American Politics, Progressive News, Human Rights, Civil Disobedience, Foreign Policy, Current Events, Cultural Activism, and Social Justice.
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Saturday, September 15

15.Sept.2012: White House Cyber-Security Executive Order Leak, Election System Criticized, Violence Against Women Act, Warrantless Wiretapping Bill, Drone Attacks and Human Rights Violations, FBI Watching Occupy, CIA Torture, Islamic Protests and U.S. Anger, America Destroying the World, Corporations Are Not People, Beef Products Sue for Defamation, Kansas Removes Obama from Ballot, FISA Surveillance Law, Illegal Drug Trade, 1 Million Kids Are Homeless, Religions Should Lose Tax Favor, Morris Sadek

LEAKED! Here's The White House's Draft Cybersecurity Executive Order
We got our hands on a draft (and confirmed what it was with multiple sources) and wanted to share it, as these kinds of things deserve public scrutiny and discussion. It's embedded below. As expected, it does have elements of the Lieberman/Collins bill (to the extent that the White House actually can do things without legislation).

US Election System Criticized by UN Commission

S campaign finance rules, which have allowed wealthy individuals to pour millions of dollars into the 2012 presidential election, have shaken public confidence in the political process, according to a report by the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security.

After 18 Years, Violence Against Women Act Has Saved Countless Lives

or many victims of domestic abuse, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been a resounding success, and a lifeline. Since then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) wrote the legislation in 1994, the country's infrastructure for dealing with rape and abuse has vastly improved, saving countless women's lives and livelihoods.

The Political Awakening of a Republican: 'I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People'

A former Republican tells about how his experiences in post-Katrina New Orleans and then Iraq destroyed his Republican worldview.

Romney Says Typical Middle-Class Homes Earn $250,000 A Year

Another day, another out-of-touch statement from Mitt Romney. Speaking today on ABC’s Good Morning America program, Romney said the typical middle-income household in America earned a quarter of a million dollars a year. Wouldn’t it be nice if, for once, we all lived in Romney’s America?

Members of Congress Who Reauthorized Warrantless Wiretapping Bill Don't Understand What It Does

Or they're ignoring the surveillance of US citizens it allows.


U.S. drone attacks amount to human rights violations, Carter says

America's citizens accepting human rights violations never imagined before 9/11


ACLU says FBI was watching Occupy Oakland

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/14/4819806/aclu-says-fbi-was-watching-occupy.html#storylink=cpy

Documents show the FBI was keeping a watchful eye on Occupy Oakland protests last year.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/14/4819806/aclu-says-fbi-was-watching-occupy.html#storylink=cpy


Closing the book on CIA torture

It has become clear that the courts are unable or unwilling to hold the agency and others accountable.

Protests sweep Islamic world, fueled by domestic politics, anti-US anger

Protesters who attacked embassies and clashed with police in at least 17 Muslim countries outraged by more than an anti-Islam video.

Bloodied and Naked Pennsylvania Man Breaks Into Home, Gnaws on Woman’s Head

Richard Cimino Jr. had quite the night last Friday. It's unclear how it started, but the night ended with him bloodied, naked, and gnawing on some poor woman's head.

How To Buy a Daughter

Choosing the sex of your baby has become a multimillion-dollar industry.


America’s Dummy System: Eating Itself While Destroying The World
It has been said that America’s last liberal President was Richard Nixon. Nixon set up the EPA, OSHA, and created the Clean Water Act. Additionally, he had a better health plan than Obamacare, and proposed a guaranteed minimum income. [1] Nixon also implemented price controls, which notably — in recent history — Hugo Chavez, has been savagely attacked in Western media, for introducing on basic foodstuffs and household goods.

Assessing the Occupation

One year ago, a small group of activists sat down in an out-of-the-way little park in downtown Manhattan. And then they refused to leave. By the time they were forcibly evicted from Zuccotti Park one month and 29 days later, the Occupy Wall Street movement had changed the national conversation and spawned dozens of affiliated groups around the country. On September 17, an unknown number of activists will converge on downtown Manhattan to mark the one-year anniversary of the movement.

CommonDreams.org
Anti-American Protests Flare in Muslim Countries

Roiled by denigration of Islam and US policies, popular anger takes hold

Protesters Interrupt Paul Ryan Speech: ‘Corporations Are Not People!’

As GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a speech the Value Voters Summit on Friday, two protesters consecutively interrupted the representative, yelling 'Corporations are not people!'

Beef Products sues ABC News for defamation in coverage of meat product called ‘pink slime’

The Dakota Dunes, S.D.-based meat processor is seeking $1.2 billion in damages for roughly 200 “false and misleading and defamatory” statements about the product officially known as lean, finely textured beef, said Dan Webb, BPI’s Chicago-based attorney.

Kansas Goes Birther: State Board Considers Removing Obama From Ballot

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an informal advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on Thursday he and his fellow members of a state board were considering removing President Barack Obama from the Kansas ballot this November.

UK feminists: fighting for rights not privilege

The utter disregard for women that austerity represents has galvanised and united women at a time where we are attacked from so many angles. But we are not only visible in response to austerity. There are explicitly feminist acts and discussions everywhere. There is no denying that we are making a sound

US House reauthorizes FISA surveillance law 
The US House of Representatives [official website] on Wedneday voted to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA) [text, PDF], a highly contested law designed as a national security protection against terrorism and other foreign threats. 

A Jaw-Dropping Explanation of How Governments Are Complicit in the Illegal Drug Trade

The drug war is far, far more than just simply criminals at work, says scholar Oliver Villar.

5 So-Called Liberal Pundits Who Are Attacking Teachers

Chicago's teacher strike is shaping up to be one of the most important labor actions in a generation. So why are people who consider themselves progressives siding with the bosses?

Do Americans Harbor Childlike Delusions About the Future? James Howard Kunstler Says Watch Out

In his new book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation, Kunstler says we’ve blown past the mileposts for global peak oil, and we expect technology to save us...

The New Real Estate Train Wreck Coming Your Way: Securitized Rentals

Wall Street eyes rental properties in a money-making scheme likely to screw both investors and renters. Whoopee!


Force Isn’t Enough: U.S. Must Make Friends

For the past decade, I’ve thought that America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere would cause us to fundamentally re-appraise our presence in the world and realign our priorities to reflect modern-day threats. Some hopeful signs of change exist, especially among military professionals who have first hand experience. They understand more than anybody the limits of force and the need for other strategies — like helping people build resilience.


Over One Million U.S. Kids Are Homeless

The number of homeless children is actually much higher. The U.S. Department of Education, which released the one million figure this June, included only “children enrolled in U.S. public preschools and kindergarten through 12th grade for the 2010-2011 school year,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. As the Sentinel points out, that excludes “infants, toddlers, preschool-aged children who aren’t enrolled in public programs and homeless children who are home-schooled.” It also excludes homeless teenagers who are not enrolled in school. The National Center on Family Homelessness estimates that the true number of homeless children in the U.S. is closer to 1.6 million.
http://www.care2.com/causes/over-one-million-u-s-kids-are-homeless.html

Why Do Americans Have to Crush Others to Get Ahead?

The competitive edge is always front and center in this country. But it's not the best way to run a society.

Inside the Islamophobic-Religious Right Alliance Whose Film Sparked a Crisis in the Middle East

An alliance of Egyptian Coptic Christians, right-wing American Christians and anti-Muslim activists is behind the "Innocence of Muslims" film.

Awesome Actions and Demonstrations Planned to Mark 1st Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street

Diverse slate of events planned in New York, with solidarity actions across the country.

How Childhood Neglect Stunts the Brain

Science is painting a dramatic picture of how childhood neglect damages developing brains, so stunting them that neglect might be likened to physically violent abuse.

Secularists are not atheists

Secularism is about separating church and state, not disbelief. Mixing it up with atheism serves only the right
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/secularists_are_not_atheists/?

Comment: Religions should lose favour from the taxman

A would-be charity must establish that it is providing some kind of 'public benefit'. That is the key criterion, but two successive governments have bottled out of the task of defining it. The Labour government missed the opportunity when it modernised charity law in the Charities Act of 2006. The coalition government asked a Conservative peer, Lord Hodgson, to review charity law and its operation: it was very happy to accept his recommendation to continue to abandon responsibility for defining 'public benefit' to the unelected Charity Commission and the courts.

DOJ appeals injunction of indefinite detention law 
The US Department of Justice [official website] on Friday filed an appeal of this week's order by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] that permanently enjoined [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] a law allowing US authorities to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of having aided known terrorist organizations.

Why Are We Being Kept in the Dark Over GMOs?

Secret weapons programs
Judge Strikes Down Indefinite Detention
The truth about the health care crisis
 

Challenging Power, Changing Politics


Prosecuting Wall Street

Obama vs Romney on Human Rights



Ticket paid with 137 origami pigs




The men behind the anti-Muslim film

 

Demonstrations inspired by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad continued into a fourth day in Cairo as authorities braced for possible protests after Friday noon prayers.
Turns out, the man who translated the crude anti-Muslim film into Arabic, sent it to Egyptian journalists, promoted it on his website and posted it on social media was an obscure Egyptian-born Coptic Christian named Morris Sadek.
And now more is emerging from The Los Angeles Times, which identified the names of the film collaborators: Joseph Nassralla Abdelmasih, the president of the Duarte-based charity Media for Christ, and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted felon from Cerritos.
Others in L.A. knew about the film. Video has surfaced from a city council meeting in June where a man appeared to alert city leaders about the anti-Islam film.
They’re not the only ones upset.
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League said he was deeply troubled that the film was falsely and widely depicted as a project of an American- Israeli and that the $5 million for the film was raised by 100 Jews.
But the corrections haven’t made it to Iran where "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the anti-Islam movie on Zionists.
Meanwhile, technical difficulties prevented Florida pastor "burn-the-Quran" Terry Jones from posting the video. He told reporters his organization’s website was hacked.
Bruce Lawrence, in an insightful piece on the Middle East protests, says this century belongs neither to the USA nor to China, neither to imperialists nor terrorists, but to the CyberKingdom and to those who grasp the endless good and evil wrought by the Information Age.

__________________________ Steve Dustcircle can be found at:

http://www.dustcircle.com
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