Government

Photos: Anons Seen All Around The World #MillionMaskMarch

November 5, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Anonymous, Democracy, Government

The Million Mask March called by members of Anonymous took place all around the world today. Protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks were seen from the Philippines to South Africa, New York City to Los Angeles, London to Amsterdam. Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of English Catholics who planned the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. November 5th has been treated as Guy Fawkes day in Great Britain from 1605 often celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. International fame was brought to Fawkes from the V for Vendetta comic book and the 2005 movie where Fawkes leads a revolt against a fascist British government. In the movie, Fawkes creates a spectacle campaign taking over the media to bring down the government, blowing up the Houses of Parliament to convince the people to rule themselves. Anonymous has taken the Fawkes image as a protest against the corruption of government. The protests today raised a wide range of issues caused by systemic corruption of government and big business interests.

We Can’t Afford The Pivot

November 4, 2013 Bruce Gagnon, www.space4peace.blogspot.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Government, Wars and Militarism

"OMG, look at China! They are building up their military. We need more $$$ to build more destroyers at BIW!" That's how the game works. For a long time the American people could afford to ignore this kind of talk and go on with their lives. But the rats are running around in broad daylight these days and our physical and human infrastructure across the nation is crumbling and collapsing. So now folks are starting to pay attention. The details matter - we can't afford the pivot. What is really out of balance these days is the ratio between Pentagon spending and domestic spending. It might just be time to consider redefining the word "security". How secure are we at home if there is no money to repair water and sewer systems, to fix our roads, to fund our schools, to pay for health care and to feed our families?

Coal Baron Sues To Silence Media Criticism

November 4, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Energy, Government, Media

The rationale behind the defamation suit for Murray boils down to Stark and The HuffPost referring to Murray as an "extremist" and pointing to the firing of the 150 Murray Energy workers as a potential "fulfillment of a promise" after the 2012 presidential election. To protect free speech and robust public debate, courts make it difficult for well-known public figures to sue for defamation or the related claim of false light invasion of privacy. To avoid those limits, Murray’s lawyers argue Murray is not a public figure at all. This isn't Murray's first time bringing a defamation lawsuit against a journalist. Rather, it's the continuation of a trend of using suits of this sort as a bludgeon to intimidate journalists from writing stories shedding his actions both as an individual and owner of a major coal corporation in a negative light.

Bahraini Protesters Stage Rally South Of Manama

November 3, 2013 Staff, www.presstv.ir Resist! Bahrain, Democracy, Government, Human Rights

On Friday, the protesters shouted anti-regime slogans and called for democracy in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom. They also demanded the freedom of protesters detained by the regime. Meanwhile, Bahrain’s main opposition party, al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, censured the regime for raiding its headquarters on Wednesday. Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have held numerous demonstrations in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on peaceful protesters.

Fukushima: Japanese Organized Crime Involved In Recruitment Of “Specialized Personnel”

November 1, 2013 Prof Michel Chossudovsky, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Environment, Government, Health Care, Nuclear Energy

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.” Several Global Research reports and background articles have outlined the dangers of Worldwide radiation resulting from the Fukushima disaster. This disaster is now being sustained and aggravated by the incompetence of TEPCO as well as political camouflage by the Abe government.

Democrats Protest $5 Billion Food Stamp Cut They Voted For

November 1, 2013 Arthur Delaney, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Government, Human Rights

A group of nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives held a press conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday to demand Congress avert an automatic food stamp cut scheduled to take effect on Friday. "The average family of four will see a $36 cut in their monthly benefits, bringing the average per-person benefit from $1.50 a meal to $1.40 a meal," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said. "Shame on this Congress for allowing this to happen." But the cut, which will reduce monthly benefits for all 47 million Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by roughly 7 percent, is happening thanks mainly to Democratic votes that hastened the demise of a benefit increase from the 2009 stimulus bill. Each of the representatives at Tuesday's presser voted with their party for a pair of 2010 spending bills that set the cuts in motion.

U.N. Urges End Of U.S. Embargo On Cuba For 22nd Time

November 1, 2013 Louis Charbonneau, www.reuters.com Educate! Government, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly for the 22nd time to condemn the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, whose foreign minister said the American policy in place since 1959 was barbaric and amounted to genocide. There were 188 votes for the non-binding resolution, entitled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba," in the 193-nation General Assembly. The only country that joined the United States in voting against the resolution was Israel. Last year, there were the same number of votes for the resolution, though the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau voted with Israel and the United States against the resolution.

Obamacare: The Biggest Insurance Scam in History

October 31, 2013 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.truthout.org Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Government, Health Care, Human Rights

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also called "Obamacare," may be the biggest insurance scam in history. The industries that profit from our current health care system wrote the legislation, heavily influenced the regulations and have received waivers exempting them from provisions in the law. This has all been done to protect and enhance their profits. In the meantime, the health care crisis continues. Fewer people, even those with health insurance, can afford the health care they need because of out-of-pocket costs. The ACA continues that trend by pushing skimpy health plans with low coverage and restricted networks. This is what happens in a market-based system of health care. People get only the amount of health care they can afford, rather than what they need.

How Obamacare Will Destroy Our Social Insurances

October 30, 2013 Michael Lind, www.salon.com Educate! Government, Health Care, Pensions

Unlike conservatives, who are right-wingers first and Republicans second, all too many progressives put loyalty to the Democratic Party — most of whose politicians, including Obama, are not economic progressives — above fidelity to a consistent progressive economic philosophy. These partisan Democratic spinmeisters are now treating Obamacare, not as an essentially conservative program that is better than nothing, but as something it is not — namely, a great victory of progressive public policy on the scale of Social Security and Medicare. In doing so, progressive defenders of Obamacare may inadvertently be digging the graves of Social Security and Medicare.

Hedges: “Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart Have Destroyed Satire”

October 29, 2013 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.acronymtv.wordpress.com Educate! Corporatism, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights, Media, Occupy, Video

In this wide ranging interview, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Christopher Hedges talks with Acronym TV's Dennis Trainor Jr about Class War, Non violence, The Great Gatsby, and about the lost art of Satire. "Satire becomes destroyed in essence in the hands of figures like Colbert, John Stewart and others," Hedges asserts. "They will attack the excesses or the foibles of the system, but they are never going to expose the system itself because they are all millionaires, they are commercially supported. You have very few people (George Carlin was one) who will stand up and do it. If you do that, it is tough to make a living. Carlin maybe being the exception. But if you really use Satire the way Swift used Satire, to expose the English barbarity in Ireland because culture, like everything else in the society has been completely corporatized."

The Long History Of Privatization Failures

October 27, 2013 Ellen Dannin, www.portside.org Educate! Corporatism, Government

We need to own up to is that privatization experiments, based on ideology rather than evidence, have created disruption, neglect, and harm to vital public services and infrastructure - and those effects have undermined the private sector which depends on high quality public services. We seem to have forgotten that the public sector has long created the environment and resources necessary for businesses to prosper. There is a long history of privatization failures in the United States. Moshe Adler's research on privatization in the 19th Century shows a pattern of corruption, poor quality, and failure to provide services the public had paid for. Says Adler, of his study on street cleaning, "in the sixty years before New York City discarded it, the cost of contracting out was about half the cost of governmental production. It was discarded not because it wasn't cheap, but because it wasn't good."

Video, Photo Essay & Samples Of News Coverage #StopWatchingUs

October 27, 2013 Staff, ww.PopularResistance.org Resist! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Thousands gathered by the Capitol reflection pool in Washington on Saturday to march, chant, and listen to speakers and performers as part of Stop Watching Us, a gathering to protest "mass surveillance" underNSA programs first disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Billed by organizers as "the largest rally yet to protest mass surveillance", Stop Watching Us was sponsored by an unusually broad coalition of left- and right-wing groups, including everything from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Green Party, Color of Change and Daily Kos to the Libertarian Party, FreedomWorks and Young Americans for Liberty. The events began outside Union Station, a few blocks away from the Capitol and ended in front of the US Capitol Building.

JPMorgan Negotiates Through The Revolving Door

October 27, 2013 Kevin Connor, www.blog.littlesis.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Finance and the Economy, Government

It is quickly becoming clear that JPMorgan’s tentative $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice is not the massive, overly-punitive sanction that some press reports have made it out to be. The weaknesses in the deal may be explained in part by the fact that in arranging the settlement, JPMorgan was negotiating through the revolving door. We have the names of the key players involved, thanks to the New York Times: attorney general Eric Holder, associate attorney general Tony West, and deputy attorney general James Cole at the Justice Department, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, general counsel Stephen Cutler, and outside counsel H. Rodgin Cohen on the other side of the negotiating table.

Bangladesh Opposition Protest Turns Deadly

October 26, 2013 Staff, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Democracy, Government

At least six people have been killed and more than 100 injured across Bangladesh and more than 100,000 opposition activists rallied in the capital, Dhaka, on Friday to demand that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit and order polls under a caretaker government. Police said the protesters died after officers and border guards opened fire in three towns as the supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist allies protested across the country, AFP news agency reported. Two protesters were killed and several others were injured by bullets in the southern resort district of Cox's Bazaar when border guards opened fire at several thousand supporters of the BNP.

Russell Brand And The Resonance Of Revolution

October 26, 2013 Jerome Roos, By, www.roarmag.org Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights, Media

Russell Brand predicted a revolution on BBC Newsnight. With a rapid spitfire of cunning rhetoric he reduced Jeremy Paxman — the establishment’s private pitbull — to a cowering heap of journalistic fluff. The video instantly went viral. My newsfeed lit up with activists waxing poetics about the coming insurrection. All the major social movement pages implored their sleepy audiences to rise from their slumber like lions and reactivate that unshaken belief we all seemed to share just two years ago: that revolution is nigh. The extreme joy with which the left (from liberals to Marxists to anarchists) seems to have embraced Russell Brand as a spokesman for the revolution is, in the first place, an indictment of our own failure. We are just so happy to see our concerns, criticisms and claims reflected in the mainstream media by a charming, articulate and . . .

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