Saturday, May 30, 2015

46 Republican Who Just Voted to Eliminate Freedom of the Press

Freedom Outpost
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Recently, I reported on the fact that the American Phoenix Foundation is in possession of what they claim are 800 hours of damning undercover video of Texas politicians engaging in corruption. I also told you that the Texas legislature was pushing to stifle freedom of the press in a new bill that would make illegal […]

The post 46 Republican Who Just Voted to Eliminate Freedom of the Press appeared first on Freedom Outpost.



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Rand Paul: “Tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program.”

Reason.com Full Feed
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So long bulk collections under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which courts say are unauthorized and the FBI says is ineffective.


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Thursday, May 28, 2015

The Danger That There Will Be No “Big Event”

SHTF Plan - When It Hits The Fan, Don't Say We Didn't Warn You
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In the end, our lines get moved without us realizing it, and what has already crossed the line, only appears as though it has not. That is both the power and danger of gradualism.

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Chris Hedges: America's Mania for Positive Thinking and Denial of Reality Will Be Our Downfall | Alternet

Chris Hedges: America's Mania for Positive Thinking and Denial of Reality Will Be Our Downfall | Alternet:



"The naive belief that history is linear, that moral progress accompanies technical progress, is a form of collective self-delusion. It cripples our capacity for radical action and lulls us into a false sense of security. Those who cling to the myth of human progress, who believe that the world inevitably moves toward a higher material and moral state, are held captive by power. Only those who accept the very real possibility of dystopia, of the rise of a ruthless corporate totalitarianism, buttressed by the most terrifying security and surveillance apparatus in human history, are likely to carry out the self-sacrifice necessary for revolt....



"The blundering history of the human race is always given coherence by power elites and their courtiers in the press and academia who endow it with a meaning and coherence it lacks. They need to manufacture national myths to hide the greed, violence and stupidity that characterize the march of most human societies....



"Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge deals with the particular and the actual. Knowledge is the domain of science and technology. Wisdom is about transcendence. Wisdom allows us to see and accept reality, no matter how bleak that reality may be. It is only through wisdom that we are able to cope with the messiness and absurdity of life. Wisdom is about detachment. Once wisdom is achieved, the idea of moral progress is obliterated. Wisdom throughout the ages is a constant. Did Shakespeare supersede Sophocles? Is Homer inferior to Dante? Does the Book of Ecclesiastes not have the same deep powers of observation about life that Samuel Beckett offers? Systems of power fear and seek to silence those who achieve wisdom, which is what the war by corporate forces against the humanities and art is about. Wisdom, because it sees through the facade, is a threat to power. It exposes the lies and ideologies that power uses to maintain its privilege and its warped ideology of progress....



"Resistance, as Alexander Berkman points out, is first about learning to speak differently and abandoning the vocabulary of the “rational” technocrats who rule. Once we discover new words and ideas through which to perceive and explain reality, we free ourselves from neoliberal capitalism, which functions, as Walter Benjamin knew, like a state religion. Resistance will take place outside the boundaries of popular culture and academia, where the deadening weight of the dominant ideology curtails creativity and independent thought."



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Tragedy of Whitney Houston and Her Daughter: The Surprising Factors That Can Make People 4600 Percent More Prone To Addiction | Alternet

Tragedy of Whitney Houston and Her Daughter: The Surprising Factors That Can Make People 4600 Percent More Prone To Addiction | Alternet: "“A person who experienced any six or more of the categories” of childhood trauma, Dr Felitti tells me, “was 4600 percent more likely to become an IV [injecting] drug user later in life than a person who experienced none of them.” (6) He adds: “I remember the epidemologists at the CDC told me those were numbers a magnitude of which they see once in a career. You read the latest cancer scare of the week in the newspaper and something causes an increase of 30 percent in breast or prostate cancer and everybody goes nuts – and here, we’re talking 4600 percent.”

The published research showed that for every category of trauma that happens to a child, they are two to four times more like to grow up to be an addict – and multiple traumas produced a massive risk. The correlation for addiction was startling. Nearly two-thirds of injecting drug use, they found, is the result of early childhood trauma. (7)"



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Anonymous Fear-Mongering About the Patriot Act from the White House and NYT

The Intercept
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Two paragraphs, courtesy of the Obama White House and the Paper of Record, illustrate the principal weapons that have poisoned post-9/11 political discourse in the U.S.

The post Anonymous Fear-Mongering About the Patriot Act from the White House and NYT appeared first on The Intercept.



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People Framing Critical Thinking and Political Engagement as “Negativity”

https://marlanaesquire.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/people-framing-critical-thinking-and-political-engagement-as-negativity/

There are several issues I run into when writing about critical topics in the public domain. One of the main contentions people have with my public participation in the political/intellectual sphere is they perceive critical engagement as “negativity.” Specifically, when I share my critical articles with people close to me (which is rarely ever now), there is definitely a backlash for my behavior. Most people don’t directly confront me about it, but they feel my engagement with cultural issues is “negative.” In fact, I had a close family member tell me I should “just be positive and everything will turn out fine.”

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

BEST OF THE WEB: 3 years of confronting the Western Empire and its propaganda machine

Signs of the Times
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After my two days marathon discussion with Noam Chomsky, (at MIT in 2012), a bestselling book was born. Later this year a film will hit the cinemas. Noam and I discussed Western imperialism, and the terror it has been spreading around the world. After WWII, at least 50 million lives were lost. Lives of those whom Orwell used to call "unpeople"; lives brutally interrupted as a result of Western-led and orchestrated wars, invasions, coups and proxy-conflicts. We discussed at length the Western propaganda, which, for centuries, worked extremely hard to justify everything from the colonialist insanity, to supremacist and exceptionalist theories. After my encounter with Chomsky, I decided to dedicate at least two years of my life to visiting most parts of the world, where the Empire had been striking; where it was attempting to bulldoze all opposition that was standing on its way to the absolute control over the planet. My goal was Quixotic - a monster, 1000-page book, exposing and confronting techniques and dogmas utilized by the Empire in all corners of the globe, for purposes of destabilizing "rebellious" nations, overthrowing "unruly" governments, or simply grabbing natural resources.

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Medical holocaust: Psych drugs have killed more than 5 million people over the last 10 years

NaturalNews.com
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(NaturalNews) If every single person currently taking psychotropic medications or antidepressants were to be pulled off these deadly drugs and given a new, safer regimen instead, society would be much better off. This is the larger inference of a new review published in The BMJ (British...


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What a Stupid and Terrifying School Intruder Drill

Free Range Kids
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From Wyoming’s trib.com news comes possibly the dumbest school shooting drill I’ve heard of: Aubrey Truman was swinging on the playground at Worland’s East Side Elementary School about 10 a.m. Thursday when she received the scare of her life. A man in a hooded sweatshirt with a suspicious backpack appeared in the back of the […]

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Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill

“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.

“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp

Vaccinating the ‘herd’ | Consumer Policy Institute

Vaccinating the ‘herd’ | Consumer Policy Institute: "Herd immunity sounds fine in theory. But as Stanford’s Dr. Obukhanych concluded, “As with any garbage in-garbage out type of theory, the expectations of the herd-immunity theory are bound to fail in the real world.”"



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Activist Post: Airlines Spraying Fliers With Pesticides Inside the Plane

Activist Post: Airlines Spraying Fliers With Pesticides Inside the Plane:



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MARYLAND MEITIVS CLEARED OF FIRST “NEGLECT” CHARGE

Free Range Kids
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Hallelujah! Danielle and Alexander Meitiv have been cleared of any wrongdoing in the Dec. 20 incident when they let their kids walk home from the park in Silver Spring, MD.  As Donna St. George in the Washington Post reports: A Maryland couple investigated for neglect after they let their two young children walk home alone […]

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It's Sinister: We're Locking Up Poor People in Debtor's Prisons to Fund Police Depts.

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed
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Local courts and municipalities are adopting aggressive collection practices that prey on the poor.

Ray Charles Staten Sr. should have celebrated his 60th birthday this month. Instead, his family marked the fourth anniversary of his death. It all started, according to a lawsuit that settled in March 2015, when a small debt became a death sentence in the spring of 2011.

Unable to pay an outstanding debt of $409 in court fines, Mr Staten was arrested and sentenced to 16 days in Mississippi’s Harrison County Jail. Shortly after being booked at the jail, Mr Staten fell seriously ill. Despite his obvious symptoms and his cellmates’ cries for help, the jail’s privately-contracted medical staff allowed his condition to worsen until – on the fifth day of his sentence – he collapsed in his cell and, upon being transported to a medical center, could not be revived. He had suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.

Whenever the government locks someone in jail, it has a constitutional duty to provide adequate medical care, a responsibility that can’t be evaded simply by contracting it out to a for-profit company. Unfortunately, Mr Staten’s is a familiar story: the ACLU is currently litigating a case in a Mississippi prison that challenges, in part, the dangerously inadequate health care provided by Health Assurance, a private corporation also responsible for Mr Staten’s medical treatment — or lack thereof.

Mr Staten’s experience is far from unusual. Every day, indigent Americans are ripped from their homes and their communities and forced into jails of varying degrees of dysfunction and decay. The US supreme court ruled three decades ago that it is unconstitutional to imprison people because they cannot afford to pay debts. The ruling, however, hasn’t ended the practice of jailing people for unpaid government fees and fines.

In 2010, the ACLU found that courts across the nation regularly deny Americans proper consideration of their financial position and throw them into jail over fines they could never hope to pay. As a result, local jails nationwide have transformed into modern-day “debtors’ prisons” overcrowded with indigent people whose only punishable offense is being poor. The effects are devastating.

This growing phenomenon funnels poor Americans into the criminal justice system with sentences that disrupt their lives, too often trapping them in a damning cycle of poverty and incarceration that far outlasts their initial conviction. These practices have a disparate impact on communities of color in the United States.

Consider 19-year-old Kevin Thompson, a black teenager in DeKalb County, Georgia, who was jailed simply because he was unable to pay $838 in fines and fees associated with a routine traffic citation. Though only half of DeKalb County’s residents are black, nearly all probationers jailed for failure to pay by its recorders court, which handles minor offenses like traffic misdemeanors, are black. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of Mr Thompson and reached a settlement with the county that included a number of new reform measures aimed at preventing others from facing the same unconstitutional treatment.

Jail sentences like those imposed on Mr Thompson and Mr Staten aren’t just unjust – they’re also costly. The ACLU’s 2010 report In for a Penny found that individuals incarcerated for failure to pay often cost the state more than they owe. The report identifies one individual whose incarceration in New Orleans cost more than six times his $498 debt. So why are we stuck with this senseless system?

Local courts and municipalities – reliant on fines and fees as a source of revenue – are adopting increasingly aggressive collection practices. This was the case in DeKalb County, where county policymakers enlisted a for-profit company for the specific purpose of targeting those too poor to pay fines on sentencing day. And a report released in March by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that municipal courts in Ferguson, Missouri, prioritized revenue above fair administration of justice and imposed undue burdens on residents living in or near poverty, perpetuating and exacerbating racial and economic inequality in the community.

Too many Americans are locked away over small debts. At best, they will leave with few resources and diminished job prospects, trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality. At worst, they will suffer and die due to the callous neglect of their jailers, like Mr Staten. Poverty should never be criminalized. Local courts and municipalities must find other sources of revenue that don’t make victims of their most vulnerable citizens.

 

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names: "Memorial Day is, by federal law, a day of prayer for permanent peace.   But is it possible to honestly pray for peace while our country is far and away number one in the world in waging war, military presence, military spending and the sale of weapons around the world?"



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Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sells 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million

Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sells 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million: "Julie Gerberding was in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2002 to 2009, which includes the years the FDA approved the Merck Gardasil vaccine. Soon after she took over the CDC, she reportedly completely overhauled the agency’s organizational structure, and many of the CDC’s senior scientists and leaders either left or announced plans to leave. Some have claimed that almost all of the replacements Julie Gerberding appointed had ties to the vaccine industry.

Gerberding resigned from the CDC on January 20, 2009, and took over as the president of Merck’s Vaccine division, a 5 billion dollar a year operation, and the supplier of the largest number of vaccines the CDC recommends (article here).

It was reported earlier this month that Dr. Gerberding, now the executive vice president of pharmaceutical giant Merck, sold 38,368 of her shares in Merck stock for $2,340,064.32. She still holds 31,985 shares of the company’s stock, valued at about $2 million. (Source.)"



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The Global Elite’s Crimes Against Humanity

The Liberty Beacon
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By COLIN TODHUNTER | May 25, 2015 The Subversion of Life, Liberty and…

The post The Global Elite’s Crimes Against Humanity appeared first on The Liberty Beacon.



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Monday, May 25, 2015

Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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Last week’s settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling weakness of modern antitrust law.

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Sunday, May 24, 2015

These Are the 5 Stages of Collapse. We Are in Stage...

Before It's News | ALTERNATIVE NEWS
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"For the most part, Americans are completely oblivious of just how close the country is to a total disintegration of its fiat monetary system...the United States financial system died in 2008. It has been kept alive by policy deregulation, monetary printing, and market manipulation (including derivative manufacturing such as interest rate swaps). These collaborative short term machinations have a lifespan that is diminishing every passing day, while investors who have made the wise decision to exchange fiat money for gold and silver keep wondering how long this manipulation can continue. I remember watching Peter Schiff on CNBC and Fox Business between the years of 2005-2007 debating about the upcoming collapse of the mortgage and housing markets.

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