“The two most important law enforcement entities in Washington — Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission — have taken a kid-glove approach to the corporate criminal activity that arguably inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.”

President Obama was questioned today about the hunger strikers at Guantanamo: “as you probably are aware, there’s a growing hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay among prisoners there. Is it any surprise, really, that they would prefer death rather than have no end in sight to their confinement?” President Obama: “Well, it is not a surprise…

The Syracuse Post-Standard reports (see video): “About 30 people were arrested outside the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base [Sunday] afternoon during a protest against the use of unmanned aerial drones. “The arrests came at the end of a series of workshops and rallies held in Syracuse this weekend and organized by the Upstate Coalition…

The New York Times reports in “Wealth Gap Among Races Widened Since Recession” that: “Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish recovery that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in…

“More surveillance risks this problem: turning all U.S. citizens and all lawful immigrants into potential terrorist suspects. In fact, the bipartisan Senate comprehensive immigration reform proposal that was released last week already showed signs of multiple surveillance cancers, even before the bombing. The bill includes the significant expansion of various cybersurveillance and data surveillance (dataveillance)…

“Our staff are on the ground. The garment workers saw the crack yesterday and refused to work. A Savar subdistrict officer came and told the owners that the building was unsafe. This morning the factory owners told the workers that ‘some cracks will not be a problem.’ They ordered the workers back to work. The…

“At the beginning of the Tunisian uprising, Al Jazeera played a generally positive role, but as soon as the dictator was deposed, Al Jazeera had a total shift to featuring more Islamic groups from Tunisia — giving them the platform. Al Jazeera also highlighted and fostered the uprisings in the Republics (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and…

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net Consortium News writes: “The revelation that the family of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was from Chechnya prompted new speculation about the attack as Islamic terrorism. Less discussed was the history of U.S. neocons supporting Chechen terrorists as a strategy to weaken Russia, as ex-FBI agent Coleen…

VINCENT WARREN, via Jen Nessel, JNessel at ccrjustice.org, @VinceWarren The Center for Constitutional Rights released a statement from Warren over the weekend: “Our thoughts go out to the friends and families of victims ofthese horrific bombings. While it is difficult to turn to points of law in times of tragedy, those are, in fact, the…

Bloomberg reports: “The environmental impact of doing business costs the global economy $4.7 trillion a year, according to a report released April 15 . “That figure includes the top 100 environmental impacts, such as airpollution-related health costs, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of nature-based benefits such as carbon storage by forests, and…