The trial of three members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot and their subsequent sentencing to two years in prison for performing a song calling for the ouster of Russian leader Vladimir Putin at an impromptu flash concert in Moscow’s largest Orthodox cathedral has garnered a tremendous amount of attention all over the world. Popular music luminaries ranging from Paul McCartney to Björk toMadonna have publicly spoken out in support of the group, though Norman LeBrecht has pointed out that the classical music community has pretty much remained silent on this topic.
Meet the Washington Sugar Daddies Who Keep Wall St. Flush with Cash
The finance, insurance, and real estate industries spend approximately $1,331 a minute on influencing our leaders. See how the worst of the worst stack up.
The elderly woman acted without authorization from anyone, according to the Centre for Borjanos, which had already received a donation from the granddaughter of the artist Elias Garcia Martinez to professionally restore it.
RT's 'Occupy' coverage nominated for Emmy news award
RT has been nominated for the International Emmy Award in the news category for its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement which began in New York last year. RT was one the first channels to thoroughly report about OWS.
nknown to most Americans, many US food companies, which manage to keep their GMO ingredients under wraps, are joining forces to beat back Proposition 37, a bill which will require simple labels on food identifying genetically engineered products and ingredients. The ballot initiative from Right to Know will be presented to voters in California's November election.
Don't Lose Sight of Why the US Is Out to Get Julian Assange
To get a grip on what is actually going on, rewind to WikiLeaks' explosive release of secret US military reports and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables two years ago. They disgorged devastating evidence of US war crimes and collusion with death squads in Iraq on an industrial scale, the machinations and lies of America's wars and allies, its illegal US spying on UN officials - as well as a compendium of official corruption and deceit across the world.
Who Needs the Protection of a “Personhood” Amendment? Women
The most important and glaring example is the 2012 GOP platform. The platform committee approved it in Tampa yesterday, on the heels of Akin’s moronic, but not exceptionally moronic, assertions.
America Trashes Forty Percent of Food Supply: Report
According to the report 40 percent of food is wasted in the US amounting to a loss of $165 billion per year. That wasted food also represents one quarter of all freshwater consumed in the US, as it is needed for agriculture and food production. Food waste is also the cause of 23 percent of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.
Did you know that genetic engineering (GE) "is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home"? A trade group funded by Monsanto wants your kids to believe it.
Paul Ryan’s dad died at a young age. He is in good company. Political leaders often have absent, alcoholic, neglectful fathers, or fathers who died too young.
We know that photographers have been having problems all over the country with police harassment, and that demonstrators’ free speech rights have also been under assault. But with the Democratic and Republican political conventions coming up, we have all too much reason to expect that free speech rights will be swallowed up in the vortex of those events, which have become constitutional black holes in recent years.
AT&T's latest proposal is a clear violation of Net Neutrality -- the fundamental principle that keeps the open Internet free from discrimination -- and a serious test of whether the Federal Communications Commission will protect mobile users.
Twenty years after FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot her mother in the head in front of her, eldest Weaver daughter Sara is more at ease, greatly thanks to her born again Christianity. Getting over that loss, as well as the death of her little brother — shot by a U.S. marshal the day before her mother was killed —took her many years, but she seems to be at peace.
Amnesty International is US State Department Propaganda Amnesty run by US State Department representatives, funded by convicted financial criminals, and threatens real human rights advocacy worldwide.
When I was back there in junior high school, there was a civics teacher who put forth the proposition that democracy depends on one simple principle: People are rational. Give them free access to information, and they’ll think things through logically to figure out what policies are best not just for themselves but for the whole nation.
American Atheists Incorporated Posts Billboards that Attack Religious Faiths of Romney and Obama
American Atheists Incorporated (AAI) has begun a billboard campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina, site of the Democratic National Convention, attacking the religious faiths of President Obama and Mitt Romney, reports Fox News (video below).
One billboard says: "Christianity: Sadistic God, Useless Savior," while the other states: "Mormonism: Magic Underwear, Baptizes Dead People, Big Money, Big Bigotry."
Elephants cooperate to solve problems. Chimpanzees teach youngsters to make tools. Even octopusesseem to be able to plan. So should we humans really be surprised that “consciousness” probably does not only exist in us?
As the November general elections draw near, voters will be tempted more and more by partisan politics and honey-dipped speeches. Conservatives once disgusted with the Bush legacy will find themselves “liking” Mitt Romney on Facebook while Obama’s conveniently-timed verbal support of gay marriage will have liberals forgetting his illegal wars and pro-corporate policies.
REMEMBER the moment my son's teacher told us, "Just a little medication could really turn things around for Will." We stared at her as if she were speaking Greek.
Chances are you missed the FBI billboards running the message above. They ran for just two weeks and only in the nine areas that the agency pegged as leading national research centers. But in their brief stay they raised a question that concerns all of us in the U.S.: Just how do the nation's top law enforcers decide what constitutes "America's trade secrets" in the era of multinational corporations?
It's not a Republican or Democratic thing. It's just that the process of running for political office has devolved into a wasteful exercise heavily tainted by wealthy special interests and their money. The main objective of politicians is to win. They may wish to be in office for ego, money, power, ideology, or other reasons, but to get into office they must first win their election, and will do whatever they think is necessary to do so.
Cynicism is a cleverly disguised expression of passivity and hopelessness. It's the art of being disgusted by hypocrisy and corruption without being moved to action. We can see its self-defeating effects in our faltering will to solve public and social problems, as well as in the loss of confidence in leaders and public and private institutions. Should America decline in self-defeat, we'll have our cynical selves to thank. We can stop being cynical, though, by understanding its roots in our psyche.
Arab and Muslim communities--and sometimes those who simply appear to be Arab or Muslim--are bearing the brunt of a series of hate crimes sparked by institutional racism and the policies of the war on terror.
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be his running mate, Catholics passed a milestone. For the first time in history, both vice presidential candidates, Ryan and Vice President Biden, are Catholic.
But if Biden and Ryan share the same faith, they couldn't be further apart in their cultural and political worldviews. On issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, taxes and Medicaid, they are miles apart.
Obama, Romney Campaigns Duck Future U.S. Role In Afghanistan War
Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney will say it out loud, but the unpopular, 11-year war in Afghanistan is not drawing to a close. Instead, substantial numbers of U.S. troops likely will be committed there for years, no matter who wins, according to U.S. officials, campaign advisers and nonpartisan experts.
Is skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee sacrilegious?
(RNS) A pack of lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides, including a nude congressman, took a booze-fueled, late-night swim in Israel’s Sea of Galilee last summer, Politico reported on Sunday (Aug. 19). Which raises at least one question: Is skinny-dipping at the biblical site sacrilegious?
We are a firewall standing between liberty and the tyranny of a corporatist and monopolist system that is diabolically opposed to freedom and the free market, especially when it comes to media and the unrestricted flow of information.
Jewish Settler Attacks on Palestinians Named ‘Terrorist Incidents’ for First Time by US
A recent US State Department terrorism report listed violence by Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank as “terrorist incidents,” for the first time, following a recent upsurge in such attacks.
President Barack Obama, Congress and the American people would support Israel if it carried out a pre-emptive attack on Iran, Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, told Yisrael HaYom Sunday.
Seven Israeli teenagers were in custody on Monday, accused of what a police official and several witnesses described as an attempted lynching of several Palestinian youths, laying bare the undercurrent of tension in this ethnically mixed but politically divided city. A 15-year-old suspect standing outside court said, “For my part he can die, he’s an Arab.”
The Paradox of Religious Morality: Religious Intolerance
First of all, religious intolerance is intolerance against another’s religious beliefs or practices. What drives them to do so, I will discuss it later. So, I am not going to tackle insignificant and irrelevant factors and trying to connect the dot, or factors that we have to consider first that are not directly related to influence of religious beliefs why intolerance is happening: such as, political conflict, socio-economic conflict, ethnic wars. I will focus only to why and how religious beliefs could drive them to commit murders.
A study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, released today, indicates that the middle class is much more charitable than the wealthy. According to the study, households earning between fifty thousand and seventy-five thousand dollars annually gave 7.6% of their net income to charity on average, while households earning over a hundred thousand gave only 4.2%. When income broke two hundred thousand, the percentage given to charity dropped to a measly 2.8%.
A Mitt Romney Presidency? The World Is Betting Against It
The whole world is watching the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. Some people are watching to see what direction our economic policies will take, others because they’re concerned about diplomacy, or foreign aid.
