Aug
08
2013
Uprising’s Thursday guest expert Arun Gupta, Independent 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:
A group of 9 young undocumented immigrants raised in the US have won a major victory after being released from Eloy Detention Center in Arizona pending review of their asylum cases. The DREAM 9 as they were called, went to Mexico and attempted to legally cross back in to the US to draw attention to the plight of immigrants and force the government’s hand on some type of immigration reform.
New revelations on spying show the US government is data mining all email and text communications between Americans and foreigners. The New York Times spoke with an unnamed Senior intelligence official and broke the story this morning, showing that the NSA “is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other text-based communications that cross the border.” As legal justification, it is invoking the 2008 FISA Amendment Act.
The war in Syria continues unabated as reports have emerged this morning that anti-government rebels claim they attacked a Presidential motorcade. Syrian officials are denying there were any mortar attacks against President Bashar Al Assad’s vehicle. This comes on the heels of a government announcement that it had killed 60 rebels near Damascus yesterday, and an Amnesty International report on the war’s devastation in the city of Aleppo. The State Department just announced $195 million in additional humanitarian assistance to Syria amid the on-going violence.
And finally, today is the 1 month anniversary of the start of the California Prisoner hunger strike. Hundreds of prisoners reportedly remain on strike and several are in medically dangerous conditions. There are rallies in solidarity with the prisoners happening in Oakland and Los Angeles today. In LA, people are gathering at noon in front of the State Office Building at 300 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, CA.
