Encouraging and Supporting the Resurgence of Liberalism in the U.S.A.
Christina Green
Christina Green
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Quote
Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
Palestinians again protest on Land Day, against more land seizures & more settlements. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZiOMs9qTRk?rel=0&w=560&h=315] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvdFQJHP-Bk?rel=0&w=560&h=315] […]
She was making a statement with her art while he was making the best statement of his art.
You better get yourself together
Gettysburg Address
1863: Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Kiley Kroh, News Investigation: A massive toxic waste spill from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta is being called one of the largest recent environmental disasters in North America. First reported on June 1, the Texas-based Apache Corp. didn’t reveal the size of the spill until June 12, which is said to cover more than 1,000 acres. The latest disaster is raising serious concerns about the safety of Canada’s rapidly expanding pipeline network.
Paul Towers, News Analysis: Last week, the term “bee-washing” emerged in public conversation. It doesn’t refer to some new bee cleaning service, but to the insidious efforts of Monsanto and other pesticide corporations to discredit science about the impacts of pesticides on bees—especially neonicotinoids—by creating public relations tours, new research centers and new marketing strategies. Pesticides are playing a key role in bee deaths.
Nick Turse, Op-Ed: As the war in Afghanistan—a conflict born of blowback—winds down, there will be greater incentive and opportunity to project U.S. military power in Africa. However, even a cursory reading of recent history suggests that this impulse is unlikely to achieve U.S. goals. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, there is ample evidence to suggest the U.S. has facilitated a terror diaspora, imperiling nations and endangering peoples across Africa.
Ashley Curtin, News Report: Despite the increasing hunger strike, widening protests and a plea from President Obama, Guantanamo Bay will remain open. After a vote in the House of Representatives denied a bill to close the prison, the House instead added a restriction to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 making it all that much harder to transfer prisoners. More 166 inmates will instead remain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay after the amendment passed, 236 to 188.
Anthony Gucciardi, Video Feature: With the tremendous success of recent grassroots activism against the mad scientist corporation known as Monsanto, a massive new online campaign is aimed at bringing the fight against Monsanto to a whole new level online. On July 24th (and even before then), we are calling for all concerned citizens, those who just want to eat real food that’s not polluted with GMOs, activists and others to create and upload a video of any length telling Monsanto why you stand against their control of the food supply and mutation of crops worldwide.
Jane Yurechko, Op-Ed: The clock is ticking on student loan interest rates. The rates for federally-backed student Stafford loans will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. And what has Congress done to help these already struggling students? Absolutely nothing. Student debt now totals $1 trillion, and Congress is still deadlocked when it comes to preventing an increase in the interest rate on student loans. The House has managed to pass a bill, mainly on party lines, that would in fact seriously harm these students.
William Boardman, News Analysis: The story from Vermont, of all places, is breath-takingly simple: the elected city council, in a bi-partisan vote, has decided to keep its law-making process secret, rather than openly address the question of whether a draconian no-trespass law it passed last winter is patently unconstitutional. That’s right, rather than explain why the law it passed is constitutional, the Burlington City Council is hiding behind lawyer-client privilege as if it—the council were some private corporation rather than a democratically-elected local government.
Jim Hightower, Op-Ed: Since 2006, Team Bush, and then Team Obama, have allowed the little-known, hugely powerful National Security Agency to run a daily dragnet through your and my phone calls—all on the hush-hush, of course, not informing us spyees. Now exposed, leaders of both parties are piously pointing to the Patriot Act, saying that it legalized this wholesale, everyday invasion of our privacy, so we shouldn’t be surprised, much less upset by NSA’s surreptitious peek-a-boo program.
Joy Crane, News Investigation: Dallas-area students who are tardy or accused of unexcused absences are allegedly being handcuffed at school, forced into court and saddled with fines of up to $500—in violation of their constitutional and civil rights, according to a complaint three civil rights groups filed Wednesday with the U.S. Justice Department. The complaint was filed against four Texas school districts in the Dallas region and against Dallas County truancy courts, where children accused of excessive absences must appear before judges.
Robert S. Becker, Op-Ed: A curious path to greatness. Hell, Obama could make history as the first president impeached for the high crime of hypocrisy: winning office as “the anti-Bush,” then governing as “the pro-Bush,” with mixed results on health care, taxes, the environment, gay and civil rights. If Obama’s fate recapitulates Clinton’s, he’d be the first president impeached less for overt crimes against the state than zealous commitment to safeguarding entrenched powers far and wide.
Froma Harrop, Op-Ed: Little victories in curbing health care costs can add up. In truth, they seem little only next to the titanic $2.6 trillion Americans spend a year on health care. So let us salute them. Case in point, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (Medpac) proposes ending a ridiculously expensive practice: Medicare paying hospital outpatient departments vastly more than it does doctors providing the same routine service in their offices.
Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program: A massive leak of poisonous waste-water in Alberta, Canada from fracking has killed every plant and tree in a 1,000 acre area; California lawmakers attempt to regulate the fracking industry by demanding more information on the use of acid in the fracking process, and more.
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: As concerned citizens across the nation protest against the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada continues to paint peaceful activists as criminals or terrorists, using the rhetoric of national security.
Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Truthout: An exploration of alternatives to our current economic structure, which is rapidly collapsing under the weight of its own inequality. As our social and environmental situation becomes a crisis, we must adapt to transform our social systems to be more just and sustainable at the same time.
Richard Schiffman, Truthout: Farmers across the US fight against the intrusive measures of big agricultural corporations as companies like Monsanto force their genetically modified and legally patented seeds on growers across the country. While the local food movement is key to the fight, political action is also key.
Joe Macaré, Truthout: Real reporting is the poorer for Michael Hastings’ passing, and it was in pretty rough shape already. We have to do better. We owe it to him.
Lambert Strether, Naked Capitalism: This continuing analysis of Obamacare reveals more examples of how the system functions as a hierarchy, continuing to create and separate first- and second-class citizens in a system the claims to be about equality.
John Logan, Truthout: One backdrop to the anti-government protests in Turkey this month is the Erdogan government’s repression of workers’ rights to organize and strike. Anti-unionism is a longstanding trend in the country which continues under Turkish subsidiaries of supposedly worker-friendly multinationals such as DHL and IKEA.
The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program: Large corporations are now using the PATRIOT Act against American citizens by accusing protesters and activists working against the TransCanada Keystone pipeline of being terrorists.
J. Andres Araiza, Occupy.com: While many whistleblowers are on trial, some are calling for the prosecution of the journalists who published leaked documents. It seems that under the Obama administration, there is a fine line between being a watchdog of democracy and being a traitor.
Blake Page, Free Thought Blogs: A commissioning ceremony at West Point over Memorial Day weekend vindicates Page’s decision to leave West Point for its failure to uphold church-state separation and join the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Mikey Weinstein, AlterNet: As the military abuses religious morality and superiority to push an agenda of war, destruction and modern imperialism, it is the American people – believers and non-believers – who suffer in the end.
The McGlynn
Kiley Kroh, News Investigation: A massive toxic waste spill from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta is being called one of the largest recent environmental disasters in North America. First reported on June 1, the Texas-based Apache Corp. didn’t reveal the size of the spill until June 12, which is said to cover more than 1,000 acres. The latest disaster is raising serious concerns about the safety of Canada’s rapidly expanding pipeline network.
Paul Towers, News Analysis: Last week, the term “bee-washing” emerged in public conversation. It doesn’t refer to some new bee cleaning service, but to the insidious efforts of Monsanto and other pesticide corporations to discredit science about the impacts of pesticides on bees—especially neonicotinoids—by creating public relations tours, new research centers and new marketing strategies. Pesticides are playing a key role in bee deaths.
Nick Turse, Op-Ed: As the war in Afghanistan—a conflict born of blowback—winds down, there will be greater incentive and opportunity to project U.S. military power in Africa. However, even a cursory reading of recent history suggests that this impulse is unlikely to achieve U.S. goals. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, there is ample evidence to suggest the U.S. has facilitated a terror diaspora, imperiling nations and endangering peoples across Africa.
Ashley Curtin, News Report: Despite the increasing hunger strike, widening protests and a plea from President Obama, Guantanamo Bay will remain open. After a vote in the House of Representatives denied a bill to close the prison, the House instead added a restriction to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 making it all that much harder to transfer prisoners. More 166 inmates will instead remain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay after the amendment passed, 236 to 188.
Anthony Gucciardi, Video Feature: With the tremendous success of recent grassroots activism against the mad scientist corporation known as Monsanto, a massive new online campaign is aimed at bringing the fight against Monsanto to a whole new level online. On July 24th (and even before then), we are calling for all concerned citizens, those who just want to eat real food that’s not polluted with GMOs, activists and others to create and upload a video of any length telling Monsanto why you stand against their control of the food supply and mutation of crops worldwide.
Jane Yurechko, Op-Ed: The clock is ticking on student loan interest rates. The rates for federally-backed student Stafford loans will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. And what has Congress done to help these already struggling students? Absolutely nothing. Student debt now totals $1 trillion, and Congress is still deadlocked when it comes to preventing an increase in the interest rate on student loans. The House has managed to pass a bill, mainly on party lines, that would in fact seriously harm these students.
William Boardman, News Analysis: The story from Vermont, of all places, is breath-takingly simple: the elected city council, in a bi-partisan vote, has decided to keep its law-making process secret, rather than openly address the question of whether a draconian no-trespass law it passed last winter is patently unconstitutional. That’s right, rather than explain why the law it passed is constitutional, the Burlington City Council is hiding behind lawyer-client privilege as if it—the council were some private corporation rather than a democratically-elected local government.
Jim Hightower, Op-Ed: Since 2006, Team Bush, and then Team Obama, have allowed the little-known, hugely powerful National Security Agency to run a daily dragnet through your and my phone calls—all on the hush-hush, of course, not informing us spyees. Now exposed, leaders of both parties are piously pointing to the Patriot Act, saying that it legalized this wholesale, everyday invasion of our privacy, so we shouldn’t be surprised, much less upset by NSA’s surreptitious peek-a-boo program.
Joy Crane, News Investigation: Dallas-area students who are tardy or accused of unexcused absences are allegedly being handcuffed at school, forced into court and saddled with fines of up to $500—in violation of their constitutional and civil rights, according to a complaint three civil rights groups filed Wednesday with the U.S. Justice Department. The complaint was filed against four Texas school districts in the Dallas region and against Dallas County truancy courts, where children accused of excessive absences must appear before judges.
Robert S. Becker, Op-Ed: A curious path to greatness. Hell, Obama could make history as the first president impeached for the high crime of hypocrisy: winning office as “the anti-Bush,” then governing as “the pro-Bush,” with mixed results on health care, taxes, the environment, gay and civil rights. If Obama’s fate recapitulates Clinton’s, he’d be the first president impeached less for overt crimes against the state than zealous commitment to safeguarding entrenched powers far and wide.
Froma Harrop, Op-Ed: Little victories in curbing health care costs can add up. In truth, they seem little only next to the titanic $2.6 trillion Americans spend a year on health care. So let us salute them. Case in point, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (Medpac) proposes ending a ridiculously expensive practice: Medicare paying hospital outpatient departments vastly more than it does doctors providing the same routine service in their offices.
