Wednesday, August 14, 2013

OpEdNews 08/14/2013

Submitted by: Suzanne
Wired magazine has a new article ; Test case: is Breaking Bad's Mr White a psycho? The story looks at Walter White's evolution over five seasons and finds that indeed, Mr. White does become a psychopath drug maker, dealer and killer, according to the criteria by Robert Hare, the man considered the world's expert on Psychopaths.
Washington is always morally right, whatever it does, and those who report its crimes are traitors who, stripped of their coddling by civil liberties, are locked away and abused until they confess to their crimes against the state. Anyone who tells the truth, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, are branded enemies of the state and are ruthlessly persecuted.
At least 95 Egyptians were killed on Wednesday after security forces moved in on protesters demanding the reinstatement of President Mohamed Mursi, and the government imposed a state of emergency as violence swept the most populous Arab nation. Troops opened fire on Islamist demonstrators in clashes that brought chaos to the capital and other cities and looked certain to further polarize Egypt's 84 million people between those who backed Mursi and the millions who opposed his brief rule.
Trans-Pacific Partnership and Monsanto
The level of secrecy around this agreement is unparalleled. The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark while representatives of US corporations are being consulted and privy to the details.If the TPP is adopted the door will be open wider for human rights and environmental abuse. Some of the things we should expect to see include:

Sequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America
Top officials at academic and medical institutions have grown convinced that years of stagnant budgets and recent cuts have ushered in the dark ages of science in America.
The first session of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are scheduled to begin Wednesday morning in Jerusalem's King David Hotel.
In a society of sociopaths, greed is good. Greed is the driving force behind their existence. It's acceptable in a society of sociopaths for people like the Koch brothers to oppose minimum wage and health care, while being worth tens of billions of dollars, because a sociopath doesn't feel they owe anything to anyone. If their workers are underpaid, overworked, lack benefits or safe working conditions, in the mind of a sociopath--who cares? That's not for the sociopath to worry about. Sociopaths are only concerned about themselves and what makes them feel good. Which is where church comes in. These right-wing sociopaths go to church, and largely excuse their hypocrisy and lack of morality by citing church attendance as why they're not horrible people.
This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter's sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project. Also, numerous FOIAs have been filed with other federal agencies concerning details of Hastings suspicious car "accident."
Barack Obama pulled out the "we're not Big Brother" line again Friday in the ongoing to effort to bamboozle people alarmed about the vast National Security Agency surveillance of whole populations exposed by Edward Snowden. The important thing to him is not that the surveillance is curtailed, but that you feel comfortable with it.
Whistleblower and Civil Rights Groups convene a historic summit on Capitol Hill. FEW/LEF, the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and Coalition For Change (C4C) support an Office of Inspector General investigation of official misconduct and wrongdoing in administratively closing over 3,000 previously unprocessed claims at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and possible complicity by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Racism raises its ugly head in Missouri at a backwater fair rodeo.
In modern culture, Nature and God are seen as separate. But, what if they are not? What if The Self, Yahweh, or I AM, is Nature? This article makes the point that Mother Nature and Father God are indeed married as one.
With its detached homes and no central square, park or even downtown, Cherry Hill is your quintessential American Dreamscape. Its Main Street is barely 500 yard-long, with no stores. To shop, one drives to the Cherry Hill Mall, which is the slick, gleaming and sanitized heart of this community, even its raison d'etre.
For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s. The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky's entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley's archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.
Activist singer songwriter David Rovics is stranded, after New Zealand has treated him very inhospitably. Shame on them. This is the first bad thing I've ever heard about NZ, but it's a nasty one.
By Eugene Elander
Give that Nobel back, Barack!
Early in his first term as President, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize totally on his pious words. His impious actions in violation of the cause of regional and world peace demand return of that very special award, now.
The government went about privacy-protecting email provider Lavabit. Rather than give up the files the government was seeking, Lavabit closed its doors. The 350,000 users who lost email services are the collateral damage of a government war on people's communications.
By Christopher Mandel
The Future According to Elysium
Neill Blomkamp's block buster, Elysium creates a disturbingly realistic vision of the future.
Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, captured the Democractic nomination for New Jersey's vacant United States Senate seat, the Associated Press projected based on early returns. Mr. Booker is facing two longtime congressmen, Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Rush D. Holt, as well as the State Assembly speaker, Sheila Y. Oliver, who has not been as big a presence on the campaign trail as the other candidates.
By Martin Hill
Outrage! TX Trooper who raped black women on roadside re-hired by TX DPS, despite having additional case pending
The so-called Texas Department of Public Safety is a national disgrace.
Poitras was not Snowden's first choice as the person to whom he wanted to leak thousands of N.S.A. documents. In fact, a month before contacting her, he reached out to Greenwald, who had written extensively and critically about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. Poitras and Greenwald are not facing any charges, at least not yet. They do not plan to stay away from America forever, but they have no immediate plans to return. The deepest paradox, of course, is that their effort to understand and expose government surveillance may have condemned them to a lifetime of it. "Our lives will never be the same," Poitras said. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to live someplace and feel like I have my privacy. That might be just completely gone."
Judge Shira Schindlin's ruling on NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies may vindicate many people's experiences with the NYPD, but does not eradicate stop-and-frisk itself. Stop-and-Frisk continues to be a killing poicy that is part of the package many refer to as the New Jim Crow.
By Robert Meeropol
A Kinship with Bradley Manning
As Bradley Manning awaits sentencing, Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, explains why he feels a kinship with this young soldier whom he considers a hero. Hint: access to the truth, whatever it is, is essential.
NSA has lobbied to deploy a "Star Wars" defense for America's computer networks, but officials said the plan had little chance of moving forward.
By Senator Bernie Sanders
Four Questions for Fed Chair Candidates
Sens. Sanders and Warren submit four questions that should be asked of any candidate for the Federal Reserve.
As the Syrian civil war drags on, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are emerging as the fiercest fighters in the rebel coalition and complicating how the conflict can be resolved. So, U.S. neocons are trying to pin the blame on President Obama.
According to a member of Michael Hastings's family, a widely circulated story that the investigative journalist's body was cremated by authorities without the family's permission is flat-out untrue. The story that the cremation was unauthorized -- further stoking credible suspicions aroused by Hastings's strange death in a fiery one-car crash, complete with a dramatic explosion -- has raged across the Internet for weeks.
By Kathy Malloy
Sweet Home Alabama?
The state of Alabama is finally revising its constitution to eliminate some particularly nasty, arcane language left over from the bad ol' George Wallace era of legalized racism. Seems the state constitution still mandates that there be separate schools for "white and colored children." Hard to believe in this day and age ... or is it?
By Robert Reich
Why the Anger?
We've lost most living memory of an era in which we were all in it together -- the Great Depression and World War II -- when we succeeded or failed together. In those years we were palpably dependent on one another, and understood how much we owed each other as members of the same society. Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous.
By Thomas Farrell
Where Do We Stand Now? Some Cultural Considerations
We should step back for a moment from the political controversies of the day and consider the bigger picture of American culture today. Are we Americans today on the brink of entering Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD of serial hook ups and orgies? Wow! Have we ever come a long way from the Puritans! But we now have an unprecedented opportunity to work toward more meaningful social relationships in our culture.
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