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Glenn Greenwald: As Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims, Snowden Risks Life to Spark NSA Debate

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 18 (News Report) - Obama distinguished his surveillance efforts from those of the Bush administration and reaffirmed his insistence that no Americans’ phone calls or emails are being directly monitored without court orders. Greenwald calls Obama’s statements "outright false" for omitting the warrantless spying on phone calls between Americans and callers outside the United States. "It is true that the NSA can’t deliberately target U.S. citizens for [warrantless] surveillance, but it is also the case they are frequently engaged in surveillance of exactly that kind of invasive technique involving U.S. persons,"

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Does the Government Understand the 4th Amendment?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By David Sirota - Jun. 17 (News Analysis) - Let's for a moment set aside all those questions about the strong probability of criminal lawbreaking that were so powerfully raised first by the Guardian's NSA series, then by the Washington Post, by Bloomberg News and then by the Associated Press. Let's instead get to the heart of the huge constitutional principle at hand - the matter of probable cause.

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Which Trader Joe's Foods Are Healthiest?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kiera Butler, Brett Brownell - Jun. 17 (News) - I've fessed up before about my takeout addiction , and now I'm ready to come clean about another dinner habit: Trader Joe's frozen meals. Even when I have plenty of time to cook a real dinner, I sometimes opt for a bowl of veggie gyozas or a chicken burrito instead. I know that these meals probably aren't exactly a juice cleanse, but I like to think they're not junk food either. So how healthy are they really? We decided to put a few meals to the test. And for the real nutrition nerds out there, here's the full rundown on the dishes we tested: ...

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Major Push to End Sexual Assault Epidemic in Military Turned Back in Senate

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Adele M. Stan - Jun. 16 (News Report) - Levin made the decision Tuesday, replacing the provisions of Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act with a measure that simply requires that any command decision not to prosecute a sexual assault case be reviewed by a high-ranking officer. But as demonstrated in at least one recent case—the overturning of the sexual assault conviction of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson by Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin—the top brass often exhibit the same deference to defendants as commanders lower in rank. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has condemned Levin’s decision.

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How Predatory Reformers Are Destroying Education and Profiting at Our Children's Expense

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Michael Gecan - Jun. 16 (Special Report) - Local people, connected to their communities, built successful schools based in large part on this pragmatic principle. But today this principle is undercut by political demands for ever-shifting versions of reform, by market demands for efficiency, by smothering student debt loads, and by the mistaken priorities of colleges racing for prestige. The debate over improving education—in the Midwest and throughout the country—often seems hopeless, but it turns out that we have long known what to do and are now suffering from the abandonment of the good methods we once pioneered and practiced.

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Edward Snowden Had a Breaking Point, Where He Decided to Risk It All to Fix This Country -- What's Yours?

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers - Jun. 16 (News Analysis) - Snowden sparked protest, lawsuits, criticism of the administration and US intelligence. His action shows the power that comes when someone inside the system break ranks and tells the truth. Successful movements depend on people breaking ranks: questioning, demurring, disobeying, defecting and withdrawing support. As Ken Butigan writes in Waging Nonviolence, the impact can start a metamorphosis for all of us:

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Secret Trade Agreements Threaten to Undo Our Last Shreds of Food Safety

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Katherine Paul, Ronnie Cummins - Jun. 15 (Special Report) - Under two new trade agreements, currently in negotiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be powerless to shut down imports of unsafe food or food ingredients. And if it tries, multinational corporations will be able to sue the U.S. government for the loss of anticipated future profits. More frightening? Negotiations for both agreements are taking place behind closed doors

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The Latest Outrageous Waste of Money for the Pentagon's Playthings

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Medea Benjamin, James Marc Leas - Jun. 15 (News Report) - Is the Vermont Air National Guard being used for corrupt purposes having nothing to do with its military mission? The answer is yes. Big time. And for big money. In the article, “Those who 'Fudged' Should not be Allowed to Judge” we described how military brass fudged their own scoring process to get Senator Leahy’s home state of Vermont on the list as the “preferred alternative” for basing the F-35.

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A Botched Attack on IRS Budget

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By FactCheck.org - Jun. 15 (Fact Check) - An ad calling for the abolishment of the IRS incorrectly claimed that the federal agency’s budget increased by $2 billion. In fact, it’s down by nearly $1 billion during President Barack Obama’s first term. To its credit, though, Americans for Fair Taxation, the group behind the ad, removed the $2 billion reference after we asked about it.

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How the Transition Movement Is Spreading to Towns Across America

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Jessica Stites - Jun. 15 (Special Report) - “Until now, there’s been the things you can do at home on your own—changing your lightbulbs and sharing your lofts and things—and then there’s everything else that someone else is meant to do: the sort of mythical ‘they,’” says Hopkins. “Transition is what’s in the middle, what you can do with the people on your street.”

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The Shocking Amount of Wealth and Power Held by 0.001% of the World Population

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Andrew Gavin Marshall - Jun. 13 (Special Report) - The global elite are of course not defined by their wealth alone, but through the institutional, ideological and individual connections and networks in which they wield their influence. The most obvious example of these types of institutions are the multinational banks and corporations which dominate the global economy. In the first scientific study of its kind, Swiss researchers analyzed the relationship between 43,000 transnational corporations and “identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.”

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Infographic: Choosing Iran's next president

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

aljazeera.com - By Ben Piven, Ben Willers - Jun. 13 (Special Report) - As Iranian polls near, Al Jazeera explores the country's electoral system, candidates and ideological divisions.

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Saving Nadrah

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Times of Israel - By Lazar Berman - Jun. 13 (Special Report) - The Times of Israel accompanies the first Syrian heart patient in Israel — a four-year-old girl whose family put her life in the hands of the enemy — on the final stage of an unprecedented journey.

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Outside Attacks in Massachusetts

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Robert Farley - Jun. 13 (News) - New ads from outside Democratic groups attacking Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez distort his positions on Social Security and taxes. An ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee claims Gomez “supports protecting special tax breaks for corporations and multimillionaires – like himself.” But Gomez has supported the elimination of special … More >>

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Silicon Valley intensifies lobbying on immigration bill

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

finance.yahoo.com - By Rachelle Younglai, Caren Bohan - Jun. 12 (News Report) - The bill also boosts the number of visas available for highly skilled foreigners, which will benefit those with expertise in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. The tech industry says such a step is badly needed. "Even through the depth of the great recession, we struggled to fill jobs," said Ardine Williams, Intel's vice president for human resources, before making her case for the bill to lawmakers on Wednesday.

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The Meta Question

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jaron Lanier - Jun. 12 (News Analysis) - Ever since we learned about PRISM, the NSA’s secret project to collect metadata on everyone by tapping into commercial online services, we’ve been confounded by a tangle of intangible clashing values. We are asked to balance “preventing tterrorism” against “protecting privacy.” It is hard to demonstrate what terrorism would have occurred without preventative measures, and privacy is as much a feeling as a circumstance.

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Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State