Panetta acknowledges US has the capacity to wage cyber warfare

In a speech Thursday night in New York, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Pentagon stands ready "to help defend the nation in cyberspace" in the same way it wages war in on land, at sea and in the air. 

Americans Get Fatter, Drunker

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=americans-get-fatter-drunker&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20121015

The Constancy of Crony Capitalism

Corporations double dip at taxpayers’ expense.


Five Fool-Proof Tips for Winning a Town Hall Debate

What lessons from debates past should Barack Obama and Mitt Romney learn before tomorrow's town hall?

Technology companies have mastered the use of schemes involving low-tax foreign countries in order to avoid billions of dollars in American taxes each year. Now, fast food chains like McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway are doing the same.

As 9/11 Pretrial Begins, ACLU Calls Out "Orwellian" Censorship of CIA Torture

On Monday, a judge will oversee pretrial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo prisoners who are accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. One of the key issues Army Col. James Pohl will decide on is whether or not there will be any public testimony by the prisoners regarding their torture and detention in CIA custody.

'Fight from the Bottom Up,' says Morello (Also, Paul Ryan is a "Jack-Ass")

"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing," wrote member of the socially conscious rock band Tom Morello two months ago for Rolling Stone, "because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.

Five Ways Deregulation Is Ripping America Apart

Conservatives believe that enriching individuals will eventually enrich society, and that government should not get in the way of the process. This is what happens as a result:

Giant Walmart vs. the Small Farmer

Small farms grow biodiversity. They are falsely described as unproductive because productivity in agriculture has been manipulated to exclude diversity and exclude costs of high chemical and capital inputs in chemical industrial agriculture. When biodiversity is taken into account, small farms produce more food and higher incomes.

Shut Up and Play Nice: How the Western World is Limiting Free Speech

Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.

The Guantánamo military commissions were created in part to hide the government’s illegal torture program while permitting the use of information obtained through torture. Because of improvements in 2009 in the law governing the commissions, it’s harder (though not impossible) for coerced evidence to be used in the proceedings. But the government still wants to hide from the public what it did to prisoners in CIA and military custody.

Whistle-blower who exposed National Guard misconduct had 'target on his backOn the morning of May 28, 2009, Staff Sgt. Chad Wille, a recruiter for the Arizona Army National Guard, was confronted at a Phoenix gas station by an angry bicyclist.

Blood, Oil, and “The American Dream”
In our times, in a media-saturated culture in which well-packaged and comforting lies are explicitly preferred to unsettling truths, those who reveal sordid realities are often dismissed if not reviled.  Whistleblowers and voices of integrity—from Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning—engage in the often-thankless vocation of disturbing complacency; and those awakened from their lying dreams angrily threaten to “kill the messenger” (figuratively?—or perhaps literally).

US, UK ‘Cause Birth Defects in Iraq’ 
A round lights up the night-sky before a U.S. bombardment over the Iraqi city of Falluja at the beginning, November 8, 2004.(Reuters / Eliana Aponte)US and UK weapons ammunition were linked to heart defects, brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs, according to a recent study. The report revealed a shocking rise in birth defects in Iraqi children conceived after the US invasion.

Religious Leaders Call on Congress to Reevaulate Military Aid to Israel
Fifteen leaders of U.S. churches and other faith-based organizations have asked Congress to reevaluate U.S. military aid to Israel.

It Is 'Impossible' for the US To Implode, Right Up to the Moment It Happens
Did Caesar think his friend Brutus would join others one lovely day in Rome to cut him up? Did Romans think the Empire could finally fall? Did the Greatest Empire the world had seen think a small nation of upstart peasants with no army could defeat the mighty Red Coats? Not until the day it happened at York Town and the world turned upside down. Did Americans believe the people who were screaming that Pearl Harbor was wide open to attack by Japanese carriers after FDR forced the Navy to move from San Diego to Pearl? Not until that fateful Sunday morning. Did the U.S. believe a small peasant nation could defeat the Greatest Empire the world had ever seen and lead its Embassy staff to flee in panic in helicopters from the roof?

Former Republican: How I Learned That Voter ID Laws Pushed By the GOP Are Racist

Why can’t Republican voters see that Republicans pass voter ID laws to suppress voting, not fraud?
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-republican-how-i-learned-voter-id-laws-pushed-gop-are-racist

Right-Wing Christian Group Attacks Program That Teach Kids to "Love Thy Neighbor"
“Mix It Up” tries to get kids to spend time with classmates of different backgrounds. American Family Association sees a stealth gay plot.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing-christian-group-attacks-programs-teach-kids-love-thy-neighbor

With New Sanctions, European Union Tightens Screws on Iran Over Nuclear Work

The European Union toughened sanctions againstIran over its disputed nuclear program on Monday, banning trade in industries like finance, metals and natural gas, and making other business transactions far more cumbersome.

Will Ohio's H.I.G.-Owned E-Voting Machines Give Romney the White House?

Electronic voting machines are vulnerable to security breaches. (photo: Alex Halderman/EQN)lectronic voting machines owned by Mitt Romney's business buddies are set to count the votes in Cincinnati could decide the 2012 election.

Death By Ideology

Last week, speaking to The Columbus Dispatch, Mr. Romney declared that nobody in America dies because he or she is uninsured: "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance." This followed on an earlier remark by Mr. Romney - echoing an infamous statement by none other than George W. Bush - in which he insisted that emergency rooms provide essential health care to the uninsured.

Leaked Memo: Mitt Romney aides propose return of waterboarding
Mitt Romney should scrap Barack Obama's ban on the torture of terror suspects and consider re-introducing waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques' if he is elected president, a leaked Romney campaign policy document has urged. The five-page memo entitled 'Interrogation Techniques' advised Mr Romney to 'rescind and replace' Mr Obama's executive order outlawing the use of all torture.

Breaking the silence on Israel

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine brought together civil rights leaders, authors, actors and others dedicated to revealing Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. Sherry Wolf, one of the organizers and press officer for the event, describes the weekend of testimony.

Walmart, the Most Powerful Company in the World, Admits that Protests and Strikes Lead to Wage Increases

Workers threaten to walk out on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Speedbump in Walmart's race to the bottom?
http://www.alternet.org/labor/walmart-most-powerful-company-world-admits-protests-and-strikes-lead-wage-increases

Huffington Post Publishes Memo With Walmart’s Secret Strike Strategies

While Walmart’s management publicly dismisses recent strikes and demonstrations as mere “publicity stunts,” a confidential internal memo leaked to the Huffington Post reveals that their associates’ activism has them running scared. Looming threats of massive, nationwide strikes on “Black Friday” — the day after Thanksgiving and the most profitable shopping day of the year for retailers — might also have something to do with Walmart’s sudden concern. The memorandum, marked confidential, is entitled “Response to Walkout/Work Stoppage — Salaried Management Talking Points,” and is available from the Huffington Post Web site as a PDF file. The memo was sent out to salaried (managerial, non-hourly) employees on October 8th, and provides seven pages worth of detailed instructions on how store managers should handle striking employees and the media.

Pew survey finds 1 in 5 Americans, mostly Democrats, have no religion
The match for the religious right is rising: the non-religious left.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/15/pew-survey-finds-1-in-5-americans-mostly-democrats-have-no-religion/

'America the Possible': How We Can Reclaim the American Dream and a Just Society

In his new book, James Gustave Speth explains how America is not broke, the money is just in the wrong places.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/america-possible-how-we-can-reclaim-american-dream-and-just-society

Three weeks to the US elections: The issues facing working people

Three weeks from the November 6 presidential election, the contest between President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney remains close, with Obama holding a shrinking lead, according to a number of polls, in the half dozen states that will decide the outcome in the Electoral College.

'73 percent of articles and opinion pieces published in 2011 on a proposed carbon price were negative.' (photo: ThinkProgress)

American Newspapers Are Number One In Climate Denial

merica is unique when it comes to giving a platform to climate deniers and skeptics.

The future of democracy in America

The Tea Parties draw strength from deep roots in the American tradition. In his updated edition of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, the author says regardless of who wins the elections in November, this radical conservative tendency poses a serious threat to the future of US democracy. 5,000 word essay

Middle East conflict: Elections, oil and the global economy

Strait of Hormuz
Iran's nuclear development, the protests in the Middle East and Syria and the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, across Northern Africa and the Middle East have made the headlines during the past two years. Are the political arguments smoke and mirrors or is the root of all evil the flow of oil?