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“Profit-Driven” BP’s “Willful Misconduct”
“Judge Barbier’s decision was both profound and significant. It demonstrates the lack of safety of all existing offshore oil operations and severely challenges the notion that those activities should be allowed to expand to areas such as the Atlantic coast and in more of the Arctic. The judge found that BP routinely put profit over prudence, people, safety, and the environment and the result was and remains catastrophic. Significantly, the judge found all three companies — BP, Halliburton, and Transocean — three of the largest offshore oil companies in the world — ALL guilty of causing this disaster and acting…
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“Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault”
“Russia has responded to popular aspirations in eastern Ukraine very differently from the way it responded in Crimea. These differences, however, have been ignored by most Western observers, who base their analysis on three assumptions. First, that despite his disavowals, Putin is in fact actively supporting the rebels with weapons and finances. Second, that without this support, the rebellion would collapse for lack of popular support. And finally, that once the rebellion is suppressed, Ukraine will embark on economic and political reforms that will stabilize the country. Because each of these assumptions is quite far from the mark, not surprisingly,…
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NATO: Part of Solution — Or Problem
“Foreign policy specialists have rightly condemned Russian intervention in the Ukraine, which has aggravated political divisions in that country. At the same time, we should recognize that the United States and NATO have also contributed to the destabilization. Russia’s actions are at least partly a response to policies adopted by the U.S. and NATO immediately following the Cold War.”
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Nader on Pushing Minimum Wage; Left-Right Alliance
“No more lip service or half measures! As corporate profits and CEO pay soar ever higher, 30 million hardworking Americans — two-thirds women and two-thirds employed by large corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s — are making less today, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1968!”
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Burger King Deal a Tax Dodge for Brazilian Billionaire, Hurts both U.S. and Canada
“You now have 100 major U.S. companies looking at ‘inversions’ like what Burger King is doing. This deal is a tax dodge by a Brazilian billionaire and other investors, it will hurt the U.S., Canada and such deals hurt virtually everyone else. These deals exposes domestic companies to competitors that are not paying substantial taxes.”
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Militarization of Police
“America is finally waking up to the militarization of its police forces. This is a good thing and heralds a tipping point in the changing face of policing in the United States. America must realize that what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri — with the overwhelming militarized response of local police forces to the protests over the shooting of an unarmed black teenager — is also bound to happen in other American cities. With outrage mounting over the crackdown in Ferguson, now is the time to act.”
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Obama and Press Freedom: Washington Post Adds to Outcry
“Mr. Obama has consistently proclaimed his belief in press freedom and its importance in our democracy. But his record undermines his words. The administration has conducted the most far-reaching campaign against leaks in recent memory, with more prosecutions than all previous administrations combined. Perhaps Mr. Obama doesn’t see any conflict here, but we do.”
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Getting Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia Wrong
“There are extraordinary elements in the present U.S. policy in Iraq and Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the U.S. is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and trainers to help beat back the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (better known as ISIS) on the Kurdish capital, Erbil. The U.S. would presumably do the same if ISIS surrounds or attacks Baghdad. But in Syria, Washington’s policy is the exact opposite: there the main opponent of ISIS is the Syrian government and the Syrian Kurds in their northern enclaves. Both are…
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Anti-Jewish Campaign Traced to Pro-Israeli Grad Student
“Like many other news websites, Common Dreams has been plagued by inflammatory anti-Semitic comments following its stories. But on Common Dreams these posts have been so frequent and intense they have driven away donors from a nonprofit dependent on reader generosity. A Common Dreams investigation has discovered that more than a thousand of these damaging comments over the past two years were written with a deceptive purpose by a Jewish Harvard graduate in his thirties who was irritated by the website’s discussion of issues involving Israel.”
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Classified Leaks and Obama: Highly Selective Prosecution
“James Risen’s case is a prime example of how the war on whistleblowers has been a back-door war on journalists. Risen is being asked to testify against a source in yet another Espionage Act prosecution of a CIA whistleblower who allegedly exposed a botched CIA operation. If Mr. Risen faces jail or exorbitant fines for refusing to do so, the small pool of independent investigative journalists to whom whistleblowers can turn dries up even further.”
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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