Articles Posted by FCJ Editor
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Rabbi Lerner Calls for Increased International Pressure
to Overthrow Syrian RegimeBoycotts are more effective when there is a functioning democracy in a given state; but when people have no recourse but demonstrations in the streets, the best we can do is to provide assistance to the demonstrators in any way we can, while simultaneously urging them to provide assurances to the Alawite minority that the regime they seek to set up in place of the current dictator will be one which respects minority rights (a message that the Kurds of northeastern Syria must already believe, else why would they risk their lives, as they have, to join the anti-Assad demonstrations). If Alawites could be assured that the democratic regime aspired to by the protestors would in fact be safe for minorities, they’d be more willing to abandon the dictatorial rule they support in part out of fear of the alternatives.
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Good Government Measure Qualifies for June 2012 Ballot
Proponents and volunteers gathered 12,869 signatures in less than five weeks to qualify the initiative, despite operatives from Recology – the holder of the City’s highly lucrative garbage collection monopoly – deploying an expensive media campaign on both network and cable TV and funding a series of allegedly illegal actions to intimidate petition workers, harass petition signers, and buy or steal petition booklets.
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Waves of Protest Pound at BART, Shutting Down Stations
What started as a fizzled anti-police brutality protest at BART’s Civic Center station has spiraled into a San Francisco moment with echoes of the Arab Spring and V For Vendetta. Following an unprecedented decision by BART officials to preemptively cut off cell phone service on August 11, in a bid to disrupt a protest that never developed, public outrage led to further protest today and a hacking attack on MyBart.org by the notorious international hacker group Anonymous over the weekend.
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Filling Prison Beds for Profit
At year-end 2010, America’s prison population topped 2.4 million, including federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US territories, and numbers held by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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Excluded From SFPOA Mayoral Forum, Tony Hall Releases Statement
Tomorrow there is to be a mayoral ‘forum’ held by the San Francisco Police Officers Association and moderated by a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. I inquired of the SFPOA’s leadership why I was not invited, and I was told specifically that it was because of my stance calling for stronger pension reform. I asked them to reconsider their position and I have not yet heard back. That is answer enough for me to issue this statement.
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This is currently a hot topic
Is Ed Lee Beginning to Look Like a Typical Lying Politician?
If Mr. Lee is now contemplating a run and enters the race, he will be fairly judged to be another typical lying politician whose words cannot be trusted and, therefore, is not fit for public office.
The good will Mr. Lee has engendered thus far would immediately evaporate. The Board would no longer trust him. The electorate would understand him to be a fraud and all the mayoral contenders who entered the mayor’s race on the understanding that Lee would remain true to his word, would be well within their rights to expose him as a continuation of corruption at City Hall.
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Board to Vote Today
on Wiener Ballot Measure Reform Proposal“San Francisco’s ballot measure system, like California’s as a whole, is broken,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, the measure’s sponsor. “Currently, we have too many ballot measures. And, once the voters pass these measures, they effectively become frozen and almost impossible to change even when it makes sense to do so. This good-government measure is a first step in making our system of ballot propositions more balanced.”
The Hunger Site
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