Wednesday Toon Roundup 2- Voter Suppression

Wednesday Toon Roundup 1- Must it always be war?

Instead of releasing prisoners, Gov. Brown wants to send them to private prisons

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday responded to a federal court order to significantly reduce California's prison population by proposing a $315 million plan to send thousands of inmates to private prisons and vacant county jail cells, hoping to avoid what he said would be a mass release of dangerous felons.

The cost could reach $700 million over two years, with much of the money likely to come from a $1.1 billion reserve fund in the state budget.

During a news conference at the Capitol, Brown bristled at the court's suggestion that the state could continue its early release of certain inmates to meet the federal judges' population cap. He noted that California has already reduced the prison population by some 46,000 inmates to comply with the court's orders and said only the most dangerous convicts remain in state prison.

The judges have ordered the state to release an additional 9,600 inmates by the end of the year.

Brown, however, said sending them to available cells in privately run prisons within California and in other states, as well as to empty jail cells, is the best way to meet the court's mandate without endangering public safety.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/California-governor-proposes-315M-prison-fix-4765612.php

And the prison-industrial complex wins again! Wonder how much they contributed to moonbeam's campaign?

toon- Perpetual War Machine

Danziger Toon- How do you ask?

Mr Fish- Surgical Strike

Syrian Electronic Army takes down New York Times website

Source: RT

The New York Times’ website has been disabled for the second time in under a month, with the newspaper attributing the outage to a “malicious external attack” widely thought to have come from hackers affiliated with the Syrian Electronic Army.

“Many users are having difficulty accessing the New York Times online,” the paper wrote on its Facebook page. “We are working to fix the problem. Our initial assessment is the outage is most likely the result of a malicious external attack. In the meantime we are continuing to publish key news reports.”

The SEA, a shadowy group of hackers sympathetic to the Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has launched cyber-attacks on a number of media outlets in recent months including the associated Press’ Twitter feed, which falsely reported that US President Barack Obama was injured in an attack on the White House.

The Times’ page was last unavailable on August 14, although the several-hour outage was later blamed on “a failure during regular maintenance.”

more

http://rt.com/news/sea-hack-nyt-site-twitter-077/

Read more: http://rt.com/news/sea-hack-nyt-site-twitter-077/

WATCH: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s capitol police violently assault protester

by DeadState




Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is being criticized for what many see as excessive force by his capitol police towards protesters this Monday.

One incident that garnered attention is from a video where police can be seen grabbing an observer and violently throwing him to the ground — apparently because the man was filming them.

In the video, protesters were singing “If I Had a Hammer” when the police entered the rotunda. As the police moved towards the center, Damon Terrell was taking pictures of them while at the same time backing up to make sure he wasn’t in their way. Some brief words were exchanged between Terrell and the officers followed by the officers violently tackling Terrell and slamming him on the marble floor.

The video clearly shows that the attack was unprovoked.

Mission Accomplished! Oil hits 6 month high on war fears!

Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:37pm EDT
* West readying attack on Syria -sources

* Libya's oil production down by nearly 60 percent


By Anna Louie Sussman

NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Brent crude surged to a six-month high over $114 a barrel on Tuesday as Western powers considered a military strike against Syria following last week's suspected chemical weapons attack.

Both Brent and U.S. crude gained upwards of $3 a barrel as fears mounted that Western intervention could further destabilize the Middle East, which pumps a third of the world's oil.

Western officials told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad's forces within days, according to sources who attended a meeting between envoys and the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.

"As the rhetoric ratchets up around Syria the geopolitical risk premium in the price of oil is once again widening," Dominick Chirichella of Energy Management Institute said.

more

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/markets-oil-idUSL4N0GS0UD20130827

Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
12:00PM BST 27 Aug 2013

The revelations come amid high tension in the Middle East, with US, British, and French warship poised for missile strikes in Syria. Iran has threatened to retaliate.

The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $112 a barrel. “We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think,” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review.

Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides.

Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, allegedly confronted the Kremlin with a mix of inducements and threats in a bid to break the deadlock over Syria. “Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets,” he said at the four-hour meeting with Mr Putin. They met at Mr Putin’s dacha outside Moscow three weeks ago.

“We understand Russia’s great interest in the oil and gas in the Mediterranean from Israel to Cyprus. And we understand the importance of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe. We are not interested in competing with that. We can cooperate in this area,” he said, purporting to speak with the full backing of the US.

more

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html