Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be
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Be Careful. Do Not Make Excuses for Obama
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I believe that those who make apologies about Obama-- blaming his bad acts on his failure, weakness, incompetence or the Republicans are wrong. Obama is not weak and doesn't make mistakes. Michael Collins article, Captain Queeg Commands the Good Ship Obama? re-activated my thinking on Obama.
People on all sides are waking up. There is an opportunity NOW to push harder, to do get more aggressive, as Patrick Walker says in his article: Against Duopoly's "Twin Towers," Democracy's ONLY Defense Is Full-Court Press We're coming close to the end of the month and we're short about $2800 towards our budget goal of $4800. That's a tiny fraction of what most progressive media sites run on monthly. We need your help to make this work financially. Will you help us keep our work alive, going strong? Click here to donate today. thanks, rob kall   Daily Headlines
the final third of "The Snowden Adventure" is being played out--after he leaves his small capsule hotel room in Sheremetyevo airport's terminal E and embarks towards political asylum in Ecuador via Havana. WikiLeaks gleefully tweeting the key moments of the saga: "He is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks."
Before Snowden blew his whistle, President Obama had a full spectrum dominance anti-leak program in place. The details are chilling. McClatchy's Washington Bureau did a great job of breaking the story.
I believe that those who make apologies about Obama-- blaming his bad acts on his failure, weakness, incompetence or the Republicans are wrong. Obama is not weak and doesn't make mistakes. He intentionally, consciously betrays the middle class in the service of the bankers, the Robert Rubins of the world. He has repeatedly appointed corporate insiders-- from Monsanto, the big banks, Goldman Sachs-- the foxes in the henhouse
#IStandWithEdwardSnowden because free nations don't spy on and murder their citizens. Democracies don't terrorize sovereign nations and their peoples with torture, false imprisonment, and drone-based perma-war. It is time to stand up against the oil oligarchy's police state that is stifling social change required to achieve universal human rights, justice, equity, and global ecological sustainability.
By Debra Sweet
Indict the Criminals Responsible for Vast Government Spying -- Hands Off Edward Snowden 
WE DEFEND Edward Snowden for his courageous action in revealing vast, unlawful surveillance by the United States.
The TPP sells our right to self-govern to corporate forces. Negotiated for several years in secret; even members of Congress are threatened with prosecution if they dare inform the public.
When Glenn Greenwald appeared Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press to discuss his reporting on leaks detailing National Security Agency programs that monitor phone calls and digital communications, he was asked by host David Gregory whether he was the bad guy.
Although Kasrils embraced violence against the apartheid state, he is very hesitant about employing violence against the corporate state. But he sees oppression, if finally left unchecked, as justifying the use of force by the rebel. He quoted John F. Kennedy's dictum: "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
By Richard (RJ) Eskow
7 Institutions That Have Grown So Monstrously Big They Threaten to Destroy America 
Corporations, databases, storehouses of personal and institutional wealth all are expanding at ever-increasing speed, threatening to engulf our economy and our lives as they do. That's the problem with Big Things: Once they reached a certain size, they keep on getting bigger. When businesses become so large that competition's squeezed out, everybody suffers.
Are we as bad as they say we are? No longer the shining city on the hill? What happened? It's more complex than our critics think.
Karla Brada Mendez thought that she was getting a second chance when she started going to AA meetings. Instead she met Eric Allen Earle, an AA old-timer with a violent past.
Where do Bioidentical Hormones Come From? They were originated by Russell E Marker, a chemist who made progesterone from the plant steroid called Diosgenin.
By Abdus-Sattar Ghazali
Silicon Valley Has Long Had Ties to U.S. Military and Intelligence Agencies The Mercury News (CA) reported today that disclosures about a secret government intelligence effort called Prism have rocked some of Silicon Valley's leading Internet companies, but the program is hardly the first instance of U.S. military and intelligence officials turning to the tech industry for help.
By Gary Corseri
Quis Custodiet? "Who will watch the watchers?," the poet-satirist Juvenal wondered. "Who will guard the guards?"
Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister and head of the main coalition partner in the current government, has been found guilty of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abusing his office to cover it up. In a highly anticipated verdict at the end of a sensational trial that proved the nail in the coffin of the playboy politician's international reputation, a panel of three female judges sentenced the 76-year-old billionaire to seven years in jail and slapped him with a lifetime ban on holding public office.
The following is a transcript of the speech given by Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books, New York City, at the program "WE WILL NOT BE COMPLICIT" at Cooper Union in New York City on June 19, 2013, shortly after the revelations of massive U.S. government surveillance -- reprinted this morning on revcom.us. [[note links under word program & criminal are not in original - I can't remove.
By Tom Engelhardt
Chip Ward, Rewilding the West Here's a nifty trick that's been on my mind lately. In case you hadn't noticed, the weather news this season has been pretty grim. Tornados so large and destructive that they would have given Dorothy pause, 500-year European floods, massive rainstorms rolling across the land, record heat in California and Alaska, late snowfalls that boggle the imagination, wildfires that dwarf past ones in the American West.
In it's effort to launch a new religion, the Christian leadership created a false divide that historically drove Christians and Jews apart. By denying the Christian populace access to their Bible for many centuries Christians were unable to learn who Jesus really was: a dedicated practicing Jew. This understanding can foster reconciliation between the two faiths and a celebration of common ground.
Using an analogy derived from pro basketball, I point out that the "Twin Towers" of the Democratic and Republican parties have become such dominant, relentless players for their corporate owners against the "people's team" that only the political equivalent of a basketball full-court press--a mass movement like Occupy but with a political strategy can "get the ball out of their hands" and hope to defeat them.
Invading our privacy to keep us safe is voodoo communication, it is false. We must stop listening to the words of government and start looking at their actions.
The Fed may not always be able to boost the economy as much as it would like, but there is little doubt that it can slow growth and job creation by raising interest rates. If the Fed believes the unemployment rate cannot safely fall below a 5.5-6.0 percent range without generating inflation then it can ensure that unemployment will never fall enough to test this hypothesis.
I'm not fooling around when I say George A. Romero's flesh-eating zombie films are a perfect metaphor for our strange and terrible Modern Times. And I'm definitely not kidding when I say the only differences between zombies and devotees of Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews are diet and hygiene.
By David Sirota
10 Questions for NBC Host Who Shamelessly Suggested Greenwald Be Arrested for NSA Leaks 
Why do many media outlets still somehow portray the NSA surveillance programs as perfectly legal? Perhaps the most damning question of all: Why are so many media outlets far more interested in the minute details of Edward Snowden's life and location than in the potential crimes against millions of Americans that he exposed?
Turks protesting their government's power grab realize that their democratic experiment is in danger. Erdogan is going along with the agenda for a New World Order because it coincides with his Islamist agenda, but his actions have unleashed the power of the People.
A weekly update on our decline and fall as a society. This week features the original cyber spying program, ECHELON, real unemployment numbers, and Syria.
The central issue is our dire shortage of democracy. How can we have real consent of the governed when the government is entrenched with extreme secrecy, surveillance and contempt for privacy?
By Andrew Schmookler
Caring About What? Manifest Insincerity of the GOP on Abortion Some of the same Republicans who make a big issue of protecting the "unborn" have made it pretty clear this past week, by their indifference to the plight of already-born children, that their reason for pressing the issue of abortion must not be about any real concern about protecting "innocent life." I'm talking about their drive to gut the food stamp program that helps keep millions of children from going hungryl.
By David Swanson
The U.S. Has a Representative Government: The Conference of Mayors Congress can't break 10 percent approval. Obama's arms shipments to Syria just crack 10 percent, with 11 percent approval. Over 80 percent of Americans in more polls than I can count say over and over again that the government is broken and does not represent us. But when the mayors of the cities of the United States get together nationally one begins to see positions taken, at least rhetorically, that resemble democracy.
It's like the plot of a summer action-adventure flick: one exiled whistle-blower helping another escape the shadowy forces of an oppressive government that secretly collects data on all the citizens of the land for its own nefarious purposes. Except it isn't a movie.
Latest Articles
Penny Gerber's Natural Gas Seep
Penny Gerber, Vice-Chair of the PA Democratic Party opposes a state-wide moratorium on Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling. Gerber resides in Montgomery County where there is currently a 6-year moratorium for drilling on the South Newark Basin.
Is Alleged National Security Violator Snowden Alone or Are Federal Officials Similarly Vulnerable?
The news headlines read: Government Files Charges Against NSA Contract Leaker Edward Snowden, who recently fled his first foreign refuge, Hong Kong, to fly to Russia and search for another country willing to adopt him. So, where are the other headlines exclaiming: Government Sues or Charges Federal Officials with Invasion of Private Citizens' Communications?
Only after banks and the US auto industry come the utility companies as a poster children for corporate welfare. Delmarva Power is making yet another application to increase its delivery charges on top of the 40% rise in the past six years
Ed Snowden flew out of Hong Cong a day after the U.S. issued an extradition request to the Hong Cong gov't to send Snowden back to the U.S. to face espionage & theft charges. In light of the U.S. move Snowden requested asylum in Ecuador. He was scheduled to leave this AM for Havana but he was not onboard. Whether he remains incognito @ the Moscow airport terminal is still a mystery. But he had to act swiftly & leave Hong Cong.
Imagine if just a fraction of the creativity, time and energy we put into raising our kids was devoted to improving our country and planet. Now make it so through this 10-step plan.
In March I wrote the following summary of Michael Hastings' book The Operators. Because of Hastings' untimely death, and because Hastings sent email about an FBI probe hours before his death, the following summary may be of interest to the readers
 Best News Links from the Web
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday U.S. congressional leaders he briefed in 2004 on a surveillance program recently disclosed by leaker Edward Snowden supported it, and both Republicans and Democrats wanted to keep it secret. Cheney said he was directly involved in setting up the program, run by the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He said it has had "phenomenal results" in preventing terrorist attacks.
Rumor: Immigration bill would grant legal status to 'climate-change refugees'
Now this is more like it. Get the jump on the inevitable. I call it positive thinking. Studying how people survive in flood plains wouldn't hurt either...
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," NBC News host David Gregory conducted an informative and provocative interview with Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has broken much of the recent material on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance. Gregory asked, "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" After the argument, Greenwald tweeted: "Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?"
In this highly unstable situation of elites and masses that bankrupt capitalism has furnished, "democracy" can no longer be tolerated by the rulers. That is why the rulers have embarked on massive information gathering, monitoring, spying and surveillance. It is all about maintaining "control" of a precarious and explosive disequilibrium.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stayed mostly quiet about Edward Snowden's travel plans. But while Assange refused to comment on Snowden's whereabouts ("he is in a safe place and his spirits are high"), he still managed to make news by implying that the NSA leaker may have turned over the four laptops he left Hawaii with to one or more media outlets. According to the Guardian, those laptops may contain access to "some of the US government's most highly-classified secrets."
Sexual assault has emerged as one of the defining issues for the military this year. Reports of assaults are up, as are questions about whether commanders have taken the problem seriously. Bills to toughen penalties and prosecution have been introduced in Congress. Women, who represent about 15 percent of the force, are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than men, experts say assaults against men have been vastly under-reported. For that reason, the majority of formal complaints of military sexual assault have been filed by women, even though the majority of victims are thought to be men.
Our ability to govern ourselves is being brought low by a witches' brew of right-wing ideology, a shockingly cruel attitude toward the poor on the part of the Republican majority, and the speaker's incoherence when it comes to his need for Democratic votes to pass bills. Boehner can't have it both ways, and he should be called out if he lets his party's disarray throw the nation into an entirely unnecessary debt-ceiling crisis this fall. The country shouldn't be held hostage because of Republican chaos.
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