Lest we forget, here is a 2015 column full of ironies for Florida’s increasingly dire climate change challenge: Nadia Prupis, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org) | – – Since 2011, environmental agency workers have been instructed not to refer to ‘climate change’ and other words like ‘sustainability,’ investigative report shows. Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection […]
As Battle w/ ISIL for Mosul nears, Iraq should exclude Abusive Militias
Human Rights Watch | – – Role of Abusive Armed Forces, Treatment, and Screening of Detainees (Beirut) – The Iraqi government should make a commitment to prevent any armed forces implicated in laws of war violations from participating in planned operations against the extremist armed group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Mosul, Human […]
The Ugly American: Donald Trump is our Mirror, not an Outlier
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – This is not about Donald Trump. And I mean it. From the moment the first scribe etched a paean of praise to Nebuchadnezzar into a stone tablet, it’s reasonable to conclude that never in history has the media covered a single human being as it […]
Return of Virulent Nationalism: how language is being used to mark national borders
Mario Saraceni | (The Conversation) | – – According to a series of newspapers, immigrants will apparently change the English language in Britain beyond repair over the next 50 years. The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have all run alarming stories on this topic. Language will change “because there are so […]
NSA again hacked by own Contractor, but wants us to trust them with our Data
TeleSur | – – “I thought the Third World War had started,” the man’s neighbor described the raid and arrest in August. A National Security Agency (NSA) contractor has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information, U.S. authorities said Wednesday, a data breach that could result in a damaging new leak about the […]
Israeli Military seizes Female Gaza aid Flotilla
By Andrea Germanos, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – Group including Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire aimed ‘to highlight the vital role women play not only in the resistance movement, but in the survival of the Palestinian people as a whole’. The Israeli navy on Wednesday stopped a boat carrying international female activists, preventing them […]
Balder & Dash: Would our presidential Candidates start a Nuclear War? They won’t answer.
By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – You may have missed it. Perhaps you dozed off. Or wandered into the kitchen to grab a snack. Or by that point in the proceedings were checking out Seinfeld reruns. During the latter part of the much hyped but excruciating-to-watch first presidential debate, NBC Nightly […]
Yahoo helped in unconstitutional US Gov. mass Surveillance of Americans’ Email
By Andrew Crocker and Mark Rumold | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – In a bombshell published today, Reuters is reporting that, in 2015, Yahoo complied with an order it received from the U.S. government to search all of its users’ incoming emails, in real time. There’s still much that we don’t know at this […]
Death by the numbers: A year of violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel
By Chloe Benoist | Ma’an News Agency | – – BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — In October 2015 began what has been in turn called a wave of unrest, a Palestinian upheaval, or even the “Jerusalem Intifada.” Whatever the name, the past year has seen an intensification of deadly violence in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. […]