(By Todd Smekens) Climate Change: Who’s Campaigning Against Our Environment? (via www.muncievoice.com) MUNCIE, Indiana – The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a new 2,600 page report this week compiled by over 300 scientists warning of the existing and potentially severe adverse future impact of climate change. “… —– Related video: […]
America’s Post-9/11 Dystopia: No-Fly Lists, Secret Gov’t Databases and Guilty even if Proven Innocent
(By Peter van Buren) Rahinah Ibrahim is a slight Malaysian woman who attended Stanford University on a U.S. student visa, majoring in architecture. She was not a political person. Despite this, as part of a post-9/11 sweep directed against Muslims, she was investigated by the FBI. In 2004, while she was still in the U.S. […]
Top Ten Ways in which it was Actually the Israeli Gov’t that Derailed the Peace Talks
(By Juan Cole) Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of peace negotiations that began last August under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry. In fact, the Palestinians took no Israeli land whatsoever since August, whereas the Israelis doubled their pace of building squatter settlements […]
The Limitations of Washington’s Proposed NSA Surveillance Reforms
(By Kara Brandeisky for ProPublica) Ten months after Edward Snowden’s first disclosures, three main legislative proposals have emerged for surveillance reform: one from President Obama, one from the House Intelligence Committee, and one proposal favored by civil libertarians. All the plans purport to end the bulk phone records collection program, but there are big differences […]
State Department Official Freaks Out That Declassifying CIA Torture Report Might Make The World Angry
While the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its $40 million, 6,300 page report detailing the CIA’s torture regime — including the facts that it went beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and then the CIA lied about…
US: Stop Blocking Palestinian Rights! (HRW)
(By Human Rights Watch) (Jerusalem) – The US government should support rather than oppose Palestinian actions to join international treaties that promote respect for human rights. On April 1, 2014, the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, signed accession instruments for 15 treaties, including the core treaties on human rights and the laws of war. On April 2, […]
World Bank Head: Climate Change and Growing Inequality threaten Global Upheaval
(By Jon Queally) President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is warning that the combined crises of planetary climate change and rising global inequality in a highly interconnected world will lead to the rise of widespread upheaval as the world's poor rise up and clashes over access to clean water and affordable food result […]
Top 7 Surprising pieces of Good news in Afghanistan Presidential Election
(By Juan Cole) Afghanistan went to the polls on Saturday, despite threats by the Taliban to disrupt the elections and calls by the extremists for Afghans to boycott the vote. As it turns out, the elections appear to have been a success, despite many problems (including a last-minute shortage of ballots as more voters showed […]
Can We Safeguard Our Democracy After Supreme Court Decision?
The Supreme Court’s evisceration of our campaign finance rules is a powerful argument for the cleansing properties of sunlight. We should respond to McCutcheon by pushing for the full and timely disclosure of every penny donated to advance a political…