Sep 25 2014
Daily News Flash with Arun Gupta on the War on ISIS, Police Brutality in NY, OH, and CA, and FBI Report on Mass Shootings
Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta is our news expert. He’s a Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent, analyzes today’s news headlines:
For the third straight day, the US led air strikes against targets in Syria, this time aimed at oil refineries in the Eastern part of the country, controlled by Islamic State rebels. At the same time France carried out its second campaign of bombing against ISIS in Northern Iraq. A French tourist named Herve Gourdel was beheaded yesterday in Algeria by a group affiliated with ISIS. French President Francois Hollande vowed to not let the beheading deter him. Meanwhile, US President Obama yesterday at the United Nations Security Council meeting, pushed a resolution for all nations to criminalize joining groups like ISIS or recruiting members for them. Al Jazeera America cited “experts,” who claim that “12,000 fighters from more than 70 nations have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with extremist groups.” Click here for a Reuters article about the story, and here for a BBC article about the story.
The New York Police Department are in hot water once more with the surfacing of a new video showing them roughly tackling a 6 months pregnant woman named Sandra Amezquita, and possibly jeopardizing her pregnancy. And, a grand jury in Ohio has just declined to press charges against police for the fatal shooting of a young black man in a Walmart. The just-released surveillance video of the incident contradicts police claims that Crawford was waving an air rifle – which Walmart sells – at customers. Instead he was simply talking on his phone when he was shot and had no warning. Finally Marlene Pinnock, a 51 year old African American woman has received a $1.5 million settlement after being straddled and repeatedly punched in the face by a California Patrol highwayman. Click here for an RT.com article about Amezquita, here for a Guardian newspaper article about Crawford, and here for a Reuters article about Pinnock.
And finally a new report by the FBI confirms that mass shootings in the nation have risen dramatically in the past 6 years. Between 2007 and 2013 there were more than 16 mass shootings per year. In a majority of the incidents, shooters killed people too fast for police to react. The vast majority of the shootings were by men. Remarkably the FBI did not tally the race of the shooters. Click here for a New York Times article about the story.
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