Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 25 July 2013

Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be
  • Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth
  • Tea Party, Progressives and Libertarians Attempt to Block NSA's Prism Fails by Small Margin
  • Obama's Willing Executioners of the Fourth Amendment
If you have a problem reading this email, please click here to see the web page version
You received this email because you signed up for it at OpEdNews. Unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of this email.

The support by Republican leadership of Obama's opposition to an amendment supporting the fourth Amendment shows how little difference there is between Obama, the Republicans and the centrist Democrats.
Where do you go for non-partisan progressive news, that stands up to power, including purported progressives? Opednews.com is the answer. 
Please support our work. Click here.
rob kall
Support Opednews. Make a tax deductible donation to make OEN Strong.
Like OpEdNews on FaceBook
 Daily Headlines


Polls from all over the world consistently show that Israel and the US are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace and to life on earth. Yet, these two utterly lawless governments prance around pretending to be the "world's greatest democracies." Neither government accepts any accountability whatsoever to international law, to human rights, to the Geneva Conventions, or to their own statutory law.

The amendment, offered by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, truly demonstrated how little difference there is between Democratic and Republican leadership. It also showed how Edward Snowden's revelations not only made a difference, but showed how strong the support for his take on the wrongness of the NSA spying is.
All three branches of the U.S. government are now largely under the control of forces with stunning contempt for basic legal processes required by the Bill of Rights. Mere words and mild reforms from members of Congress may mollify the gullible, but only a direct challenge to the Obama administration's policies can rise to the level of the current historic imperative to restore civil liberties in the United States.

Congolese Army (FARDC) helicopter gunships, piloted by Ukrainian soldiers from high altitudes, inflicted heavy civilian casualties near the village of Rumangabo in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday.
By Philip Giraldi
The Lobby Never Sleeps
When it comes to actual war and peace, those of us who have been preoccupied by the crises in Egypt and Syria would be well served by taking another look at what Israel has been up to. Settlements are expanding and still more Arabs are being dispossessed, making peace all but impossible.
From the right, Detroit is being cited in the discussion about budget shortfalls as proof of the need for austerity. Yet, we aren't hearing much about why in the face of such shortfalls Gov. Snyder just devoted $1.7 billion to a new corporate tax cut that will likely exacerbate the state's deficit, nor are we hearing much about why state law compelled Detroit to forfeit other desperately needed tax revenues.
Right-wing Republicans in Congress are plotting to cripple the U.S. government if Barack Obama, the first African-American president, doesn't submit to their demands. The battle pretends to be over the size of government but it echoes the whips, chains and epithets of America's racist past.
By John Whitehead
Kafka's America: Secret Courts, Secret Laws, and Total Surveillance
In a bizarre and ludicrous attempt at "transparency," the Obama administration has announced that it asked a secret court to approve a secret order to allow the government to keep spying on millions of Americans, and the secret court has granted its request.
Similarities of the Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin cases. Potential steps needed to change the tone in Florida.

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's whistleblowing has led to a major House vote being scheduled on an amendment that addresses unchecked NSA surveillance.
By People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
News flash: Vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters
If you're searching for the Fountain of Youth, you may want to start by looking at what's on your plate. According to a new study, vegetarians live longer.
Where are all the compassionate grandmothers instead of the materialistic women? We need grandmothers now more than ever.

By Franklin Lamb
Livni Squeals, Kerry Deals and the EU Picks Up the Tab
Ms. Livni demanded three things from Kerry as the "price tag' of the Israeli government going thru the motions of appearing to be willing to resume negotiations and to state publicly that Israel will consider some sort of slow-down or temporary "time-out' for the frenzied construction project on the West Bank.
By Yvona Fast
ADA Anniversary: We've come a long way, but there's more work to do
what has been accomplished since the passage of the ADA, and what still needs to be done.
As in the Middle Ages, indulgences entail the promise of some vague level of less torture after you die, unless of course you find yourself sentenced to hell. Then you are doomed to unspeakable, eternal miseries beyond imagining. Indulgences do no good for the souls cast into the ghastly holocaust of holocausts. Details are not available as to how much less burning in Purgatorial flames is associated with most indulgences.

The history of infidelity and sexual indiscretions show that redemption and forgiveness often prevail, especially if followed by good deeds and control of the "restless penis syndrome." With the latest revelations, Anthony Weiner has violated the control factor making his fate uncertain.
By David Glenn Cox
A Shadow World
What are a people supposed to do, where are they supposed to go, when unable to afford even the simple basic necessities of life? Nearly 32 million Americans priced out of their own society and country by Neo-liberal economics. All nations have faced hard economic times, that part is understandable. Only, for the first time in modern human history the government's response to the crisis has been to close the door
When do "all enemies, foreign and domestic" encompass agents of disruption who won't "faithfully discharge the duties of office," nor respect the legitimacy of the legislative and executive branches? How long can the Union survive with dissension from internal guerrilla war?
By Seymour Patterson
Not having Health Insurance Coverage is Risky Business
Many Americans have no health insurance. But because premiums are expensive, many Americans elect not to have insurance. Obamacare is an attempt to address this problem, however, the House voted 37 times to repeal it. Already, more people have access to insurance, premiums are cut in half, seniors on prescription drugs have saved $6.3 billion, and $1.6 billion has been rebated to policyholders.
Interview with whistleblower Matthew Hutcheson.

Powerful sections of the ruling class are pushing for a broad US war to oust Assad and forcibly assert US imperialist hegemony over the Middle East. Anthony Cordesman, an influential strategist from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made his case for such a war in a Washington Post column yesterday titled "Syria's Ripple Effect."
In advocating a new mass movement to counter our corrupt Democrat-Republican duopoly, I've long promoted a wiser Occupy movement that includes an electoral strategy and demands. Though acting on the single demand of purging Big Money's undue influence would be great for nonpartisan unity, I try to show here why two dire instances of undue influence--fossil fuels and the security state--need taming for democracy's sake.
By Corp Watch
CorpWatch : Commodity Scams: Barclays, Goldman & JP Morgan Under Fire
JP Morgan Chase is expected to announce over $600 million in penalties and repayments for allegedly cheating customers in energy markets in California and Michigan. This just after Barclays bank paid out $470 million for manipulating electricity rates. Now Goldman Sachs is under scrutiny for possibly manipulating aluminum prices.
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts says, "The country is not being run by the President. It is being run by spy agencies and private interest groups, Wall Street and military security complex . . . They run the country. The President is a puppet, a figurehead."

By Tom Engelhardt
Ira Chernus, Political Dreaming in the Twenty-First Century: Where Has It Gone?
Before plunging into TomDispatch regular Ira Chernus's piece on political dreaming, there's one historical reality worth considering in the largely dreamless night that is our present planet. As everyone knows -- but few give the slightest thought to these days -- the Soviet Union, that "evil empire," that other "superpower," gave up the ghost in 1991. In that moment, history as humanity had long known it ended.
By Kathy Malloy
Hallelujah!
There is a war on naughtiness being waged in colleges across America. The Family Research Council isn't content with waging war against teaching evolution in public schools; now it seeks to eliminate all discussions of s-e-x from college campuses as well.

For the past five years of the Obama administration Republicans have marched in lockstep to oppose just about everything Obama and the Democrats have proposed. Yet the Democrats rarely march together. Recently, for example, 22 Democrats in the House joined every Republican in voting to delay the individual mandate in Obamacare.
Rather than expanding the money supply, quantitative easing (QE) has actually caused it to shrink by sucking up the collateral needed by the shadow banking system to create credit. The "failure" of QE has prompted the Bank for International Settlements to urge the Fed to shirk its mandate to pursue full employment, but the sort of QE that could fulfill that mandate has not yet been tried.
By Elayne Clift
The Summer of Their Discontent: Reflections on the Trayvon Martin Verdict
The dignity of Trayvon Martin's family and supporters following the Zimmerman verdict reminds us that we have far to go in realizing MLK's dream.


 Latest Articles

Inescapable historic connection between the fear that racial profiling led to Trayvon's being killed by an overly zealous volunteer law enforcer and two centuries of racially profiled genocide within non-white Majority Mankind constantly under attack for economic plunder by US firepower and covert homicide. Needed: International non-white solidarity! Stoping America's overseas crimes against humanity will end those at home.

What we can do about the NSA and our Freedoms
We all need to upgrade our courage and integrity. The NSA, and others, have destroyed the integrity of the internet and our communications systems. It is wrong for us to accept this. We don't have to. Here's one thing we can do...
It would be nice to think that we won't be in a situation again where we need another large stimulus package, but does anyone really believe this? If we want these trade deals to be a boost rather than an impediment to growth, they will have to leave some room for home country preferences for government expenditures.

Left, Right and Wrong: Divided Supreme Court Causes Concern amid Celebration
Is the Supreme Court safeguarding our Constitutional rights or tilting ever more to the political right?

 Best News Links from the Web

'Using Orwellian language so extreme as to be darkly hilarious, this was the first line of the White House's statement opposing the amendment: "In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens" (i.e.: we welcome the debate that has been exclusively enabled by that vile traitor, the same debate we've spent years trying to prevent with rampant abuse of our secrecy powers that has kept even the most basic facts about our spying activities concealed from the American people). The White House then condemned Amash/Conyers this way: "This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process." What a multi-level masterpiece of Orwellian political deceit that sentence is.'

A controversial proposal to restrict how the National Security Agency collects telephone records failed to advance by a narrow margin Wednesday, a victory for the Obama administration, which has spent weeks defending the program since media leaks sparked international outrage about the agency's reach.
Gilberton, Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler is earning himself a reputation as " America's scariest police chief." The right-wing leader of an armed paramilitary group appears to have a penchant for filming himself firing weapons, ranting about liberal America. In a video he had the gall to upload to YouTube, Kessler fires off rounds from automatic weapons during a profanity-laced rant about "libtards."
You could be forgiven if you thought you had heard President Obama's speech on the economy today before. Because you have. For most of the 2012 campaign. It seems incredibly unlikely that this speech, which Obama gave some version of for virtually the entirety of his 2012 campaign, will change any GOP minds.
The speaker says Republicans should be judged on how many laws they repeal. This is unprecedented, irresponsible, and terrifying. The Republican Party now sees dysfunction as not just an unfortunate consequence of a set of historical factors, something that they might work every now and again to correct. Now, the Republican Party sees dysfunction as its mission.
A new method for producing electricity from carbon dioxide could be the start of a classic trash-to-treasure story for the troublesome greenhouse gas, scientists are reporting. The method uses CO2 from electric power plant and other smokestacks as the raw material for making electricity. [Given the basic laws of thermodynamics, well established for a very long time, the net result may be less than other options. But alas, all options need to "get moving."]
Scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost in a part of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable. The melt rates are comparable with the Arctic and could preview melting permafrost in other parts of a warming Antarctica. In Garwood Valley, scientists found melt rates accelerated consistently from 2001 to 2012, rising to about 10 times the historical average.
Researchers have warned of an "economic time-bomb" in the Arctic, following a ground-breaking analysis of the likely cost of methane emissions in the region. Economic modelling shows that the methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars -- the size of the world economy in 2012.
The Army has conceded a significant loss of records documenting battlefield action and other operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched a global search to recover and consolidate field records from the wars. In an order to all commands and a separate letter to leaders of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, Army Secretary John McHugh said the service also is taking immediate steps to clarify responsibility for wartime record keeping.
Three American and four Afghan soldiers and an interpreter were killed Tuesday morning in Wardak Province after an insurgent riding a donkey detonated a bomb in one of the most hotly contested districts in the country. Violence across Afghanistan this month has abated to some degree because of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day. But military and police commanders are bracing for an increase in violence in August, when the fasting season ends.
Congress has launched an investigation of the helicopter crash that killed 30 Americans in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 6 unit. The victims' families say the Pentagon hasn't provided answers to their many questions about the deadly attack, which took place on Aug. 6, 2011, three months after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Team 6 forces.
The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn't have the technology.
An out-of-control natural gas well off the Louisiana coast continued to burn Wednesday after it caught fire following a blowout that prompted the evacuation of 44 workers. The Coast Guard kept nautical traffic out of an area within 500 meters of the site throughout the day. The Federal Aviation Administration restricted aircraft up to 2,000 feet above the area.