Government

The Honorable History Of Whistleblowing

April 24, 2016 Sam Smith, www.prorevnews.com Resist! Accountability, Government, Transparency, Whistleblowers

By Sam Smith of Progressive Review. Your editor has just returned from a meeting of the Fund for Constitutional Government which helps to support the Government Accountability Project, a big friend of government whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden. I asked GAP's sainted Louis Clark how many whistleblowers they were handling these days and his estimate was 50, with another 50 being assisted in some way. The media, embedded as it is in the official version of Washington life, doesn't let the public know how important whistleblowing is to decent government, not infrequently implying that revealing the truth is some sort of dirty - or disloyal - trick. This list of whistleblowers over the years, compile by GAP, may help to counterbalance the Washington view.

Breaking: Iceland PM Resigns Over Panama Papers

April 5, 2016 Staff, www.france24.com Educate! Big Banks, Corruption, Finance and Economy, Government, Iceland

By France 24 Europe. "The prime minister told (his party's) parliamentary group meeting that he would step down as prime minister and I will take over," the deputy leader of Iceland's Progressive party and Agriculture Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson told a live broadcast. Gunnlaugsson, 41, had been under pressure to resign after the leaked documents revealed that he and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands and had placed millions of dollars there. Iceland’s opposition party filed a motion of no-confidence on Monday as thousands of protesters gathered in front of parliament, hurling yogurt, eggs and bananas and demanding the departure of the leader of the centre-right coalition government, in power since 2013.

Bill McKibben Calls Out Fracking & Government Officials Who Pushed It

March 25, 2016 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Bill McKibben, Fracking, Government

By Deirdre Fulton for Common Dreams - With a new piece in The Nation, environmental leader Bill McKibben upends widely held assumptions not just about President Barack Obama's climate legacy, but about the so-called "natural gas revolution" that was once considered a "savior" in the fight against global warming. The author and 350.org co-founder points to "an explosive paper" published last month in Geophysical Research Letters, in which Harvard researchers "concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities."

Report Blames State And Federal Government For Flint Water Crisis

March 25, 2016 Andrew Emett, www.nationofchange.org Educate! Flint, Government, Lead Poisoning, Water

By Andrew Emett for Nation of Change - Appointed by the governor, the Flint Water Advisory Task Force recently released a damaging report accusing state and federal agencies of prolonged inaction while falsely claiming that the water was safe. Due to multiple levels of government failure, the task force concluded that Gov. Rick Snyder’s office, inept state employees, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and state-appointed emergency managers were directly responsible for poisoning the citizens of Flint.

Pro And Anti-Government Marches Take Streets Of Caracas

March 17, 2016 Lucas Koerner, www.venezuelanalysis.com Resist! Government, March, Venezuela

By Lucas Koerner for Venezuela Analysis - Caracas, March 14, 2016 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Rival marches flooded the streets of Caracas on Saturday as Venezuelans voiced their respective support for and opposition to the government of President Nicolas Maduro. On the pro-government side, tens of thousands of Chavistas marched through the streets of heavily working class downtown Caracas expressing their firm rejection of a US executive order labeling Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat”.

Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report

March 6, 2016 John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi, www.nsarchive.gwu.edu Educate! CIA, Government, NSA, Transparency

By John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi for National Security Archive. Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney. Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public.

Michigan House Democratic Leader Calls For Gov. Snyder To Resign

March 3, 2016 Brian McVicar, www.mlive.com Resist! Government, Michigan, Water

By Brian McVicar for Michigan Live - House Democratic leader Tim Greimel called on Gov. Rick Snyder to resign Wednesday, saying the Ann Arbor Republican showed "negligence and indifference" in his handling of the Flint water crisis. Greimel, pointing to information contained inthousands of pages of emails Snyder's office has released in recent weeks, said it is "inconceivable" that the governor wasn't aware of mounting concern over the safety of Flint's water prior to October. That's when the state officially acknowledged the water was unsafe to drink and contained high lead levels.

Can The New Left Govern Europe?

February 19, 2016 Conn Hallinan, www.fpif.org Create! Europe, Government, Left

By Conn Hallinan for Foreign Policy In Focus - Over the past year, left and center-left parties have taken control of two European countries and hold the balance of power in a third. Elections in Greece, Portugal, and Spain saw right-wing parties take a beating and tens of millions of voters reject the economic austerity policies of the European Union. But what can these left parties accomplish? Can they really roll back regressive taxes and restore funding for education, health care, and social services? Can they bypass austerity programs to jumpstart economies weighted down by staggering jobless numbers? Or are they trapped in a game with loaded dice and marked cards?

Podemos Proposal For Coalition Government Unmasks Ruling Class

February 1, 2016 Lucha de Clases, www.marxist.com Create! Government, Spain

By Lucha de Clases for In Defense of Marxism - If the proposal of a “government of progress” is to be taken seriously by the working masses, their families, the youth, the pensioners and other layers, they should accompany it with a call for a mass mobilisation throughout the whole country in support of their proposal. That would put the PSOE leaders under enormous pressure. Mass meetings in working class neighbourhoods should be called to explain the content of what is being proposed. The lodging of parliamentary initiative 25 on the part of Podemos, which includes opposition to cuts, increasing the minimum wage, emergency measures for families in need, halting evictions, etc, was a very positive step.

People Of Flint Call For Pro-Democracy Revolt To Save Poisoned City

January 28, 2016 Lauren McCauley, www.counterpunch.org Resist! Flint, Government, Michigan, Protest, Water

By Lauren McCauley for Common Dreams - Fed up with an administration whose policies caused the devastating water crisis and subsequent health epidemic, advocacy organizations and community members are calling for nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way government works in Michigan. On Tuesday, Flint residents met with leaders of the national NAACP to draw up a "15-point priority plan" for addressing the lead-tainted water crisis. Chief among their demands is the repeal of Michigan's contentious emergency manager law, which was enacted in 2011 under Gov. Rick Snyder.

Spain’s Deadlocked Parliament Reflects Crisis Of The Regime

January 19, 2016 Jorge Martín, www.marxist.com Resist! Capitalism, Europe, Government, Spain

By Jorge Martín for In Defense of Marxism - “I’d like Spain to get a stable government as soon as possible,” insisted president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, a few days ago. The reason why was explained by Eurogroup president Dijsselbloem: “Spain will have to present further adjustment.” European capital has already said that Spain’s budget is off-target and is demanding 10bn euro worth of additional cuts. However, forming the type of government the ruling class needs, is proving very difficult.

Banks Don’t Always Win Anymore, Are On The Defensive

January 3, 2016 Zach Carter, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Banks, Finance and the Economy, Government, Wall Street

By Zach Carter for Huffington Post. Washington, DC - Banks started the year with a long Washington wish list. They wanted to tie up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with reams of red tape. They wanted to charge high hidden fees on auto loans -- a practice that disproportionately hits the pocketbooks of people of color. They wanted to poke a big hole in the Volcker Rule, which bans banks from placing speculative securities bets with taxpayer-backed money. They wanted to let banks with assets measured in 12 figures operate with thinner capital cushions and larger amounts of risky borrowed money. They wanted to kill a new rule that would require financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients (amazingly, this is not already the law). The banks lost every one of these fights.

Lebanon’s Rich-Poor Divide In Focus As Garbage Protests Widen

September 24, 2015 Josh Wood, www.thenational.ae Resist! Government, Lebanon, wealth inequality

By Josh Wood in The National - For 20-year-old Ali Obeid, the decision to join Lebanon’s anti-government protests two months ago was simple. He was sitting at his home in Beirut during one of the early demonstrations when another long summer power cut set in. Aware of the protest and figuring that the heat outside couldn’t be that much more miserable than in his home, he took to the streets that day. “Maybe I could tell them we need electricity for air conditioning,” he recalls thinking. The You Stink protest movement began two months ago after rubbish piled up in the streets of the capital when the Lebanese government failed to find an alternative way to dispose of Beirut’s waste after Naameh – the nation’s largest landfill – shut on July 17. The call of the demonstrators broadened as people like Mr Obeid brought other demands for basic services that were lacking, such as water and electricity. Others railed about corruption.

Could A Coup Really Happen In The United States?

September 11, 2015 Peter Moore, www.today.yougov.com Educate! Government, Wars and Militarism

By Peter Moore in YouGov - A law professor at West Point was forced to hastily resign after it emerged that he had authored a number of controversial articles. In one he suggested that legal scholars defending the rights of suspected terrorists could be considered legitimate military targets, while in another he examined a potential military coup in the United States, arguing that officers may have a duty to sieze control of the federal government if the federal government acted against the interest of the country. The United States military has long embraced the idea of civilian control of national affairs, and apart from certain rare moments the American officer corps has faithfully followed the orders of their civilian superiors. YouGov's latest research shows, however, that officers in the military are held in much greater esteem than their civilian superiors, and that they are widely viewed as having the best interests of the country in mind instead of their own selfish concerns.

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