FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as "the most gagged person in the history of the United States" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Was the Sunday Times pressured to drop its investigation into her revelations? A whistleblower has revealed extraordinary information on the U.S. government’s support for international terrorist networks and organised crime...
When a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group started airing ads for expanded oil drilling and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, CREDO Action decided to post an ad of their own calling Zuckerberg out — on Facebook. This morning, Facebook rejected CREDO’s Facebook ad (pictured right). According to CREDO Action, Facebook initially informed them...
News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning , widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued , the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quick
CISPA is all but dead, again. The controversial cybersecurity bill known as the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week, will almost certainly be shelved by the Senate, according to a representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The bill would have allowed the federal government to share...
In the wake of Thatcher’s departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby’s daughter, Marie, was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although...
New Iraq WMD “Curveball-Style” Accusation against Syria, Giving Russia a Way Out & the Evacuation of Additional Russian-Caucasus Citizens from Syria During my April 22 interview for Boiling Frogs Post EyeOpener Report (See here
In most state legislatures today, "off the wall" has become the political center, and bizarre bills are no longer unusual. Still, it seems strange that legislators in so many states — including Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Vermont — have simultaneously been pushing "ag-gag" bills that are not merely outrageous, but downright...
News reports purporting to describe what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told US interrogators should, for several reasons, be taken with a huge grain of salt. The sources for this information are anonymous, they work for the US government, the statements were obtained with no lawyer present and no Miranda warnings given, and Tsarnaev is "grievously wounded" , presumably quite medicated, and...
The New York Times this morning deserves credit for publishing one of the most powerful Op-Eds you will ever read . I urge you to read it in its entirety: it's by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni national who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo without charges of any kind for more than 11 years . He's one of the detainees participating in the escalating hunger strike to...
The solar era has begun: the industry is booming, prices are dropping, and solar energy at last seems poised to help topple the climate-altering dominance of fossil fuels. But bringing it to the masses won’t be as simple as just soaking up the sun. To gain a better picture of the challenges to come—and of some possible solutions—electric companies and solar developers...
Elections have become auctions, and nearly every issue is paralyzed by the overwhelming influence of money. But you knew that. The real challenge is how to fix what has become one of our nation's most pressing political challenges. If you're hoping our leaders will prioritize this issue, you'll be disappointed. Look to the website of President Obama's new advocacy group...
According to a report yesterday in Bloomberg Businessweek, former 2012 Republican Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were very close to forming a “Unity Ticket” back in February of 2012, in an effort to knock Mitt Romney out of nomination contention. After Santorum claimed the Iowa caucus and three other primaries in early February, the talk of forming a...
The way The Telegraph and some other media houses in Kolkata are manipulating the public opinion on behalf of the big pocketed lobbyists, it's becoming more obvious than ever. When someone speaks of media manipulation, they can mean both manipulation by the media and manipulation OF the media (by business lobbies/politicians/self-serving interest groups etc.) Manipulation of the media does...
According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars’ worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation. Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home?...
Despite impressive green economic growth during this country’s job-challenged recovery, particularly in the wind energy sector, the conservative right is systematically seeking to reverse this trend by repealing state-mandated renewable energy targets, even if many of the states that stand to lose jobs and economic opportunity lean red. Right-wing groups funded by the fossil-fuel...
TRAVELING IS A GREAT WAY to learn about other cultures and ways of thinking. While most of our encounters with a host country’s legal system usually revolve around visas and Customs offices, there is a much broader and underlying set of laws that guides the flow of daily routines and reflects a people’s values and beliefs.
In 1888, at the height of the Gilded Age, a rather prominent American said some startling things. First he observes: Our cities are the abiding places of wealth and luxury; our manufactories yield fortunes never dreamed of by the fathers of the Republic; our business men are madly striving in the race for riches, and immense aggregations of capital outrun the imagination in the...
The word “libertarian” is becoming an increasingly popular descriptor of political ideology in the US, though many in the US incorrectly associate libertarianism only with the capitalist Libertarian Party. Historically libertarianism was a term used most commonly by anti-authoritarian socialists to describe their political philosophy. In fact, in most countries the term is...
Being a libertarian means opposing the use of force to restrain peaceful, voluntary exchange. That doesn’t mean it should be understood as involving support for capitalism. Whether this claim makes any sense at all depends, of course, on what you mean by “capitalism.” For some people, perhaps, the term just refers to free exchange. And if that’s all you intend when...
A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work (Part 1) Last year in Lansing, Michigan, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union leadership fought a pitched battle with the Lansing City Council to push capitalist real estate developers to use union labor. When discussing the fight, Joe Davis, the union representative, proclaimed, “It’s important to...
From its very beginning, gun control — the attempt to regulate the possession of means of self-defense by the ordinary populace — has been closely associated with class rule and the class state. In early modern England, regulation of firearm ownership was closely intertwined with the struggle by the landed classes and capitalist agriculture to restrict the laboring...
Left-libertarians differ from the (current) libertarian mainstream both in terms of what outcomes they regard as desirable , and in terms of what outcomes they think a freed market is
Dear Progressives, With President Obama’s second term underway and huge decisions looming on Capitol Hill, consider this statement from Howard Zinn: “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.”
PARK CITY, Utah—As President Barack Obama prepared to be sworn in for his second term as the 44th president of the United States, two courageous journalists premiered a documentary at the annual Sundance Film Festival. “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” reaffirms the critical role played by independent journalists like the film’s director, Rick Rowley, and its...
What’s the greatest way to dishonor Martin Luther King Jr .? Compare him with US President Barack Obama – a servant of an engine for the greatest disparity, inequality, and injustice on Earth – driven by the very corporate-financier interests King stood up against, was opposed by throughout his entire life, and most likely was killed by. For Ma
Leaders must aim to bring down global inequality at least to 1990 levels. An explosion in extreme wealth and income is exacerbating inequality and hindering the world’s ability to tackle poverty, Oxfam warned today in a briefing published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week. The $240 billion net income in 2012 of the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to...
Amidst the White House and congressional theatrics surrounding the so-called fiscal-cliff negotiations, a number of bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama that renew some of the worst excesses of the Bush years. Largely ignored by the media, these laws further entrench odious policies like indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and the continued operation of the U.S. gulag...
Agreement was widely shared across the progressive community on Wednesday that the deal reached in Washington in the first twenty-four hours of 2013 fell well short of what might have been possible had President Obama simply held strong to the leverage provided to him by a Republican Party hell bent on preserving lower taxes for the nation's wealthiest while simultaneously clamoring for cuts...
I give a little chuckle each time I hear one label the New World Order a push toward world socialism- if only such were the case. The New World Order is a dangerous conclave of far right mad men who wish to see but two classes of people in the world - the haves and the heave-nots. Theirs is a game to instate neo-feudalism, and with so many countries now going bankrupt and most of the...
I know we’re not supposed to say such things, but I have lost faith in national politics. Yes, I’ll [continue to vote in] elections and do my part to get the less sold-out, less anti-communitarian candidate in office. But I no longer look to the top tier of centralized government to solve our problems or help us grope toward conclusions together. For me, big government has become...
Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) said Monday that he will put mega-retailer Walmart squarely in his sights during the next Congress for the company’s liberal use of public assistance programs to supplement their workers’ wages. Speaking to Current TV host Cenk Uygur on Monday’s episode of “The Young Turks,” Grayson called Walmart “the largest...
Ten years ago, I spent my 21 st birthday in Palestine. It was a fairly perfect scenario. In the UK, you traditionally reach adulthood at 21. You are presented with a symbolic key. I was presented with a shocking realisation: what I saw on the news was not true. What I read in the papers was not true. There was a disgraceful sociocide happening in the world and I would not have...
At his official post-election press conference, President Obama told reporters that he's serious about fighting climate change while creating jobs. "We can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader," he said, "I think that's something that the American people would support." We have just the answer...
THEY SAY WHEN all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But when you are a politician and all you have is a hammer, you must convince voters every problem looks like a nail. This is the only thinking that can explain Israel's behavior in escalating bombardment of Gaza. The Israeli spin machines are out in full force in the hopes of convincing Israelis and the rest of the world...
“Obama is the more effective austerity president – if the Republicans will just let him work his show.” “Get Away Sandy – God and Obama Will Save Us” read the graffiti, scrawled man-high on a cinderblock wall in the majority Black town of Plainfield, New Jersey. It is an apt articulation of African American politics as we descend into the First Black...
Yes, election night was a heck of a party and it’s great that the really bad guys lost. Karl Rove and his reactionary ilk were defeated by a new American majority that is younger, more tolerant, rainbow colored and multilingual and one in which women now trump the depressing ignorance of so many older white men. But morning in America already feels too much like a hangover. The house is...
Throughout this long, crazy campaign, there’s been a tension simmering between empiricists like Nate Silver and Sam Wang , who cited poll data showing Obama with a small but durable lead, and pundits who trusted their “guts” and the “narrative,” both of which indicated that Romney had all the momentum after the first debate. In the face of model projections...
Sandy has blown climate change back on the agenda – and many believe the White House was wrong when it decided in 2009 that climate change was not a winning political message [as opposed to the opportunity of the clean energy economy]. Barack Obama: a 2009 off-the-record event marked a strategic decision by the White House to downplay climate change. (Photograph...
I live in a purple part of the country (Virginia) and move in academic circles, so of course I know many, many people who will be voting for Obama. It is impossible to know, but if I sodomized the Easter Bunny in front of their children the look on my Obama-voter friends’ faces could scarcely be much different than the look they get when I say I am voting for Jill Stein. “But...
In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits. In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity...
Barack Obama has been called everything from a gun-hating, closet-Muslim hiding socialist to a big-government loving, deficit exploding , tax increasing, class-warfare waging liberal elitist. He's been compared to Hitler and denounced for wanting to destroy capitalism and/or America. He pals around with terrorists . They say he wasn't born in America and secretly hates white people...
Progressive hero Daniel Ellsberg wrote a statement, published on numerous sites, urging Obama-disaffected left/liberal/progressives who live in swing states to vote for Obama's reelection. He declares it "urgently important" for Romney to be defeated. Despite this plea, Ellsberg takes offense at being seen as "supporting Obama.” “I lose no opportunity publicly,&rdquo...
It is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013. The election is now just weeks away, and I want to urge those whose values are generally in line with mine -- progressives, especially activists -- to make this goal one of your priorities during this period. Romney and Obama exchange fingers in Tuesday night's debate...
Scott Noble is the director of several acclaimed and politically charged documentaries, including Psywar, Human Resources and Lifting the Veil. His documentary on Occupy Wall Street, Rise Like Lions, took the #1 spot on Films for Action’s Top Ten Occupy films. His latest, The Power Principle, takes on the American empire, with emphasis on the Cold War period. We sent him a few questions...
The first two U.S. presidential debates have been painful to watch. Both candidates are running on platforms constructed from verbal hallucinations about the nation’s past, present, and future. And the American people are being asked to choose between those hallucinations in order to select the best available scapegoat for the next four years of national economic decline. The race is...
democracynow on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free As President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney square off in the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3, Democracy N
I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it -- seeing if there’s a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza." Recently, on the Matthew Filipowicz Show, I had the privilege of speaking to Professor Noam Chomsky at his MIT office. We discussed many aspects of activism including how he felt activists and progressives should approach...
Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along. Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But...
“ Indeed, I asked myself, how could this happen, how could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction.” – Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State [ 1 ] The recent armed attack on a lightly defended United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens is an alarming...
"Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason." - José Maria de Eça de Queiroz "There is no such thing as not voting; you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote." - David Foster Wallace "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." ...