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Here's a quicklink that reveals how totally sold out the Democrats really are:
So tell me how wonderful Obama and his corporatist democrats are. I made a typo-- demcorats-- kinda rings true.
And we're having a very tough month this month. Please take a moment to make a donation to support our work.
Click here to donate today. It's essential for us to do our job.
thanks,
rob kall
Support Opednews. Make a tax deductible donation to make OEN Strong.  Daily Headlines
If
you own a television or read a newspaper you've probably heard that we
need another war because the Syrian government used chemical weapons.
Control
and dominance are the two words that make sense of what is going on
today. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs,
of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating
propaganda in the public consciousness.
Sen.
Elizabeth Warren asked her colleagues to oppose Michael Froman, Pres
Obama's pick for US Trade Representative, charging that he is not
committed to giving the American public information about
theTrans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, which would affect
everything from intellectual property rights, to product safety
standards, to financial regulations. Many lawmakers criticized the
secrecy surrounding the deal; certain members of Congress can see the
proposed text of the deal, but the public cannot. Warren has called on
the office of the US Trade Representative to release the full text of
the TPP deal to the public. But in a floor speech Wednesday, she said
Froman has made clear he would not release the text.
A terrible formula has taken hold: warfare state + corporate digital power = surveillance state.
From
day one of his first campaign for President, Barack Obama promised a
kinder, more humane treatment of undocumented migrant workers and their
families. But his administration has been nothing short of brutal when
it comes to his policies. Some of those on the front lines fighting for
comprehensive and humane immigration reform have started to refer to
Obama as "Deporter in Chief."
Government
officials are howling with outrage, and calling for Edward Snowden's
head. The pundits are livid: how dare this "narcissist" who didn't go to
an Ivy League college presume to sit in judgment of his betters!
Whatever their disagreements, politicians and talking heads of the left
and the right agree: Snowden is a "traitor"!
I
know the issue of political spying -- and not just because my lawful,
nonviolent activism got me spied on by local, state and federal
"intelligence" agencies (whose spy files on me were unearthed through
successful lawsuits and partly successful Freedom of Information
requests). I also spent a dozen years as a journalist, researcher and
ACLU lawyer investigating the spies.
America
has a massive national deficit of nearly $16.9 trillion; it continues
to spend money it doesn't have and the problem remains. What's the
answer to this dilemma? Many of our esteemed politicians say that, to
alleviate the condition, government welfare must be ended. So with that
premise in mind let's examine the pros and cons and the depth of this
issue.
The problem that faces the US in this second term of the Obama presidency is not too many whistleblowers, but rather too few.
President
Obama is beginning a long slide into oblivion. He can turn things
around by serving the people instead of the financial elite. Five
programs for a rapid change in his standing with the public.
How does the health of a society relate to low wages, emotional disconnection, and a shrinking middle class?
From CNN: In writing about the epidemic of violence against women, up-to-date stats like this are essential.
I
am on the mailing list for the Neighborhood Energy Network, based in
New York City. They regularly send out updates, presentation and movie
announcements, and activist opportunities, to a large mailing list.
This one, their latest, lists many useful sites on Climate Change,
including how to deal with deniers.
Sunday
, July 7, 1963, was the date of my first arrest, among protesters
creating a "walk-in" aimed at ending racial segregation at Gwynn Oak
amusement park in Baltimore. This coming July 7, 2013 (also a Sunday
) there will be a 50th-anniversary celebration in Baltimore of the
desegregation of the park, which followed soon after the arrests.
When
my son was about 15 months old, he climbed up on a chair. The problem
is, while he figured how to get up on the chair, he didn't know how to
get down. So he jumped, and he broke his leg.
By Gary Brumback
Inside the corpocracy: Big pharma and servile government This article begins the second in a series that takes an inside snapshot of American industries along with their control of a servile government. The present article overviews the pharmaceutical industry along with a servile government that supports the industry in various ways. Additional overviews of the other components of the healthcare industry will be written next before going on to other industries.
By Hamad S Alomar
Counting Up, Counting Down What really matters for me is that at age 60 one has consumed 70-75% of his life. I call this age, the stop-counting-up and start-counting-down age. This never means giving up on life. Not at all. I will enjoy it more. The counting down means something else.
The
attack line against whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden
-- that they should have gone through "proper channels" -- ignores that
those oversight channels have been badly corrupted over the past several
decades. That has left Americans dependent on out-of-channel leaks.
Mohammad
Naji Allaw says, "Over 90 of 166 Guantanamo prisoners are from Yemen.
Most of them, 56 to be exact, have already been cleared by the US
government for release but the US government still won't send them
back."
By Franklin Lamb
WAR BY ANOTHER NAME" The Obama Administration prepares a "Marshall Plan" to reconstruct Syria, but not for the Syrians With respect to Syria, the " equivalent of the Marshall Plan" currently being finalized is very different from what General George |C. Marshall explained to his Harvard University audience, 66 years ago this month, when he announced the post WW II initiative.
Our Schools, Cut Off From the Web
"ON June 6, at a middle school in Mooresville, N.C., President Obama set a goal of high-speed Internet in nearly every public school in America in five years" but today, " half of Americans don't own a smartphone, one-third lack a broadband connection and one-fifth don't use the Web at all and while 'virtually all of America's schools are connected to the Internet today...the question is quality. Children who go to school in poor neighborhoods are connected to the Web at speeds so slow as to render most educational Web sites unusable... free online courses from great academies is closed to those who lack a digital pathway....Mr. Obama was right to call attention to this problem. A good first step in addressing it would be to overhaul E-Rate to make sure it gets the Web into every classroom and library, not just a school,and with sufficient financing for upkeep" and trained experts.
By Dean Baker
Celebrate the Defeat of the Granny Bashers! Billionaire-backed Campaign Fails to Cut Social Security and Medicare 
We
should take a moment to celebrate the victory we have achieved. So pick
up a glass of the beverage of your choosing and drink a toast to Social
Security and Medicare, to the people whose lives they have made more
secure, and to the people who have worked to ensure that these programs
are there for current generations and those yet to come in the decades
ahead.
The
Federal Reserve might begin tapering off its economic life support late
this year and finish a controversial program of bond purchases by the
middle of the next year, Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday in remarks
that triggered fear and loathing in financial markets. Stocks fell
sharply after Bernanke used a midafternoon news conference to clarify
the circumstances under which he'd begin easing off the pace of
purchases of government and mortgage bonds, a pace that's now averaging
$85 billion a month.
On
Monday, in a case called Salinas v. Texas that hasn't gotten the
attention it deserves, the Supreme Court held that you remain silent at
your peril. The court said that this is true even before you're
arrested, when the police are just informally asking questions. The
court's move to cut off the right to remain silent is wrong and also
dangerous--because it encourages the kind of high-pressure questioning
that can elicit false confessions.
Russia's
Middle East policy shows an awakening of power and focus on Vladamir
Putin's part. By "standing tall" on Syria, he's establishing
credibility on "the Arab street." Standing up to Israel and the United
States while opposing the al Qaeda extremists and Moslem Brotherhood has
a huge audience among thinking people.
By Jim Kavanagh
"No matter what the law actually says": The Snowden Revelations and the Eternal Surveillance State The sudden cascade of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden through Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Laura Poitras in the Guardian, and Barton Gellman in the Washington Post has provided stark confirmation of our worst fears about the American government's contemptuous disregard for our most fundamental rights.
By Christopher Mandel
Classifying and Understanding Diverse Tactics in Activism: Part 1 This article discusses the nature of violent and non-violent tactics in activism.
By Tom Engelhardt
Pepe Escobar, The Tao of Containing China Yes, the predictions are in. By 2016 (or 2030?), China will have economically outpaced the U.S. So say the economic soothsayers.
The
GOP's national role will be primarily negative -- seeking to block,
delay, and filibuster measures that will eventually become the law of
the land in any event, while simultaneously preaching "states' rights"
and praying for conservative majorities on the Supreme Court. In other
words, more of the same.
Why I am calling on Congress to end signature strikes. You should too.
Latest Articles
As
the meme goes, the chief villains responsible for the high cost of
American healthcare are waste, overtreatment, fee-for-service medicine,
unaccountable hospitals, and paying for treatments that don't work.
Obamacare fixes reflect that meme. But are the accepted villains really
the central villains, or just the easiest ones to target?
It is an utter failure if you want special privileges
A New Moderate "American Party" Is Forming
A new political party hopes to fill the wide-open range left by current two-party polarity, its founders say.
Remarkably,
protean Obama sponged up the Bush Doctrine (belligerent, go-it-alone
militarism), the Cheney Doctrine (spying uber alles, freedom demands
tyranny), the Clinton Doctrine (pragmatic relativism), even the
transparency-hating Nixon Doctrine (if a president does it . . .).
Once
the NSA has this court approval, it can then target anyone chosen by
their analysts, and can even order telecoms and internet companies to
turn over to them the emails, chats and calls of those they target. The
Fisa court plays no role whatsoever in reviewing whether the procedures
it approved are actually complied with when the NSA starts eavesdropping
on calls and reading people's emails.
The
gov'ts propaganda mill is @ full throttle. Yesterday, NSA Chief
Alexander came before the House Intel Committee saying more than 50
potential terrorist events was foiled by the Agency's programs since
9/11. Where is the evidence & if true could these plots been
prevented by legal investigative means w/o the NSA's snooping? No
evidence was given. But the to corp. media, gov't officials "say it", we
"print it" ergo it's true
What does it take to clean up our own messes? Our society's norms aren't going to help.
 Best News Links from the Web
While
State Department officials are fond of saying they're providing
hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the Syrian opposition,
only a fraction of the promised funds has arrived, and none has gone to
the political body the U.S. looks to as an alternative to President
Bashar Assad's regime. The topic is only expected to get thornier now
that the administration has promised even more nonlethal aid after
concluding that Assad's regime has used chemical weapons.
The
US was scrambling to salvage a plan to open peace talks with the
Taliban on Wednesday amid a diplomatic row between Washington and the
Afghan president Hamid Karzai over how the process was announced.
Repeated phone calls by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, appeared
not to have mollified Karzai, who accused the Obama administration of
duplicity. Irritated by a press conference in Qatar at which the Taliban
effectively portrayed itself as a government in exile, Karzai suspended
talks on a long-term security deal to keep US troops in Afghanistan
after Nato leaves in 2014.
Along
with -- and because of -- dramatic social and demographic changes,
America is quickly dividing itself into two separate nations, regional
enclaves of rigid politics, as the idea of common national priorities
fades further into a distant past. We're now at a point where people may
not worry as much about all of America as about their slice of America.
In the tumult and transition of change, we may be becoming a nation
divided against itself.
The Worst of Both Worlds - By CHARLES M. BLOW NYTimes.com
"According to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, the reason most Americans disapprove of Congress isn't because of a specific policy or bad ethical behavior but because of inaction and partisan gridlock. Americans believe that Congress is broken.The reason Congress doesn't work is because Republican lawmakers have ceased to believe that it should. For too many of them, compromise has become synonymous with collusion. They would rather resist than work. So the wheels of government are screeching to a halt. Obstruction and bluster have replaced solutions and courage."
Four
American service members were killed in a mortar attack at Bagram Air
Base outside of Kabul Tuesday, shortly after the announcement of the
first-ever talks between the U.S. and Taliban representatives. The
Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The four Americans were
members of the International Security Assistance Force serving in
eastern Afghanistan, the ISAF said.
As
the descendant of a long line of dirt-poor Jews, I share Congressman
Steve Israel's dismay at this new reality show, depicting age-old
stereotypes.
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