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US watchdog turns blind eye to Israel’s religious rights violations
Stuart Littlewood
It's hilarious.
I'm still rolling on the floor laughing my socks off at a report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
What's the joke? Well, it’s no joke really. The USCIRF has just released its 2013 Annual Report pdf on the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. And... you simply won't believe this... it doesn’t even mention the worst offender of all, Israel.
I am regularly bombarded with reports of Israel's religious persecution of Christians and their Muslim brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.Truly. It's like Israel doesn't exist...
Trans-Pacific Partnership – Is It Really that Bad?
By Tracy Turner
If you read the statement of SIFMA on Japan negotiations in the TPP, then look at exactly what (not who, but what) SIFMA represents – it gives you a feel for TPP expanding the ‘rights’ of securities firms, banks and asset managers. In plain English, TPP expands the rights of the uber rich and reduces the rights of the ordinary. SIFMA Statement on Japan Joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. ... "that for a 21 st century ... should remain an integral part of our current trade agenda." ... In very plain English, Japanese TEPCO, which built 150 nuclear reactors on top of a volcano, should enjoy a bill of rights that strips you and I of our Bill of Rights...
Most Americans do not bother looking at the official positions and talking points of Green Peace and the Sierra Club on TPP. The Sierra Club's introduction paragraph: "An Explosion of Fracking? One of the dirtiest secrets of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. The United States is quietly negotiating an expansive trade agreement with ten other countries that could dramatically increase exports of liquefied natural gas to overseas markets without any domestic oversight. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, therefore, could increase dirty fracking and carbon emissions; put sensitive ecological areas at risk; and increase natural gas and electricity prices, impacting consumers, manufacturers, workers, and increasing the use of dirty coal power". More Here by Sierra Club. Read GreenPeace New Zealands' position on TPP.
THE NINE STAGES OF CIVILIZATION ~ WE'RE ENTERING THE EIGHTH, DEPENDENCE
Allen L Roland
The United States is now firmly entering the eighth stage of all civilizations ~ Dependence with only Bondage ahead of it. Apathy has allowed our constitution to be shredded in stage seven which led to our current state of Dependence on the state ~ but soon an IRS monitored Obamacare program of 'Shared responsibility, or else' will usher in the Orwellian ninth stage of militarized Bondage:
Last year I wrote that the average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years and that these nations have progressed through a nine stage sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacence to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/19/the-nine-stages-of-civilization-were-in-the-seventh-apathy/
Thirdworldizing America
by Stephen Lendman
Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Dean Baker calls poverty America's "new growth industry." The state of today's America is deplorable.
In his latest May 3 analysis, economist John Williams said "April "employment and unemployment data were nonsense: the economy remains in serious trouble."
About 23% of Americans wanting work can't find it. Most jobs are temp or part-time low pay/poor or no benefit service ones with no futures. Conditions are getting worse, not better.
Federal, state and local government jobs were lost. Construction shed 6,000 jobs. Zero manufacturing jobs were created. Most good ones are overseas. They've been offshored to low-wage countries.
Eroding Freedom in America
by Stephen Lendman
US democracy is illusory. America never was beautiful. It's not the land of the free and home of the brave. It wasn't created that way. More than ever, it's not now.
Freedom is a four-letter word. It's fast disappearing. It's an endangered species. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. America's war on terror priorities advance them.
International, constitutional and US statute laws are spurned. Rogue state ruthlessness replaced them. Boston's unprecedented lockdown suggests what's coming. It covered a two hundred square mile area. An important threshold was crossed. Martial law terrorized city residents. Constitutional rights were suspended. Perhaps it was prelude to what's coming. It can happen anywhere across America. It can show up nationwide.
Fearlessness Grows From the Grass Roots
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
As more people see that the government represents Wall Street and concentrated wealth, instead of them; that the government continues to give the banksters who crashed the economy a break while cutting access to basic necessities, that the government continues to put big energy profits ahead of protecting the planet – more people are becoming fearless.
Last week, front-line environmental groups including climate justice activists, opponents of tar sands, mountaintop renewal and many others who oppose the extraction economy that poisons our land, water and air while risking climate change, announced “Fearless Summer.” They announced a week of actions from June 24 to 29 to begin “an epic summer of actions.” The rising tide of courage in the environmental justice movement is one we also see growing in many communities on many issues.
When people stand up against the destructive extraction industries of big energy interests, we gain community support and sometimes we win. This week in New York communities got a lot of power when a court upheld their right to ban fracking. This happened because people stood up for their communities.
Foreclosure Inferno, Florida Homeowners, and HB 87
Michael Collins
Justice and basic concepts of law are sacrificed to allow banks greater ease and efficiency in taking possession of your home.
A bill passed last week by the Florida legislature offers efficiencies and advantages to banks that may launch a major increase in foreclosures in the state known for its volatile real estate market. The only thing standing in the way is a veto by Governor Rick Scott. (Image: Nathan Rein)
HB 87 shifts the burden of proof from the plaintiff, typically a bank, to the defendant, the homeowner. If the bill is signed into law, homeowners must prove that the bank lacks the legal right to take your home within 20 to 45 days of the date that the bank served the foreclosure notice. The reduced timeline restricts the ability to gather evidence from the bank and test it (Does the bank actually have a legal record of your mortgage?). Without the time to discover evidence, homeowners are at a major disadvantage at the initial hearing or appealing a decision, presuming there are funds for an appeal.
The bank-friendly bill, H.B. 87, was passed by the Florida Senate 27 to 13 and House of Representatives 87 to 26 in partisan votes with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. However, when Democrats in the Florida Senate had opportunities to stop the bill due to rules violations, none spoke up. The party line vote was a sideshow that masked the bipartisan assent without objection to what may be the most pro-bank legislation in any major state.
EARLY CREATION Facebook Pages: Real, Fake or Really Fake
By Robert Singer
As is becoming more and more common in the Internet age, right after a disaster (e.g., the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Sandy Hook shooting and now the Boston Bombing), the online community starts buzzing with gossip about the event.
These wild rumors and conspiracy theories are always based on the errant data related to the disaster that seems to show up in the online world … right after the event.
Fortunately we have a number of reliable common sense websites, also showing up right after the disaster, which are ready, willing, and able to debunk these rumors and conspiracy theories.
One of the most popular fact-checking and debunking websites is www.Snopes.com.
David and Barbara Mikkelson are the unassuming California couple who act as honest referees to help us, “ordinary folks,” sort out “the ‘news’ that isn’t fit to print.” News from the 24-hour cable gasbags, partisan talk radio hosts, chain e-mails, blogs and Web sites. [1]
Ordinary folks can fire off an email to the Mikkelsons and the Snopesters stop whatever debunking they have going on and with common sense and logic show us that these tragedies happened just the way the media has reported.
The Conspiracy Theorists always rely on the holes and errant data in the “official story” as proof that some sinister force conspired to commit an illegal act (the “event”) and the follow up (the “cover up”). However, what the Conspiracy Theorists consistently ignore (and rarely does anyone point out including the Mikkelsons) is how simple it would be for the criminals to change or falsify the alleged discrepancy or anomaly {errant data). The act of doing so would be trivial compared to the magnitude of other acts the theorists claim the conspirators committed.
Claim: Websites and social media pages set up as donation sites or memorials for victims with date-stamps before the shooting are proof that there was “prior knowledge of the event by some sinister force (usually said to be the government) intent on deflecting blame away from the "real" perpetrators). [2]
Discussion: These days you can’t swing a cat or open your mailbox without being hit by a flood of emails about the memorials, tributes, condolences, and donation sites for the victims of these tragedies that the conspiracy theorists say were created -- not right after the event, but right before the event.
Anti-Assad Rhetoric Intensifies
by Stephen Lendman
US-led anti-Assad efforts continue. Obama's going all out to topple him. He's heading America for more war. His imperial strategy prioritizes it. Rule of law principles are discarded. Unchallenged global dominance alone matters. America's longstanding permanent war agenda advances it. Syria's now being ravaged. Assad's wrongfully blamed for US proxy death squad crimes. Ad nauseam propaganda claims otherwise. Facebook and Twitter have Stop Assad campaigns.
UK-based Media Lens reports reliably on media bias. On May 8, it headlined " ' This Madman Must Be Stopped' - Syrian Chemical Weapons."
COINTELPRO, Assata Shakur, and Obama’s FBI
By Larry Pinkney
History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”—Howard Zinn
The infamous U.S. government’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was established to “discredit, frame, neutralize, imprison, and kill” Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow political activists in this nation who dared to question and oppose the unjust policies, official narrative, lies, and hypocrisy of the U.S. power elite.
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