Government

How A CIA Whistleblower Survives Behind Bars

February 11, 2014 Kelley B. Vlahos, www.antiwar.com Educate! Government, Torture, Whistleblowers

"It’s been one year since former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to prison for 30 months, the first American official to do time for the government’s torture policies during the Global War on Terror. This is what whistleblower advocates like to point out – and Kiriakou, 49, strongly believes himself – that he is not in jail for doing the torture or even promoting it, but being the first counterterrorism official to acknowledge the use of waterboarding, and then speak publicly against it."

The Economics of Revolt

February 7, 2014 Brandon Jourdan, vimeo.com Educate! Austerity, Finance and the Economy, Government, Revolution

Mason examines revolts around the world and sees a common denominator as the failure of neo-liberal capitalism to deliver decent lives to people. While economies grow wealth is not shared so incomes go down and at the same time government programs are cutback. When the collapse of the economy occurs government pour money into the economy but not to meet the necessities of people but to recapitalize banks. At the same time that monetary policy is printing money for the banks, fiscal policy is cutting back government services in the name of austerity and deficit reduction. Governments cannot respond to these revolts until they find a way to create an economy that serves the people.

Prosperity For Main Street, Not Wall Street

February 7, 2014 Rudy Avizius, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Government, Public Banking

The key reason that communities are struggling is the huge burden of interest payments that are flowing to the big banks. Think about this, if you buy a home for say $100,000 dollars, typically you will have paid $250,000 once the loan is paid off. This means the typical loan will incur $150,000 in interest charges. The same concept applies when a community builds an infrastructure project such as school, road, bridge, sewer or other project. That $1 million dollar school could end up costing taxpayers in the community $2.5 million after interest charges. So taxpayers are paying more to the financiers of the project than to those who supplied the materials and actually did the labor to build it. Are you OK with them acting as a middleman sucking prosperity from our communities? Any good business model dictates the efficiency of eliminating middlemen.

VIDEO: Massive Resistance Building to Stop KXL

February 7, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Climate Change, Corporatism, Democracy, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Government, Indigenous Rights, Occupy, Tar Sands

Last week, the State Department has released the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the proposed northern leg of the controversial and long-embattled TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. As Steve Horn, of DeSmog Blog notes: “In a familiar “Friday trash dump” — a move many expected the Obama administration to shun — John Kerry’s State Department chose to “carefully stage-manage the report’s release” on Super Bowl Friday when most Americans are switching focus to football instead of political scandals.” Even with the Super Bowl weekend serving as a distraction, over 200 events took place from coast to coast the day after the Super Bowl aimed at sending a message to President Obama, that – according to 350.org: “it’s time for President Obama to be a climate champion, not the pipeline president, and reject Keystone XL. Standing together, we can be heard.”

VIDEO: What Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death Can Teach Us About Climate Change (Really)

February 6, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Climate Change, Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Government

For the State Department to suggest that the Keystone XL pipeline will not have a negative impact on the environment is like Walter White telling Phillip Seymour Hoffman that heroin is as healthy as kale. If one reads the Obama administration State Department’s Final Environmental Study on the KXL pipeline it is almost as if the State department subcontracted the study to a company with vast financial ties to the oil and gas industry. Actually, that turns out to be true. Andy Kroll, reporting for Mother Jones in May of 2013 put it this way:

What The US Would Look Like As Mega-Regions Instead Of States

February 6, 2014 Tom McKay, www.policymic.com Educate! Government, Urban Design

America 2050 project proposes that we begin to view the country's urban areas not as discrete metropolitan areas but as interconnected "megaregions." Megaregions are areas where large cities and the spaces in between share "interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems." They identify 11 in the U.S. — Cascadia, Northern and Southern California, the Arizona Sun Corridor, the Front Range, the Texas Triangle, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, the Northeast, Piedmont Atlantic, and Florida (it's kind of dangling off on its own there, anyhow). In other words, these are the areas in which residents and policymakers are the most likely to have shared common interests and policy goals and would benefit most from co-operation with each other. It's especially important, because as the Regional Plan Association notes, "Our competitors in Asia and Europe are creating Global Integration Zones by linking specialized economic functions across vast geographic areas and national boundaries with high-speed rail and separated goods movement systems."

US Official Won’t Say Whether Obama Phone Data Is Collected

February 5, 2014 Michael Mathes, http://www.afp.com/en Educate! Democracy, Government, NSA

A US official acknowledged Tuesday that the NSA likely scoops up data on congressional phone communications, but stopped short of saying whether such action extends to calls made by President Barack Obama. The tense exchange occurred during a hearing on the status of the administration's reforms of the secret, bulk data collection program exposed last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Deputy Attorney General James Cole, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, hesitated when asked whether the controversial NSA program that gathers the numbers, call times and lengths of virtually every US phone call extended to communications by members of Congress and executive branch officials.

Who Are The Puppet Masters That Control The Media And Politicians?

February 4, 2014 Andrew Kreig, , www.justice-integrity.org Educate! CIA, Democracy, Government

My new book Presidential Puppetry can help viewers better understand the implications of President Obama's State of the Union address last week. Obama announced his plans for 2014 and beyond. His rhetoric soared. But specifics fell far short of his promises during his 2008 presidential campaign, as Atlantic columnist Conor Friedersdorf noted in The Decline and Fall of 'Hope and Change.' Puppetry shows via a century of history why Obama is a status quo centrist playing the role of reformer. Like his parents, he has a hidden national security background that helps show why he is a minion for the truly powerful and not a master. Obama's ascent to the presidency was enabled by wealthy, powerful figures who remain in the shadows while the public receives from his handlers only a few core talking points about his past along with a lot of superficial conventional wisdom.

Where Is Labor’s Opposition To Cuts In Food Stamps, Unemployment?

January 31, 2014 Labor Fightback, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Government, Human Rights, Jobs, Labor

On January 29, by a 251-166 margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut food stamp funding by $8.6 billion over a 10-year period. 89 Democrats joined 162 Republicans to bring about this result. "They are gutting a program to provide food for hungry people to pay for corporate welfare," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger. Anti-hunger advocates like Berg say crop insurance expansion would come at the expense of millions of people who depend on food stamps. "This vote is a tragic, heartless and economically counterproductive departure from America's bipartisan history of fighting hunger," Berg said. "Members of Congress who voted for this should be ashamed."

Americans Trapped On Pequod In Suicidal Chase For Moby Dick

January 30, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Corporatism, Corruption, Democracy, Government

The most important dilemma facing us is not ideological. It is logistical. The security and surveillance state has made its highest priority the breaking of any infrastructure that might spark widespread revolt. The state knows the tinder is there. It knows that the continued unraveling of the economy and the effects of climate change make popular unrest inevitable. It knows that as underemployment and unemployment doom at least a quarter of the U.S. population, perhaps more, to perpetual poverty, and as unemployment benefits are scaled back, as schools close, as the middle class withers away, as pension funds are looted by hedge fund thieves, and as the government continues to let the fossil fuel industry ravage the planet, the future will increasingly be one of open conflict. This battle against the corporate state, right now, is primarily about infrastructure. We need an infrastructure to build revolt. The corporate state is determined to deny us one. The state, in its internal projections, has a vision of the future that is as dystopian as mine. But the state, to protect itself, lies.

What Would A People’s State Of The Union Look Like?

January 29, 2014 Sam Smith, www.prorevnews.blogspot.com Educate! Corporatism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Democracy, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Government, Health Care, Surveillance, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

How would the American people write a State of the Union Address? The media and Washington politicians typically ignore or misrepresent the public views on many matters. This post examines recent polls that suggest what a citizen-written State of the Union address might include. A State of the Union of, by and for the people would be very different than what President Obama gave us last night. The differences between the people and their elected "representatives" show the wide disparity between the two. It is hard to call the government representative of the people with these wide disparities.

Pete Seeger’s Testimony Before HUAC, 1955

January 29, 2014 Staff, www.peteseeger.net Educate! Government

MR. SEEGER: I will tell you what my answer is. (Witness consulted with counsel [Paul L. Ross].) I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir. CHAIRMAN WALTER: Why don't you make a little contribution toward preserving its institutions? MR. SEEGER: I feel that my whole life is a contribution. That is why I would like to tell you about it. CHAIRMAN WALTER: I don't want to hear about it.

VIDEO: 2014 State of The Union (minus the Corporate Influence)

January 28, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Barack Obama, Globalization, Government, Minimum Wage, State Of The Union

Note: In some alternative universe, not only am I the speechwriter for President Obama, but I’ve actually convinced him to deliver the following as the 2014 State of the Union. – Dennis Trainor, Jr. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens- 60 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his annual State of the Union Address to the Nation as a Fireside Chat from the White House in which he outlined a proposed second bill of rights that would to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. The power elite have been guiding this country in a direction in the exact opposite of the spirit behind that second bill of rights ever since. It is because of this- the outsized influence of a few rich people and multi-national corporations that I must report to you that the state of our Union is in tatters, and if allowed to continue on its present trajectory, presents an existential threat to human life both at home and abroad and to the only habitat that human life has ever existed on: planet earth.

Video: Legalize Democracy – Full Documentary

January 27, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Activism, ALEC, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Democracy, Finance and Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Video

Legalize Democracy is a documentary film by Dennis Trainor, Jr. (American Autumn: an Occudoc) about the movement to amend — why it is needed, and how you can get involved, placing the response to corporate coup of our government in the context of the growing Democracy movement emerging right here and right now. Combining interviews with Move To Amend’s national leadership team, with archival footage, and dynamic animated time lines that tell the stories of the Supreme Court cases that shaped the doctrine of “corporate personhood”, the rights guaranteed by amendments fought for by people’s movements, and the intersection of law and culture that codified and created discrimination based on race.

Tell Obama – Stop State Kidnapping Of Lakota Children

January 25, 2014 Staff, www.lakotalaw.org Petitions and Online Actions Criminal Justice and Prisons, Government, Indigenous Rights

South Dakota continues to violate the federal law by placing 90% of the 750 Lakota foster children it seizes each year into non-Native homes and facilities, instead of with relatives or tribal homes. Both federal law and the United Nations define this behavior as genocide. Only tribal programs are placing foster children with their relatives. Obama has the authority to order three federal agencies (the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services), to provide resources to train and develop tribal family service programs and foster care systems for the nine Lakota Sioux tribal Councils. Within a short time, the $60 million in federal funds that currently go to the State of South Dakota’s Department of Social Services to illegally remove Indian children and force them into foster care can instead be spent and managed by the tribes, as they work to keep children with relatives, while restoring tribal sovereignty.

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