christ. In the same way, no objective person would saddle Islam, which is one fifth of the world’s populations, with the violent deeds of hate groups living in their midst.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-215_162-57513402/beyond-religion-getting-to-the-heart-of-the-violence/

When one lives in a capitalist culture where everything is for sale, one get used to privatization. For some, money is the only motive, so when looking to save money on prisons, such thinking gave birth to the abomination of private prisons. At that point, the fate of prisoners was in the invisible hand of the market, which profited by refusing them parole and gained nothing by rehabilitatng them.

Not surprisingly, private prisons and detention centers for immigrants are hot beds for prisoner abuse, sexual assault and mysterious deaths.

Now, one private prison company is moving into mental health care. GEO Care now has mental health hospitals in Texas, Florida and South Carolina.

The Austin Statesman reported:

“A series of health and safety and compliance reviews by the Texas Department of State Health Services found GEO Care’s Montgomery facility rife with patient neglect, forced seclusion, denial of access to phones and family visits and administering of medication without patient consent.”

According to the AP:

Three gruesome deaths at the privately run South Florida State Hospital triggered an investigation that revealed concerns that employees were overmedicating patients and failed to call the state abuse hotline after a patient died in a scalding bathtub, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The article below makes the point that Texas is already spending lesst per capita on mental health services of any other state in the nation. But like anyone brainwashed by the profit motive, moving to privatization will save us even more. And because our victims will be behind walls, we won’t even have to look them in the face.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/09/the_state_of_texas_is.html

My heroes are not the masters of violence, but the masters of peace. Those who make war have magnificent monuments built to them, most makers of peace come and go almost unnoticed.

J. Christopher Stevens was the ambassador murdered in Libya earlier this week. Like many diplomats he strove to communicate and understand those people with whom there is misunderstanding. Ambassador Stevens saw the dangers in Libya, but also saw an opportunity to bring the rule of law to that beleaguered nation.

As US warships move toward Libya in a show of strength, one of his friends noted:

“Just as the U.S. should not be blamed for the offensive film of a few deluded whackos, Libya should not be blamed for the unjustified violence of a few ignorant extremists,” Abrahams said in an email Thursday. “And maybe this will spur the Libyan government to rein in the militias that have troubled Libya since Gaddafi’s fall — Chris would have wanted that.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-rohde/2012/09/13/honoring-a-slain-ambassador/

Thank goodness someone in Washington noticed that we have a constitution, and believes it has implications about how we treat our prisoners. This ruling could force President Obama to reconsider his support of President Bush’s policies on this matter. Judge Katherine Forrest had issued a preliminary injunction against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). On Wednesday that verdict was made permanent, meaning that the NDAA cannot be used as an excuse to hold prisoners without charge or for indefinite periods of time.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who uncovered US misdeeds during the Iraq war, was one of the plaintiffs. For some, “patriotism” is not questioning or criticizing one’s country. For other, “patriotism” is calling one’s nation to live up to its ideals.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/13-4

Human Rights Watch has discovered that children in eastern North Carolina as young as 14 are picking tobacco. Other reports claim that children maybe working as young as 9. \

“Fifteen-year-old “Elena” is typical. She would get up at 3 a.m. to make lunches, she said, then go up and down the rows removing flowers from tobacco plants for 12 or more hours a day. “It smells of chemicals and it gives you a headache,” she told me. “Sometimes I feel like vomiting… We can’t get sick because then we can’t work.”

“Elena’s sickness may have been more than an inconvenience. A 17-year-old tobacco worker told me: “They sprayed the field next to us yesterday. My head hurt. I could smell it, it blew. We kept working. People say this can hurt you. I’m a little, a little worried about it.” Children, whose bodies are still developing, are uniquely vulnerable to chemicals and may absorb pesticides more easily than adults. Long-term pesticide exposure is associated with cancer, brain damage, and reproductive problems.”

We must never forget that the regulations upon big businesses came at a tremendous toll. Worker protections like the eight hour day and children’s labor laws took lifetimes to obtain. Those protections, or what opponents call “regulations,” can be unravelled in one political cycle. There are those among the rich will never rest until those protections are undone and they can exploit workers with no constraints. The rest of us must keep vigil as well on behalf those who

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/05/hidden-victims-tobacco

It’s not the kind of story that will get much coverage, especially on the anniversary of 9-11. A young Yemeni man has died in captivity at Guantanamo. The man was not only denied a trial, he was not even charged with a crime. He had been handed over by Pakistani soldiers 11 years ago. That act, was enough to make the US assume his guilt and leave him without recourse.

A US federal judge ruled In July 2010 that the man’s detention was unlawful, and that he should be released. The Obama administration appealed and the ruling was overturned. His lawyer quoted the man as saying, “I am a prisoner of death”.

Amnesty International is asking the Obama administration for some kind of due process for the remaining 167 men at Guantanamo base. They are not asking for the guilty to be set free, simply that all the prisoners face receive a fair trail in the name of the democracy we say we are protecting.

“Once and for all, the US military must bring the human rights vacuum at Guantanamo to an end – the detainees must be brought to fair trial in independent courts or released and trials by military commission should be abandoned,” said Rob Freer, Amnesty International’s USA Researcher.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-guant-namo-death-highlights-urgent-need-end-indefinite-detention-2012-09-12

Much attention has been spent on super PACS and the danger they pose to fair elections, but Propublica.org has filed a report on another threat that usually goes unreported: nonprofit groups that can funnel huge amounts of money into campaigns without having to report where the money came from.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare

When we aren’t in communion with another group of people, our imagination still forms images about them. Those mythologies have more to do with our own fear than with the actual human beings we fear. Many of us in the West have gotten so used to seeing Arabs and Muslims used as villains in movies that we the word “Muslim” triggers sinister associations. Even newscasters put the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” in the same sentence so many times that we become hypnotized to link those images together. What follows is one person’s list of mythologies the West has developed about people who are Muslim.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-saunders/10-myths-about-muslims-in_b_1864589.html?ir=Religion&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

If you follow the link you will find an artist’s rendition a recent discovery of a new star and its planet-forming cloud being pulled towards the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. I did not know that our own black hole has a name “Sagittarius A.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19558443