Challenging the Democratic party’s corporate allegiance

Florida congresswoman and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an oligarch-friendly party hack who is adept at spouting faux-progressive rhetoric, is for the first time facing a strong primary challenge in her congressional district from a real progressive Tim Canova. His challenge has prompted an unusual action from president Obama, who normally does not get involved in primary races, and he endorsed her. But that seemed to have given a boost to Canova’s fundraising.
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What Bernie Sanders said about Panama in 2011

The program Democracy Now! had an interview about the Panama Papers with Michael Hudson, senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which published the Panama Papers, and Frederik Obermaier, investigative reporter at Germany’s leading newspaper, the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung that first received the papers from the secret source.
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The Democratic party’s undemocratic superdelegate system

Today the state of Wisconsin holds its primary elections which, on the Republican side, has 42 delegates up for grabs in a ‘winner-take-all’ system (actually, the winner of each of the state’s eight Congressional district gets 3 delegates, while the winner of the whole state gets 18) while the Democrats have 86 delegates to be elected on a proportional basis, plus 10 superdelegates. Both primaries are open. The total number of possible Democratic delegates is 4,763 of which 4,051 are elected and 712 are superdelegates (there is a slight disagreement about the exact number). Hillary Clinton has won 1,243 of the elected delegates so far while Sanders has won 980. But Clinton has a huge lead among the unelected superdelegates, 469 to 31. The strength of the campaign of Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side has prompted closer scrutiny of their entire superdelegate system.
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Important Supreme Court ruling on voting rights

The US Supreme Court issued an important unanimous 8-0 ruling today in a case involving voting rights. States are required to draw electoral districts that have roughly equal numbers of people. The question is whether the ‘people’ who count should be every resident (even those who cannot vote) or just eligible voters. The former has been the universal practice, since the argument has been that government serves everyone, voters and non-voters alike.
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The latest massive leak: The Panama Papers

News reports are emerging of the massive leak of documents (2.6 terabytes in size) from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that provided off shore tax havens for wealthy people. The leak was originally given to a German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. An anonymous person approached the newspaper and said that he would provide them this massive trove of documents. The source did not want anything in return, financial or otherwise, but demanded that it all be done over encrypted channels because of the danger to his/her life, and that s/he would leave it up to them to decide what should be published. The manner of the leak is remarkably similar to that of Edward Snowden and it seems clear that the new leaker had followed his example.
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Paying people to create faux ‘grass roots’ support for Israeli policies

The increasing support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement has caused great concern with the Israeli government and they have resorted to something called ‘hasbara’, where people receive training in propaganda on how to derail discussions that they think are critical of Israeli policies. Jonathan Cook explains what hasbara involves and why it will not work.
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