Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be
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Check out my exclusive interview with Dr. Leonard Wong.
I was astonished that I was the first to interview him after the release of his report of a culture of lying in the US military.
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By Rob Kall
Exclusive: The Military's Culture of Lying- A Top-down Problem? Intvw With Army War College Expert 
I interview the first author of the Army War College's report on Lying in the Military, focusing on how the top-down, hierarchical nature of the military is part of the problem
What does a one-room schoolhouse in Michigan have to do with Greece, Europe, Democracy and the now floundering economic globalization experiment?
We now know that, according to the reporters who were with him at the time, some of Bill O'Reilly's war stories from Argentina don't appear to be true. We also know that at least one of Brian Williams' war stories wasn't true. Does it matter? Should it matter?
On the weekend, the DNC gave its unanimous endorsement to a constitutional amendment that explicitly states voting is an individual right.
About our Founders, Jefferson, in particular and economist Adam Smith, disliked the idea that the rich should continue to 'past on their wealth', as at least, unhealthy.
Right-to-work laws require unions to represent all workers covered by a union contract, but lets those workers opt out of paying dues to the union. The idea is to weaken or even bankrupt the union. The union is required by the contract to provide services to the workers, including rent and employees for the union office, representation in disciplinary hearings and contract negotiators.
Political activism! Wasn't it refreshing to hear all the sincere political statements from the Academy members. It could be a powerful blow to the Koch brothers and their minions if these enlightened producers, directors, writers, and celebrated actors worked together to battle the Neocon propaganda that dominated our corporate-controlled media. That would be truly deserving of a golden statue.
A year after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Ukraine's elected president, the new powers in Kiev are itching for a "full-scale war" with Russia -- and want the West's backing even if it could provoke a nuclear conflict, a Strangelovian madness that the U.S. media ignores, writes Robert Parry.
This war has been the greatest failure in American history. The American people will be paying the price for it for generations to come, in more ways than one. But Jeb Bush has reminded us that there is no price to be paid for failure, or for ethical lapses, among the elites who govern us.
Bill O'Reilly tried to win the day by producing documents that, he asserted, showed how he had been unfairly tarred. "In what I consider to be a miracle," he declared, "I found this CBS internal memo from 33 years ago praising my coverage" of a protest in Buenos Aires that happened just as the 1982 Falklands war ended.
According to The New York Times, Bill O'Reilly threatened one of its reporters if they didn't report on him accurately. During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter's coverage was inappropriate. "I am coming after you with everything I have," Mr. O'Reilly said. "You can take it as a threat."
Patriotism is for the oligarchy and the patriarchy and so is feminism. Matriotism is needed in the postmodern world?
CBS News today posted its reports from Buenos Aires at the end of the Falklands war, in response to a request from Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who has been seeking to counter reports that he mischaracterized his wartime reporting experience. But rather than bolstering O'Reilly's description of the anti-government protest he says he covered as a "combat situation," the tape corroborates the accounts of other journalists who were there and who have described it as simply a chaotic, violent protest.
Oklahoma isn't the only state where Republicans are waging war on high school history class.
Is there a fixed reality apart from our various observations of it? Or is reality nothing more than a kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities? Experiments on elementary particles have upended the classical paradigm of a causal, deterministic universe. Consider the double-slit experiment. The electron appears to be a strange hybrid of a wave and a particle that's neither here and there nor here or there. Like a well-trained actor, it plays the role it's been called to perform. It's as though it has resolved to prove the famous maxim "to be is to be perceived." I suggest that we regard the paradoxes of quantum physics as a metaphor for the unknown infinite possibilities of our own existence. This is expressed in the Vedas: "As is the atom, so is the universe; as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm; as is the human body, so is the cosmic body; as is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind."
By Mark Taylor-Canfield
Loss of Affordable Housing Hits Home In Seattle - InArtsNW Journalist Mark Taylor-Canfield documents the loss of independent art & music venues in Seattle.
By Dr. Lenore Daniels
The Empire of Necessity Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (Greg Grandin): Of Hulls and "Routes" of Regene 
A review/essay of Greg Grandin's "The Empire of Necessity."
In a rare move, Washington DC's Federal U.S. Court of Appeals will hear a landmark challenge to their continued operation.
NEPC: Separating Fact and Fiction About Charter Schools; BY DIANE RAVITCH
So how does the public find the truth about Charter Schools. This Ravitch blog shows how misleading 'reports' can be. The National Education Policy Center regularly reviews reports from think tanks and advocacy groups. In this report, its scholars review an effort by charter school advocates to defend charter schools against critics. "The conclusion: charters promote privatization and segregation. "National Charter School Report IS Misleading and Superficial."Read and see an academic review of the report finds that it perpetuated its own myths and fictions about charter schools rather than adding to the discourse surrounding school choice." et, the reviewers found that the report's main purpose appears to be the "repetition or 'spinning' of claims voiced by advocacy groups and think tanks that promote privatization and school choice." Furthermore, the reviewers found... GET THE TRUTH.
By Herbert Salit
What is 'the US Economy?' Where will it be Tomorrow? - Herbert Salit Author notes that 'the US Economy' is a 'Potemkin,' fake, a top-down distribution-scheme, where the 'money' is just created in a vast electronic 'printing-press' by The Federal Reserve, thanks to the absurd holdover fact that The Yankee Dollar remains the world's international reserve currency - i.e. the whole world remains 'The-Dollar-Zone.'
As pressure builds to make public 28 pages of a joint congressional inquiry on 9/11 which was classified by President George W. Bush, the Bush family's well-documented relationships to Saudi and other foreign terror suspects are again coming to the fore.
Two senior U.S. Senate Democrats invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to a closed-door meeting with Democratic senators during his upcoming visit to Washington, warning that making U.S.-Israeli relations a partisan political issue could have "lasting repercussions." Senators Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein extended the invitation "to maintain Israel's dialogue with both political parties in Congress," according to a letter to the Israeli leader obtained by Reuters. Durbin is the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate. Feinstein, who has been in the Senate since 1992, is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations and Judiciary committees.
What the statement from Walker's office reveals is what the governor would not say when he was running for re-election in 2014 but what he will say as a 2016 Republican presidential prospect. Walker is what he has always been: a longtime supporter of this agenda "who co-sponsored right-to-work legislation as a lawmaker and supports the policy."
By Carl Milsted Jr.
Global Warming? Who Cares? The case for being a bit more mellow about global warming -- without disbelieving the science.
I sometimes mock "very serious people" -- politicians and pundits who solemnly repeat conventional wisdom that sounds tough-minded and realistic. The trouble is that sounding serious and being serious are by no means the same thing, and some of those seemingly tough-minded positions are actually ways to dodge the truly hard issues. Rising inequality isn't about who has the knowledge; it's about who has the power.
It was a terrifying three minutes for the Koch brothers, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took on the Kochs directly and delivered a message of populism that struck at the heart of their oligarchic plot to buy control of the federal government on ABC's This Week. Bernie Sanders is the last person that the Koch brothers want to see on a network Sunday morning show. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) did more damage to the Koch conspiracy to buy control of the federal government in three minutes than almost anyone else could have done in ten.
Republicans were hammered over the 1995-96 government shutdowns, losing House seats in the next election and boosting President Bill Clinton's sagging approval ratings. Now it appears the party is heading toward another budget-related standoff, this time over immigration policy and the Homeland Security Department, which is scheduled to run out of funding Saturday. But House conservatives say they are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop what they describe as the latest example of Obama's executive overreach.
By Tom Engelhardt
Alfred W. McCoy: The Unwritten American Rules of the Road "The sovereign is he who decides on the exception," said conservative thinker Carl Schmitt in 1922, meaning that a nation's leader can defy the law to serve the greater good. Though Schmitt's service as Nazi Germany's chief jurist and his unwavering support for Hitler from the night of the long knives to Kristallnacht and beyond damaged his reputation for decades, today his ideas have achieved unimagined influence. Latest Articles
This is the third installment, in "Part 1" of my proposals for a Third Direct Democracy Constitution for America. The general following of the format of the Second Constitution continues, but with explanatory notes added.
The US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute's (SSI) has generated a report: Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession Opednews is publishing excerpts from the full report
Another one of Bill O'Reilly's former colleagues at CBS News is casting doubt on his claims that he reported from a "combat situation" in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War. Charles Krause, a CBS News correspondent from 1980 to 1983 who reported from Buenos Aires during the same period as O'Reilly, is the latest to contradict the Fox News host.
Pepe Escobar: Inside China's "New Normal"
Seen from the Chinese capital as the Year of the Sheep starts, the malaise affecting the West seems like a mirage in a galaxy far, far away. On the other hand, the China that surrounds you looks all too solid and nothing like the embattled nation you hear about in the Western media, with its falling industrial figures, its real estate bubble, and its looming environmental disasters.
U.S. Army Claims to Be Full of Liars
"Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession" is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability.
Why did economists make no protest as the US economy was shipped abroad and deep-sixed at home? Globalism, like neoliberal economics, is an instrument of economic imperialism. Labor is exploited, while peoples, cultures, and environments are destroyed. Yet the propaganda is so powerful that people partake of their own destruction.
Georgia House Republicans Moved to Legalize No-Knock Warrants for the First Time in Georgia History, creating HB56 which also helps to allow bad apples in law enforcement to get away with crimes under the newly legalized and highly profitable raids.
There are lessons about resistance that apply not only to the 2.3 million Americans who are incarcerated but to a society in which the loss of civil liberties and the creation of the security and surveillance state increasingly mirror the prison state.
Some of the Financial Repression is collusion of government serving the financial interests because Wall Street is a huge supplier of political campaign funds which you are highly dependent on to get re-elected. So you answer to the donors. You don't answer to the public interest. It doesn't give you any money.
Sliding and Slithering Down the IV Slippery Slope. Back, Beast!
Can We Reinvent Ourselves?
I ask the question, can we reinvent ourselves? I believe we can by becoming aware of the stories that we have absorbed which tell us how to live our lives. Through our interaction with others, we can modify those stories to become more effective and satisfying. We absorb stories through being born into a family, a place, a culture. We habitually perform those stories because we don't know better.
We are determined to be a leading voice against nuclear power, Big Pharma and big banking, and in favor of remanufacturing heavy equipment including tractors and cars. Also, putting body cams on every police officer, requiring safety locks for firearms, the proliferation of AEDs to curb sudden cardiac arrest, especially in Big Box stores.
Any corporation that accounts for at least 80 percent of the work someone does, or receives at least 20 percent of his or her earnings, should be presumed to be that person's "employer." Congress doesn't have to pass a new law to make this the test of employment. The Labor Department and the IRS have the power to do this on their own, through their rule making authority. They should do so. Now.
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Two former senior British government ministers denied wrongdoing Monday after they were caught in a hidden-camera sting appearing to offer access to politicians and diplomats in return for cash. Prime Minister David Cameron said the allegations against Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind were "very serious matters" that should be investigated by Parliamentary authorities. Straw, foreign secretary under Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Conservative former Foreign Secretary Rifkind were secretly filmed by reporters posing as representatives of a fictional Hong Kong-based communications agency. The reporters said they were seeking top U.K. politicians to join the firm's advisory board. Rifkind was recorded as saying he could arrange "useful access" to ambassadors, while Straw spoke of using "charm and menace" to change politicians' minds.
The popularity of France's National Front party continues to grow apace, with a new poll placing Marine Le Pen's party as favourites in next month's local elections. According to an Ifop survey commissioned by Le Figaro newspaper, the National Front enjoy the support of 30 per cent of the public, ahead of a combined score of 28 per cent for the conservative UMP and centrist UDI parties. President Francois Hollande's Socialist party currently sits in third place with 20 per cent, with his personal approval ratings have slipping to 24 per cent just a month after he was lauded for his handling of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. At the end of 2014, with an approval rating of only 12 per cent, Hollande was the least popular President in France's history. The poll also showed National Front voters to be the most mobilised, with 53 per cent intending to vote in the March local election...
As corn yields rise, bees are dying worldwideThe United States has been experiencing devastating honey bee die-offs since the mid-2000s and many beekeepers are pointing to neonicotinoid pesticides as the cause. The pesticide is used on 90 percent of U.S. grown corn and -- as many studies suggest -- it endangers bees, birds, and other animals by disrupting their immune and nervous systems. Despite the obvious dangers of the pesticide's widespread use, there hasn't been a broad federal ban on neonicotinoids. Even worse: The EPA won't complete its review of the neurotoxin until 2019.
From the introductory essay: "I am not convinced that the joy of scientific creation must remain mysterious, locked away from all but a few informed colleagues. I lean toward my other historical hero, physicist and prankster Richard Feynman, in this matter. I think Feynman would have said, 'If you can understand it, you can explain it.'"
The United States and Iran are working on a two-phase deal that clamps down on Tehran's nuclear program for at least a decade before providing it leeway over the remainder of the agreement to slowly ramp up activities that could be used to make weapons. More rounds of negotiations are needed for a framework, officials said, with Kerry likely to return to Geneva as soon as next week.
During the 87th annual Academy Awards, journeywoman actress Patricia Arquette delivered a rousing speech upon accepting the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Boyhood. She brought the house down. "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights," shouted a fiery Arquette. "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America!"
Roads are crumbling, bridges require repairs, schools need upgrades and public pension systems remain underfunded. How can states and cities find the money to address any of these problems? One way could be through their tax codes. According to a new report, if the rich paid the same state and local tax rate as the middle class, states and cities would have hundreds of billions of dollars more a year in public revenue.
Bloomberg reported last month: "Banks don't have a need for deposits, and the demand for loans by households and firms is weak," Niels Storm Stenbaek, chief economist at the Danish Bankers Association, said in a phone interview. Wait " what? Banks don't need deposits? They're not giving many loans? Isn't that what banks do?
"Citizenfour" won Best Documentary at the Oscars on Sunday night. Director Laura Poitras accepted the award with Glenn Greenwald by her side. "The disclosures that Edward Snowden reveals don't only expose a threat to privacy but to the many other whistleblowers." The film tells the story of his 2013 National Security Agency leaks. Poitras travels to Hong Kong to meet with Snowden and analyzes the impact of the surveillance documents he revealed as well as his role as a public figure threatening to eclipse the story he unmasked.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter met with military commanders at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan Sunday, as the Obama administration weighs whether to keep troops there. The base has been a major hub for the U.S. military during the war in Afghanistan. Its strategic location in Kandahar province, the heartland of the Taliban, made it an ideal place from which to launch operations against Islamic extremists.
Left-leaning journalists have engaged in a smear campaign to ruin his reputation, Bill O'Reilly said Sunday on Fox News. Appearing Sunday on #MediaBuzz, a Fox News TV show hosted by Howard Kurtz, the TV host and political commentator defended his recollections of his coverage of the Falklands Islands conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982. O'Reilly said that he is attempting to get original footage from CBS "so that people can see for themselves." "These guys want to come after me, I'm here," O'Reilly said. "Anybody who says my reporting in Argentina was erroneous, they can come on my show tomorrow night."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif met for two hours in Geneva on Sunday in another round of nuclear talks to try to narrow gaps as they pressed against a March 31 deadline to reach a political agreement. The meeting included for the first time U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, who spent most of the day separately negotiating technical details of curbing Iran's nuclear program. The talks are set to resume on Monday before Kerry returns to Washington in time to testify before the Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday on the State Department's 2016 budget request.
Senior Republican senators said they expected Congress will avoid a shutdown over the Department of Homeland Security, which faces a partial shutdown on Feb. 27 amid a GOP push to roll back President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pressed lawmakers to resolve the deadlock, expressing frustration at what he described as finger-pointing between House and Senate lawmakers over who is to blame if Congress fails to enact a spending bill to keep the department running.
Rudy Giuliani is not only refusing to back down from his comments about President Obama not loving America, but he's taking it even further. In an interview with The New York Post yesterday, the former mayor claimed that the president's worldview has been shaped by communists and socialists. When asked about Giuliani's criticisms yesterday, all White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest could say is that he feels sorry for Giuliani.
Time magazine--Today, every word that Limbaugh says is broadcast and archived. Watchdog groups, such as Media Matters, scrutinize every word, waiting to blast any potentially offensive statements out to the world. Whereas the opinions of non-listeners might have been irrelevant in 1988 and a boycott hard to organize, today someone could easily use social media to pressure advertisers to remove their ads from Limbaugh's program (as many did in 2012 after Limbaugh insulted Georgetown student Sandra Fluke). Time magazine notes that Rush seems to be on a sinking ship.
Media Helped Eric Holder Polish Image, Selma March Is Next Stage
Attorney Gen. Eric Holder burnished his legacy Feb. 17 with a National Press Club speech. Holder received the deferential treatment accorded high officials. But New York Times reporter James Risen reacted from afar by tweeting that Holder's legacy is a "wrecked First Amendment." Risen described President Obama as the "worst" enemy of press freedom in U.S. history. The stakes are high as a new attorney general decides whether to follow Holder's lead in his dubious cases -- or reform the DOJ's culture of cover-up and its attacks on political enemies. Next month, Obama, his team, and celebrities from the hit film "Selma" will attend the 50th anniversary of the 'Bloody Sunday' civil rights march in Selma, Alabama -- a state notorious also for the federal frame-up of still-imprisoned Democratic former Gov. Don Siegelman for a non-crime in 1999. How should the public react? |
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