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Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan, a sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

A 30 year old man from Rochester, New York, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for several charges related to recruiting and arming the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mufid Elfgeeh was arrested in May after his interactions with FBI informants. The news comes at the same time as ISIS released an inflammatory new video called Flames of War which employs the format of a dramatic film trailer and threatens to attack US troops and the White House. Meanwhile, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey told a Senate committee yesterday that ground troops may eventually be needed in the US fight against ISIS. The US Congress is planning on voting to approve President Obama’s strategy of targeted air strikes. Click here for an Al Jazeera America article, here for a Guardian newspaper article, and here for an LA Times article about the story.

US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced a multi-year, multi-city investigation into racial bias among law enforcement officers in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. A team of researchers has been picked to do the study in 5 as-yet-unnamed cities. Holder, the nation’s first black Attorney General, said, “Studies show that if people think that they are treated fairly by the police, that matters almost more than what the result is.” In the past few days alone, African American actress Daniele Watts was stopped by police on suspicion of being a prostitute in Studio City, LA, while Darrien Hunt, a 22 year old young black man in Utah was fatally shot, allegedly in the back, by police. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.

While there has been much focus on poor labor conditions in China’s Apple factories, a new report this week funded by the US Labor Department has found widespread prevalence of forced labor in Malaysia’s electronics factories. The industry employs about 350,000 workers, and one-third of them are affected. The group which conducted the 2-year study, Verité, wrote, “Virtually every device on the market today may have come in contact with modern-day slavery.” Malaysia is considered a “middle income” nation, expected to have higher labor standards. Click here for an Al Jazeera America article about the story, and here to read the actual study.