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Elite Corruption: A “Violation of Public Trust”
“But it’s often the corruption of elite insiders, not petty bribery, that most foments distrust of leaders and public institutions. As I describe in my new book, this ‘new corruption’ may be less visible, but it is practiced on a wide scale by a set of global power brokers who have rigged the system to their advantage in innovative ways. The worldwide protests triggered by this form of corruption are proof that a growing number of people have turned into disaffected outsiders, all too aware that they stand squarely apart from this system of power and influence. This is the…
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Netanyahu: * Corrie’s Death * Nuclear Armed
“In the midst of controversy over the Israeli prime minister’s plans to address Congress next month, a researcher has won the release of a decades-old Defense Department report detailing the U.S. government’s extensive help to Israel in that nation’s development of a nuclear bomb… The 1987 report, ‘Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,’ compares the key Israeli facilities developing nuclear weapons to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the principal U.S. laboratories that developed the bomb for the United States.”
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West Virginia Oil Train Derailment Highlights Need for Significant Safety Reforms
“‘Back-to-back fiery derailments involving crude oil trains should be an unmistakable wake-up call to our political leaders: Stop these dangerous oil trains and stop them now. People’s lives are at stake, clean drinking water is at stake, and the well-being of towns and wildlife along thousands of miles of rail line are directly in harm’s way of this unchecked, reckless increase in oil transport by rail.’ Oil transport, especially by rail, has dramatically increased in recent years, growing from virtually nothing in 2008 to more than 400,000 rail cars of oil in 2013. Billions of gallons of oil pass through…
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Surveillance “Reforms” Allow for Plenty of Suspicionless Spying on Americans
“[Recently], the Obama administration released a report and documents cataloging progress toward signals intelligence (SIGINT) reform goals set a year ago by the president in a document known as PPD-28. PPD-28 promises foreigners some of the same privacy protections given to U.S. citizens and residents. But it turns out that those protections, even for citizens, are fairly meager, in ways that have not yet fully entered the public conversation about surveillance. U.S. citizens and residents have been — and remain — exposed to suspicionless electronic surveillance. Implementation of PPD-28 will do little to change that.”
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“Why Muslim Lives Don’t Matter”
“Irrespective of what rallying cries, signs or adapted hashtags proclaim, Muslim lives in America don’t matter. The aftermath of the murder of the three American students in Chapel Hill, and the broader context that spurred it, reconfirms this brutal truth. … State-run programming targeting Muslims marks members of that demographic as presumptively suspicious. NSA surveillance and counter-extremism programming, PATRIOT and Suspicious Activity Reporting strategies, are shaped within government walls. But these policies also shape stereotypes and spur violence far beyond them.”
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Key Author of War Powers: ISIL AUMF Could be Worse than Vietnam Authorization
“This Resolution sets a dangerous precedent. Up until the 2001 AUMF, all War Powers Resolutions had been adopted with respect to a State, not alleged terrorist organizations that can operate anywhere in the world as defined by the President. This Resolution continues in that dangerous path, basically substituting ISIS for al-Qaeda and continuing to wage a global war on terrorism. So if Obama cannot plausibly invoke the 2001 Resolution because there is no connection to 9/11 as required therein, he will simply invoke this Resolution. Between the two resolutions you can have the U.S. government waging war all over the…
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AUMF: “Another Blank Check for Endless War”
“The new AUMF is a blank check for another endless war. The U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria is a part of the problem. Dropping more bombs in Iraq, and arming militias and proxy groups, will not defeat extremism. Iraq and Syria will not be bombed into moderation and stability. Ending extremism and violence in Iraq and Syria is possible, but the new U.S. AUMF will make it even more difficult to achieve.”
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Ukraine: Who Wins from War?
“At nearly every critical juncture over the last year, military escalation has been to the detriment of the Ukrainian people and the government’s own survival. As a result of military action and escalation by both Russia and the West, Ukraine is now on the verge of financial and military collapse — with the currency falling by more than a third this past week and with foreign-exchange reserves down to a few weeks. Kiev knows it can only win by drawing NATO to fight by its side in a long, bloody civil war, bringing us closer to a real East-West crisis.”
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HSBC Scandal: Why Did DOJ Ignore Whistleblower?
“HSBC got off with a $1.9 billion fine for sanctions busting and money laundering in 2012, but only a $12 million fine from the SEC related to this tax dodging. And no bankers have gone to jail anywhere — except some of the whistleblowers themselves. … These bankers are too big to fail and too big to jail, so they just keep engaging in illegal activity. There’s a widespread pattern of using fines to penalize the top 20 global big banks – $247 billion since 1998, for 655 separate major infractions of all kinds. But they just pass along the…
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Trade Numbers Reinforce Opposition to “Another Job-Destroying Deal”
“This abysmal new data shows how the past agreements that serve as the template for the trade deals Obama is now pushing destroy more middle class jobs and further suppress wages, which spotlights why there is so much congressional and public opposition to Fast Tracking the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact. President Obama’s goal of doubling exports has failed dramatically in part due to slow and even declining U.S. exports under recent ‘trade’ deals.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn