The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Part of the reason nothing is being done about climate change is the naked bias of some of the major corporate media institutions. This story is particularly pernicious, because Reuters is not a single newspaper, or television station but, like the Associated Press, a service used by almost all newspapers.
Reuters Exposed: Publication Openly Hostile To Climate Coverage, Top Editor Doubts Climate Science
KILEY KROH – Climate Progress
In a two part series (titled “The Defense Budget Is Even Larger than You Think”) at Time magazine's Battleland blog, I attempt to explain how high spending advocates and even the Department of Defense misuse and manipulate budget data to alter public and congressional perceptions of the contemporary size of DOD spending. The differences between what the Pentagon's self-serving data present to the public and what is shown by generally used measures of the American economy amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars in some cases. The generally accepted, non-DOD budget history data I use for this analysis (described in more detail in tomorrow's Part II) put the current defense budget debate and assertions that Pentagon spending is shrinking to “dangerously low” levels in an entirely new perspective.
Part I, “Cooked Books Tell Tall Tales,” describes the subtle, and not so subtle, ways that the Pentagon and other high spending advocates distort DOD's budget history to make the public and Congress think they need to cough up more money. Find this first installment at
The Defense Budget Is Even Larger than You Think: Part one of two.
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This is the new warfare. It is the obvious next step in asymmetrical conflict. Lower risk for Americans, and probably cheaper. But, I wonder, is it making more enemies than it is eliminating? If I lived in a little village in the Afghan mountains and, in the middle of night, a drone strike blew up one of the houses, killing a neighbor family, I might have some serous attitude about it.
Obama's Secret Kill List – the Disposition Matrix
IAN COBAIN – The Guardian (U.K.)
There is a growing anti-American attitude taking root in Europe, one already well-established in the Islamic world, and parts of Asia. The long term consequences of this are not going to be happy. But our foreign policy barely deals with it.
Snowden Revelations Stir Up Anti-US Sentiment
GEOFF DYER – Financial Times (U.K.)
More and more judicial decisions, particularly those of Republican appointed judges, overwhelmingly favor corporations over people. These decisions get almost no coverage in the media, but they have real and far-reaching consequences. Here's an example of what I mean.
In Chilling Ruling, Chevron Is Granted Access to Amazon Activists’ Private Emails
JUAN COLE – Informed Comment
Phi Beta Iota: Absolutely worth a full read.
Huh?
Barrett Brown, political prisoner of the information revolution
If the US government succeeds in criminalising Brown's posting of a hyperlink, the freedom of all internet users is in jeopardy
Kevin M. Gallaher
Guardian, 13 July 2013
When I first noticed Barrett Brown in early 2011, I never thought that two years later I'd be directing Free Barrett Brown. Intrigued by his irreverence, I became familiar with his work, admiring him for his skill as a writer. I spoke to him briefly on IRC (internet relay chat) and occasionally dropped into the same channels he frequented; later I met him in person at a conference in New York City. But it's the US government's behavior in this and other cases – see also, Manning, Hammond, Swartz, Assange, etc – that have made running his legal defense fund a labor of love for me.
The distributed research project Brown founded, Project PM, is important and necessary. Since 9/11, the intelligence and cyber-security contracting industries have exploded in size. I believe, as Barrett does, that the public/private partnership on surveillance constitutes a threat to civil transparency and the health of democratic institutions. Large and very profitable companies like Booz Allen Hamilton obtain most of their revenues from the federal government; yet, the majority of their work is performed in secrecy.
Barrett had the insight to realize early on that the troves of emails that were hacked by Anonymous out of HBGary Federal and Stratfor and subsequently made public had the potential to provide a rare window into the activities of the cyber-intelligence industry. I believe it was this journalistic work of digging into areas that powerful people would rather keep in the dark that made him a target.
Contrary to claims, Brown is not a hacker (he is unabashedly lacking in technical skills). Nor was he a spokesperson for Anonymous (the very idea is ridiculous). He is an iconoclastic writer with a penchant for satire and hyperbole. He became an activist by observing the media's failure to cover the issues or stories that he deemed important. Some of his proudest work was the assistance rendered by Anonymous to citizens in North Africa during the first months of the Arab Spring.
Complete article below the line.
Paul Craig Roberts
The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”
An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.
Complete post and about the author below the line.
Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Is the US Government in Enemy Hands?”
