Sep 18 2014
Daily News Flash with Arun Gupta on House Vote For ISIS War Plan, Border Patrol’s Plan To Wear Cameras, and Rolling Jubilee Strikes $4 m of Debt
Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, 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:
The US House of Representatives has voted to approve President Obama’s plan to provide weapons and training to Syrian rebel groups. In a vote of 273-to-156, the GOP dominated House passed the measure after the Obama Administration reached out to its opposition party for support. Many Democrats railed against the plan, which is an amendment to a spending bill. California’s Barbara Lee, who opposed the bill asked, “How will we ensure that the … weapons we are providing to Syrian rebels will not get into the wrong hands, as they did with the rebels we supported in Libya?” There is no funding yet attached to plan. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill today before being signed into law by Obama. Click here for an Al Jazeera America article about the story.
Members of the US Border Patrol may be deployed with cameras soon, in an effort to increase transparency of their conduct at the border. At a secret meeting this week, it was reported by AP that discussion ensued over a months-long testing phase for cameras before any possible deployment in the field. If adopted, the move would mirror a similar discussion over law enforcement officers using body-worn cameras to quell questions of police brutality. The union representing a majority of Border Patrol officers, the National Border Patrol Council, opposes the use of cameras. Click here for an ABC News article about the story.
Finally, a group that emerged from the Occupy Wall Street movement, called Rolling Jubilee has announced that it’s Strike Debt campaign just canceled almost $4 million in student loans from for-profit institutions. The idea behind Strike Debt was to buy up debt from lending institutions just like a collection agency would, for pennies on the dollar. Then, instead of collecting, the debt would simply be canceled. After Sallie Mae, the company that handles public university loans, refused to sell to Rolling Jubilee, the group took aim at private school loans, in particular, Corinthian Colleges. Coincidentally, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week launched a major lawsuit against Corinthian to the tune of $500,000 for what it calls “illegal predatory lending.” Click here for a Think Progress article about the story.
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