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Abuse and Protests in Puerto Rico
Obama is visiting Puerto Rico today. ADRIANA MULERO CLAUDIO, la.luna.de.firmin at gmail.com SCOTT BARBES CAMINERO, sbarbes at gmail.com Mulero is a student activist who was suspended for political activity several months ago. She states that though there are some rights for people in Puerto Rico, real freedom is limited in large part because it is a colony of the United States. She highlights the continued imprisonment of pro-independence activists. She is participating in protests today with “several thousand people. In addition to the issue of independence, the protests are also against war and exploitation.” Barbes is a labor organizer who…
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Whistleblowers: “Rescind Obama’s ‘Transparency Award’ Now!”
Over 20 noted whistleblowers have just released a petition calling for rescinding a “Transparency Award” President Obama recently received. The signatories including Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers; former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern; former Pentagon analyst Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski; and former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice. SIBEL EDMONDS, sibeledmonds at boilingfrogspost.com, boilingfrogspost.com COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net Edmonds and Rowley drafted the petition. Edmonds is a former FBI official and whistleblower. Rowley is a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures and was named one of…
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Pentagon Papers: Lessons for Today
Forty years ago today, on June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War. In the weeks that followed the Nixon White House worked to stop the Times and other newspapers from publishing the Papers, with the Supreme Court ultimately ruling against prior restraint. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers and later that month got them to Sen. Mike Gravel, who late in the evening of June 29 to June 30 entered them into the Congressional Record; he was conducting a filibuster against…
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FBI “Off the Rails”
The New York Times is reporting: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.” SHAHID BUTTAR, via Amy E. Ferrer, media at bordc.org Buttar is executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He said today: “Over Director Mueller’s ten-year tenure, the FBI has repeatedly violated the rights of peaceful Americans, abused its powers, lied to Congress, and overlooked opportunities to better protect national security –…
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Should NATO Have a Future?
AP reports: “America’s military alliance with Europe — the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades — faces a ‘dim, if not dismal’ future, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a blunt valedictory address.” DAVID N. GIBBS, dgibbs at arizona.edu Author of First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Gibbs is a professor of history and government at the University of Arizona. He said today: “NATO basically lost its reason for being in 1991 and has been struggling to find a purpose since then. The world would probably be better off if NATO simply…
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Syria and Yemen
ELAINE HAGOPIAN, echagop at verizon.net Hagopian is a Syrian-American sociologist, a professor emeritus of sociology at Simmons College in Boston and political interviewer for Arabic Hour TV. She said today: “There is and has been in Syria an authentic desire for real democracy, for real economic opportunity, for elimination of the vast corruption and privilege given to the Alawites, the powerful minority base of the Assad regime. The protesters were not originally calling for President Bashar Assad’s removal, but for vast reforms. Bashar initially ignored these demands and then began to offer, but not fulfill some of them. As the…
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Mountaintop Removal Mining Protests in West Virginia
Hundreds of people are marching towards Blair Mountain in West Virginia to protest mountaintop removal mining. The march will culminate Saturday with a rally featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Emmylou Harris, among others. You can follow the march at marchonblairmountain.org The documentary “The Last Mountain,” which examines the threat mountaintop removal mining poses to the environment, has just been released. Watch the trailer.
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* Al-Qaeda Wants U.S. to Stay? * Palestinian U.N. Membership
GARETH PORTER, porter.gareth50 at gmail.com Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy and author of Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. He just wrote the piece “Slain Writer’s Book Says U.S.-NATO War Served Al-Qaeda Strategy,” which states: “Al-Qaeda strategists have been assisting the Taliban fight against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan because they believe that foreign occupation has been the biggest factor in generating Muslim support for uprisings against their governments, according to the just-published book by Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistani journalist whose body was found in…
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Obama Meeting with Bahraini Despot
The Wall Street Journal reports: “President Barack Obama will meet with the crown prince of Bahrain at the White House on Tuesday, an administration official said. But in a show of how delicate relations with the U.S. ally have become, the sit-down is not officially on the president’s schedule.” HUSAIN ABDULLA, mohajer12 at comcast.net Abdulla is director of Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain. He said today: “There will be no news conference so there will likely be no pictures together, but the reality is that Obama is meeting Salman al-Khalifa. While he’s been depicted as the more enlightened element…
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Jobs: Goolsbee Resignation and Ten Years After Bush Tax Cuts
On Sunday chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee appeared on ABC’s “This Week” defending the administration’s record on helping to produce jobs. “It’s not a jobless recovery” he said. Later in the program, economist Paul Krugman said: “The fact is, for about 18 months, we’ve had an economy that’s recovering in a technical sense, but it’s not generating jobs faster than population growth.”
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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