MARCH 11 THROUGH 21
March
21, 2017
In 1965- Selma to Montgomery march begins
The
CIAs Primary Objective is to Preserve Its Own Existence,
Not to Protect U.S. Citizens. ... So what is the CIAs
primary purpose? Essentially, to stay in business. This
is according to a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The
Ring of Fire
UNRIVALED
Surveillance State Monitors Every American Citizen!
Redacted Tonight. ... Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp delves
into our twisted and all-encompassing Surveillance State.
One week ago it came out that the CIA has been spying on
Americans through, not only our phones, but even our smart
TVs and cars. The Ring
of Fire
Why
does House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (Rep.
VA) want to fast-track legislation overhauling civil litigation
that protects all Americansincluding those in his
Congressional District, who simply wish to have their day
in court when wrongfully injured or cheated by the very
corporations to whom Chairman Goodlatte is beholden? Does
he distrust judges and juries that have fairly adjudicated
disputes for years? Does he hate the American people? Ralph
Nader
How
'dirty money' from Russia flooded into the UK and
where it went. ... Exclusive: Investigators in eastern Europe
have uncovered a trail that leads to fur brokers, Bond Street
jewellers and even a Somerset school. Guardian
Amid
Spike in Civilian Deaths from U.S. Strikes, Trump Requests
Lifting Policy Limiting Casualties. ... On Thursday, a U.S.
Reaper drone struck a gathering in a rebel-held village
in Aleppo province, killing as many as 49 people. Monitoring
groups say most of the dead were civilians who had gathered
at a mosque to pray, while the Pentagon claims the gathering
was a meeting of al-Qaeda members. Democracy
Now
How
Senators Might Get the Goods on Gorsuch; The Reclusive Billionaire
Behind Breitbart and Trump.
Bill
Moyers
Network
of wealthy Russians has sunk $100m into Donald Trump's luxury
developments. ... The President recently insisted he has
'no deals in Russia' but investigations show lengthy list
of major investments by Russian elite in his property empire.
Independent
March
20, 2017 - First Day of Spring
U.N.
agency published a report noting that Israel has established
an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people
as a whole. ... the author of that report, who has
served as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic
and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) since 2010,
Rima Khalef, resigned after the Trump administration, working
in conjunction with Israel, pressured the U.N. secretary-general
to demand that she withdraw the report.
The
Intercept
A
Last Chance for Resistance. ... The crawl toward despotism
within a failed democracy is always incremental. No regime
planning to utterly extinguish civil liberties advertises
its intentions in advance. It pays lip service to liberty
and justice while obliterating the institutions and laws
that make them possible. TruthDig/Hedges
Brexit,
Nationalism and the Damage Done. ... Brexit is English nationalism
made flesh, but the English underrate its destructive potential
as a form of communal identity. CounterPunch/Cockburn
For
Donald Trump, a Terror Attack Will Be an Opportunity Not
a Curse. ... CAN WE BREATHE a sigh of relief after federal
judges blocked President Donald Trumps discriminatory
executive orders? For a moment we can, but we are just a
terrorism attack away from the White House gaining a new
pretext for its wrathful crackdown against Muslims and immigrants.
The
Intercept
Finks
Explores the Blurred Line Between Propaganda and Literature
... The CIA colluded with literary magazines to produce
cultural propaganda throughout the Cold War, a debate began
that has never been resolved. The story continues to unfold,
with the reputations of some of Americas best-loved
literary figuresincluding Peter Matthiessen, George
Plimpton, and Richard Wrighttarnished as their work
for the intelligence agency has come to light.
TruthDig
March
19, 2017
All
IN THE FAMILY - TRUMP STYLE
|
RUSSIAN
IN HACKING PROBE LINKED TO
ALT-RIGHT STOCK FRAUD
Pavel "Red Eye" Vrublevsky
Vrublevsky,
a Russian businessman under investigation in
the FBIs probe of Russian hacking in the 2016 Presidential
election, shared a business address in John Gottis
former stronghold of Howard Beach, Queens with a company
led by a Tampa Mobster convicted in the alt-right
stock fraud ring run by Sarasotas own Andrew Badolato,
business partner and Breitbart collaborator of Trump advisor
Steve Bannon. MadCow
Related:
Donald Trump and The Palm Beach Homies.
... Trumps history with the Mob - beginning with early
business partners in Atlantic City who were dese dem
& dose guys with crooked noses who knew where
Jimmy Hoffa was really buried is a virtual travelogue
through 30 years of ever-more sophisticated organized crime.
MadCow
From
2008 - Trump Mansion Sold to Mobsters
Sans Frontières ... The Russian "businessman"
to whom Donald Trump sold his Palm Beach mansion for a purported
$100 million was arrested in Russia in April of 1997 and
charged with masterminding the killing of a business rival,
in what law enforcement authorities called "a contract
hit." MadCow
In
Yemen, where US/UK/Saudi have waged savage war:
7
million one step away from famine, 17 million w/food insecurity
- Greenwald. ... Yemen at 'point of no return' as conflict
leaves almost 7 million close to famine. ... Governments
have been warned they face enduring shame should famine
take hold in Yemen, where two-thirds of the population face
severe food shortages. Guardian
Southern
Command in Costa Rica:
US Occupation Disguised as Humanitarian Aid . ... The military
personnel were playing the role of missionaries, giving
Bibles away. However, simultaneously, they were carrying
out various military training activities in the area around
Alto Cuen, a Bribri community. ... "They said they
were missionaries, but no one believed them," Bribri
tribe member Leonardo Buitrago Morales told Truthout. "We
knew they were looking for something more. The truth is
that they want our lands and our forests to make money."
TruthOut
Trump
and Mussolini:
11 Key Lessons from Historical Fascism. ... Italian fascism
provides a better model for our moment than Nazi Germanyand
the comparison is not encouraging. AlterNet/Salon
Trump
budget: an extra billion dollars for nuclear weapons.
... His draft 2018 budget would drastically curtail State
Department spending and foreign aid and end financing for
the U.S. Institute of Peace, but boost the budget for nuclear
weapons production by 11 percent. Public
Integrity
March
18, 2017 -
BOOKS: Empire
of Illusion - The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle. We now live in two Americas.
Onenow the minorityfunctions in a print-based,
literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate
illusion from truth. The otherthe majorityis
retreating from a reality-based world into one of false
certainty and magic. To this majoritywhich crosses
social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affectedpresidential
debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade
reading level.
Chis
Hedges
Compilation
of Trump's Russian Connections. ... We should view all the
stories about Russia and Trump as part of a whole. To facilitate
that, I made an outline of the (1) evidence and (2) people/businesses
linking Trump to Russia. DailyKos
(Bookmark this site if interested, it is updated frequently)
The
Blow-it-all-up Billionaires ... When politicians take money
from megadonors, there are strings attached. But with the
reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House,
theres a fuse. Huffington
or Download
the report
The Enemy Is Not Donald Trump or Steve BannonIt Is
Corporate Power (Video). ... The future In a recent speech
... Chris Hedges tells the audience that resistance
must also be accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist,
anti-capitalist society. TruthDig/Hedges
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's
communications. ... British spy agency collects and stores
vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts,
internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA,
latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal. Guardian
Ralph
Nader Denounces Trump Budget as Corporatist, Militarist
& Racist: "The Mask is Off" . ... Well, so
much for Donald Trumps campaign promises to the forgotten
men and women of America. Theyre the ones who are
the big losers, as you pointed out with your many examples
of these budget cuts. DemocracyNow
Can
Customs and Border Officials Search Your Phone? These Are
Your Rights TruthOut
March
17, 2017 -
Rep.
Gutiérrez Speaks Out After Being Handcuffed for Demanding
Answers on ICE Raids & Deportations. ... federal police
handcuffed Democratic Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez
along with activists and lawyers Monday, after they held
a sit-in protest at a federal immigration office. DemocracyNow
ACLU
Lawyer Esha Bhandari on Your Rights If Border Agents Try
to Seize Your Cellphone at the Border. ... Border agents
are increasingly seizing cellphones and demanding passwords
of travelers, including U.S. citizens. Democracy
Now
(Followup
from yesterday)
Sebastian Gorka, Trumps top counter-terrorism adviser,
is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is
listed by the State Department as having been under
the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany during
World War II, leaders of the organization have told said
Forward.
Key
Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence
of Trump/Russia Collusion. ... From MSNBC politics shows
to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching
issue for the Democratic Partys base since Trumps
victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for
other issues.
Intercept
Israeli
Pol threatens Crimes against Humanity in Lebanon. ... A
far-right Israeli minister said Lebanese civilians must
be direct targets in a future war over Hezbollahs
rising political sway in Lebanon. ... The
next war Israel will launch against Lebanon must take the
country back to the Middle Ages and should target
civilians in the country,
Informed Comment
US
envoy's meeting with Israeli settler leaders raises policy
concerns. ... A top adviser to Trump has met Israeli settler
leaders in an unusual move that may raise fresh concerns
over prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Guardian
March
16, 2017 -
Noam Chomsky on the 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine.
... Amy Goodman narrates a short video piece for Al Jazeera
based on Noam Chomskys book "Manufacturing Consent",
a seminal work on mainstream journalism and its role in
the mechanics of power.
DemocracyNow
and
Video
also
Chomsky on US-Russian relationship. Video
Web
of Weirdness: US and Israeli Codependent Relationship
is Not Just about Money. ... We must look back twenty-five
years to realize how far Israel has fallen in world support,
wrote famed Jewish scholar, Harvard sociologist, Nathan
Glazer in 1976.. CounterPunch
Trumps
Infrastructure Boondoggle. ... Trumps $1 trillion
infrastructure plan is not an infrastructure plan and it
wont put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy.
Its basically a scheme for handing over public assets
to private corporations that will extract maximum profits
via user fees and tolls. Because the plan is essentially
a boondoggle, it will not lift the economy out of the doldrums,
increase activity or boost growth. Quite the contrary. CounterPunch
Trump
admits his health care plan would benefit rich investors,
screw over people who voted for him. ... President Trump
sat down Wednesday for an interview with Fox News
Tucker Carlson, and Carlson asked him to respond to criticisms
that the Republican health care plan favors the healthy
and hurts most of the voters who supported his election.
Trump didnt hesitate to agree that that is exactly
what it does. ThinkProgress
Federal
Layoffs Loom as?Trumps Meat-Ax Targets EPA and?IRS.
... Even former Bush administration officials agree this
would be dangerous and counterproductive. The draft of President
Trumps first Executive Budget indicates he will make
double-digit funding cuts to dozens of non-military agencies.
AlterNet
Beware
The False Temptations Of The Russia Story. ... Fantasy,
confirmation bias, and forgeries in the reaction to Trump.
BuzzFeed
Top
Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka is a sworn member
of Nazi-linked group. ... controversial Trump counter-terrorism
aide Sebastian Gorka is facing fresh scrutiny for his ties
to far-right political organizations in Hungary. RawStory
March
15, 2017 -
Don't like your government? Fear not - there is a fix for
that. ... Bannon
and Trump Have Quietly Installed an Alt-National Security
Council Operating Inside the White House. ... The Strategic
Initiatives Group is the White House pipeline to the white
nationalists of the European right. AlterNet
How
Our Political System Has Crackedand Why It Probably
Can't Be Fixed. ... What ever happened to the separation
of powers? The system wasnt supposed to work this
way. The Founding Fathers deliberately devised a structure
in which someone like Donald Trump a vain, self-centered,
mendacious demagogue could never become chief executive,
and in which the legislature could never be captured by
a reckless, ideologically obsessed minority bent on overriding
the majority interests of Americans. AlterNet/Moyers
How Our Political System Has Crackedand Why It Probably
Can't Be Fixed. ... What ever happened to the separation
of powers? AlterNet
Senator
introduces bill to investigate Russian news outlet RT. ...
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is introducing a bill
that would give the Justice Department additional authority
to investigate Russia's English-language news outlet RT
America for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration
Act. Politico
Edward
Snowden Has Some Advice for Donald Trump About Surveillance.
... NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said on Tuesday that
if Donald Trump is sincerely concerned about the governments
ability to listen in on his private communications, he should
fix the NSA mass surveillance programs that collect data
on every American. Intercept
Ex-NSA
analyst: Intel sources say White House targeting journalists
with help from Russian intel. ...Former NSA
analyst John Schindler, who now is a national security columnist
for the Observer, reported on Tuesday that his sources in
the intelligence community believe that President Donald
Trumps White House is colluding with Russian intelligence
to target journalists.
RawStory
(2013) FISA court oversight: a look inside a secret and
empty process... Obama and other NSA defenders insist there
are robust limitations on surveillance but the documents
show otherwise. Guardian
March
14, 2017 -
The Deep State 2.0 ... The prospect of four years of Donald
J. Trump's nonstop rants about imaginary conspiracies against
his daughter, wholesale slander against the judicial branch
and attacks on the press as enemies of the people has caused
some Americans to slip into a comforting form of denial.
He will be a blip in our history, they say, because our
formal institutions, and the American people, will ultimately
prevail against a rogue disruptor. TruthOut/Moyers
The
Trump administration is exploring how to dismantle or bypass
Obama-era constraints intended to prevent civilian deaths
from drone attacks, commando raids and other counterterrorism
missions outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan
and Iraq, according to officials familiar with internal
deliberations. NYT
If
We Don't Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says
Yale Historian. ... Timothy Snyder warns: History gives
us a bunch of cases where democratic republics became authoritarian
regimes.
AlterNet
The
American 'Deep State,' as a Trump Voter Might See It ...
When
unelected leaders confront illiberal ones. The
Atlantic
Angels
and Demons in the Cold War and Today. ... George Kennan
knew how to bring down the house. His lecture audiences
started off skeptical about whether Russia really wanted
to be remade on the American model. NYTimes
Cambodia
Outraged as US Demands Repayment of 'Blood-Stained' War
Debt. ... The
US dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia during
the Vietnam War. ... Cambodians are responding with outrage
to the U.S. government's demand that the country repay a
nearly 50-year-old loan to Cambodia's brutal Lon Nol government,
which came to power through a US-backed coup and spent much
of its foreign funds purchasing arms to kill its own citizens,
according to Cambodia's current prime minister Hun Sen.
Common
Dreams
March
13, 2017 -
The Dance of Death. ... The ruling corporate elites no longer
seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of
death. They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the
country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an
insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism.
TruthDig/Hedges
Chris
Hedges Discusses the Irrevocable Decline of the American
Empire With Poet Linh Din. ... We are really
the poorest country on earth, and people refuse to see that,
we only look good because of our military might, but this
farce cannot go on forever. Truth
Dig Video
Trumps
War on Dangerous Memory and Critical Thought ... The ideal
subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or
the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction
between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
CounterPunch/Giroux
Globalization
Is Just a Contemporary Word for Financial Colonialism. ...
We who live in imperialist countries owe an enormous debt
of solidarity to people in countries like Bangladesh, which
are being ransacked by our governments and corporations.
We cannot have socialism in the West until we acknowledge
and start repaying this debt. TruthOut
The
Perils of the New, Shiny George W. Bush. ... The cuddly
George W. Bush who paints pictures of dogs and Jay Leno
is a war criminal. He doesnt deserve an inch of rehabilitation.
JacobinMag
White
Nationalist Party (wiki)
White
Nationalist - White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist
or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged
inferiority of nonwhites. Groups listed in a variety of
other categories - Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi,
racist skinhead, and Christian Identity - could also be
fairly described as white nationalist.
SPLC
(May
2016) White Nationalist Party Claims More of Its Members
Are Now Trump Delegates.
Mother
Jones
(2016)
How White Nationalists Learned To Love Donald Trump. ...Once
they believed he was a secret Jew. Now he has more white-power
support than any mainstream candidate in modern politics.
Heres how it unfolded. Politico
The
Complete History Of Donald Trump's Relationship With The
White Nationalist Movement. ... Bannon oversaw Breitbart
News attempts to normalize and embrace the white nationalist
movement. As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, Breitbart
"has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing
ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right.
Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas."
MediaMatters
March
12, 2017 -
Exposing the corporate ties, corrupting influences and conflicts
in Trump's billion dollar cabinet.
Updated Corporate
Cabinet
Former
Koch Agents, Fossil Fuel Industry Hired Guns Now Staffing
Trump's Agencies. ... A DeSmog investigation shows that
this list of staffers, largely undisclosed before this week,
includes former operatives allied with Koch Industries,
oil and coal industry employees, a former employee of a
prominent climate denial group, and an advocate for a pro-trophy
hunting organization funded by oil and gas. CommonDreams
Related:
ProPublica
Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama.
... German chancellor furious after revelations US intelligence
agency listened in on her personal mobile phone. Guardian
Frightening
Truth About Trump Supporters
Fox News viewers believe the mainstream media is the enemy
of the people, even as they consume said media. The American
right is rife with internal contradictions, perhaps none
more pronounced than its attitude toward the mainstream
media. AlterNet
How
to Forget, American-Style: George W. Bush and the Forever
War. ... George W. Bush peddles his book of wounded soldiers,
and his past crimes are forgotten. Thousands of refugees
seek asylum from the wars we started, and are denied. We
forget what he was, we forget the aftermath of what he did,
but how? Whence comes this shallow grave of memory?. TruthOut
March
11, 2017 -
Book of the Week -
1984
by George Orwell -
Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwells chilling
prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone,
his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything
to control the narrative is timelier than ever.
March 11, 2017 -
Our President Is Up to No Good ... Does Donald Trump in
his fevered, ungovernable mind relish polluting the public
with ever more abominable lies? Is he so unhinged he wants
to take the republic down with him, like a raging, blinded
Samson?
TruthOut
(Moyers and Giroux)
New
Anti-Protesting Legislation: A Deeper Look. ... In recent
weeks, multiple articles have pointed to the wave of new
anti-protesting bills introduced in state legislatures since
the end of 2016. TruthOut
New UK Secrecy Laws Include Harsh Sentences For Journalists
Working With Whistleblowers. .. Open Rights Group's Executive
Director Jim Killock says PM Theresa May has demonstrated
a preference to defend the right to government secrecy over
the right to a free press. The
Real News
Why
the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and
the Media. ... Russia scandals have bloodied the Trump administration.
But it carries dangers for those reporting it. Rolling
Stone/Taibbi
Little-noticed
House Republican bill would let employers demand workers
genetic test results. ... A House panel voted to allow employers
to require workers to undergo genetic testing or risk paying
a penalty of thousands of dollars. RawStory
Trump
keeps finding himself in the same city as Russian billionaire
who paid him $95 million for mansionl. ... A Russian billionaire
paid Donald Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion nearly
a decade ago a substantially higher price than the
future president had paid several years earlier and more
expensive than any other home for sale at the time. RawStory
Death
in al Ghayil -
Women and Children in Yemeni Village Recall Horror of Trumps
Highly Successful SEAL Raid ... On January 29,
5-year-old Sinan al Ameri was asleep with his mother, his
aunt, and 12 other children in a one-room stone hut typical
of poor rural villages in the highlands of Yemen. A little
after 1 a.m., the women and children awoke to the sound
of a gunfight erupting a few hundred feet away. Roughly
30 members of Navy SEAL Team 6 were storming the eastern
hillside of the remote settlement. Intercept
Solar
Creates More US Electricity Jobs Than Oil, Gas, Coal, Nuclear
Combined. ... The US Department of Energy (DOE) issued its
second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) in
January of 2017, and the numbers didn't bode well for the
fossil fuels industry. TruthOut
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