@dustcirclenews VIDEOS: 75% of Americans Don't Trust the Government, Vatican Report, Military Surveillance State, L.M. Krauss on Gender Segregation, US Government Preparing for Collapse, Obama and Israel's Path to War, International Women's Day Assault, Hacktivists and Citizens Not Too Big to Fail, NASA Employee Sells US Secrets

Report from the Vatican

Father Guido Sarducci reveals the secret of life

75% of Americans wake up

They don't trust the government to do the right thing

Boys and their toys

The mentality behind the surveillance state

Physicist Lawrence M Krauss Stands Up To Forced Segregation Of A Debate

U.S. Government Preparing for Collapse 

Mr. Obama Goes To Israel; Fraud on the Path To War?

Israel marks International Women’s Day with violent assault on worshippers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque

Banks Too Big To Jail, Hacktivists and Citizens Not

FBI Surveillance Video 

NASA employee agrees to sell U.S. government secrets to Israel 

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10.Dec.2012 - Activists Occupy Starbucks, Israeli Settlement Project, Snooping Guidelines, Jimmy Carter Slams Drone Attacks, Roots of Zionism, Atheist Voters and American Politics, Black Box Recorders in Cars, American Worship of Empire, Nuclear Hypocrisy, Unrestrained Elite, Striking the Fast-Food Giants, Syrian WMDs Credible? more...

Activists Occupy Starbucks Cafes, Turning Them into Women's Shelters and Day Care Centers Across UK

The protests, which simultaneously focused on the American company's tax dodging and austerity cuts to women's and children's programs, saw activists turn cafes into women's shelters, day cares, homeless shelters and temporary libraries.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/08/1168270/-Activists-Occupy-Starbucks-Cafes-Turning-Them-into-Women-s-Shelters-Day-Care-Centers-Across-UK

Add This Group To Obama's Winning Coalition: 'Religiously Unaffiliated'
They're the "nones" — that's the Pew Research Center's shorthand for the growing number of American voters who don't have a specific religious affiliation. Some are agnostic, some atheist, but more than half define themselves as either "religious" or "spiritual but not religious," Pew found in a recent survey.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/12/09/166753248/add-this-group-to-obamas-winning-coalition-religiously-unaffiliated?ft=3&f=1001&sc=nl&cc=nh-20121209

Israel...Initiates Settlement Project That Would Render Two-State Solution Impossible

Furious international reaction greeted Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to build a "Doomsday" settlement on settlement plan.

http://www.alternet.org/world/israel-crosses-red-line-initiates-settlement-project-would-render-two-state-solution

Dragging Secretive Trade Talks Into the Light: Activists Expose Slow-Motion Corporate Coup

A highly secretive trade agreement aims to penalize countries that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. Luckily, the growing opposition goes beyond the usual trade justice suspects.

http://www.alternet.org/world/dragging-secretive-trade-talks-light-activists-expose-slow-motion-corporate-coup

Why The GOP Is Holding Middle Class Tax Cuts Hostage

Power-crazed Republicans have lost their minds.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/why-gop-holding-middle-class-tax-cuts-hostage

Only A Populist Anti-Corruption Movement Can Repair American Democracy, Says Larry Lessig

AlterNet Radio speaks with the influential legal scholar.

http://www.alternet.org/only-populist-anti-corruption-movement-can-repair-american-democracy-says-larry-lessig

Snooping guidelines: UN document revealed

Can people be hypnotically programmed to kill?

Experts say: "Yes"

What Does the NDAA Really Authorize?

n Tuesday, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a yearly military spending bill. Last year, the bill affirmed the U.S.'s authority to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely and without charges. The provision had generated plenty of controversy, particularly about whether U.S. citizens could be detained indefinitely. This year, the Senate bill says that citizens can't be detained in the U.S. - but concerns remain about the scope of detention powers.http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/294-159/14929-what-does-the-ndaa-really-authorize

We fight Zionism – Not Judaism.

A COLLECTION OF LINKS

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/daily-reminder-we-fight-zionism-not-judaism-for-who-does-not-understand-the-difference-%E2%86%92/

Former US president slams drone attacks

WASHINGTON: Former US President Jimmy Carter has slammed American assassination drone strikes in other countries, saying that killing civilians in such attacks would in fact nurture terrorism.

http://rebel-institute.org/politics/americas/126-united-states/241116-former-us-president-slams-drone-attacks

Roots of the Zionist Genocide of Palestinians

How Atheist Voters Could Change American Politics Forever

Analysis of the exit polls from the last presidential election shows that these ‘nones’ played a key role in President Obama’s victory in November — and demographic data suggests their influence will only grow from here. This could have a major impact on American politics, and maybe even restore the separation that’s supposed to exist between church and state.

http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/20404/how-atheist-voters-could-change-american-politics-forever

Obama Gives OK For Black Box Data Recorders to Be Installed in All Cars

The NHTSA says that by September 2014 all car and light trucks will be equipped with EDRs that will silently “record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33265.htm

The American Worship of Empire
The Republicans who subscribe to Christianity actually think that the man called the Prince of Peace would condone all that they stand for. Duh, like the worship of greed at the expense of 99.5% of us. Yet, when it comes to other foreign policy issues, both of those political parties think they own the cross and the memory of the Christ.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33271.htm

American Nuclear Hypocrisy
http://www.countercurrents.org/akleh101212.htm


Western Powers Have Lost All Sense Of Morality
http://www.countercurrents.org/ziabari101212.htm

The Condition Of Human Rights At The International Setting
http://www.countercurrents.org/boyle101212.htm

Climate Change and the Unrestrained Elite

umankind's greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14950-climate-change-and-the-unrestrained-elite

Whistleblowers lead to $3.3 billion in US recovery

Justice Department rewards whistleblowers with $439 million in 2012

http://www.koat.com/news/project-economy/Whistleblowers-lead-to-3-3-billion-in-US-recovery/-/9153566/17651806/-/12q7s2nz/-/index.html

Low wages won't work

Peter Rugh reports on a wave of organizing by low-wage workers in New York City.

http://socialistworker.org/2012/12/10/low-wages-wont-work

Striking the fast-food giants
Peter Rugh reports from New York City on a day of walkouts at fast-food restaurants--another step in what organizers call the largest union drive in fast-food history.
http://socialistworker.org/2012/12/03/striking-the-fast-food-giants

Why the Bible doesn’t give Israel a claim to the West Bank

Having a passport stamped with the names Judea and Samaria reminds me of a trip my family made to Disneyworld, where I got a passport stamped Neverland.  That day I met Peter Pan and Wendy. Getting my passport stamped for the West Bank these days, I can hope to stand before the graves of Biblical characters in Samaria and Judea. 

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/alice-bach/why-bible-doesnt-give-israel-claim-west-bank

How credible are reports of Syrian WMDs?

Doha deal extends Kyoto Protocol

Documentary targets family courts and custody evaluators

Antibiotics in chicken causing new infections

The Peril of Idolizing Our Military

By William Astore
[REPRINT]

Do you believe with President Obama that our military today constitutes a "generation of heroes" and that their teamwork and courage in battle show us the proper path forward in civilian life? Do you believe that the deadly effectiveness of the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden should inspire us to put aside differences in politics and to work together as a people?

As a retired veteran, such pro-military rhetoric in the president's state of the union address resonates with me, but as a student of history it makes me more than uncomfortable. In democratic societies, armed forces are funded and fielded to preserve liberties, not to provide templates for personal and societal behavior.

When civil aspirations are guided by and defined within military matrices, one gets the Iraq war of yesterday, the Afghan war of today, and the Iran (or Syria or insert-new-terrorist-nation here) war of tomorrow. Forever war is indeed the price for a nation that glorifies its military as the very best of its people and their ideals.

The kinetic (killing) competency of our military is certainly impressive, yet it's a competency that we must use judiciously and with restraint. When we elevate it as an example of "I've got your back" teamwork that all should be emulating, we tend to devalue diplomacy and the level of patience and perspective our country needs to display in an increasingly turbulent world.

Our dedicated military and its matchless strength should afford us the luxury of being patient and of keeping threats in perspective. But our unbridled extolment of the military -- our deeply personal investment in its power and methods as pointing the way forward in all walks of life -- encourages us instead to deploy our armed forces time and time again. We act impatiently, injudiciously, against threats we often exaggerate.

Iran is the latest such threat that has the drums of war beating. Iran is supposedly an incipient nuclear terrorist; defined as such, the preferred solution for our nation of military enthusiasts is decapitation by kinetic action.

But is the solution really that simple? Past events suggest otherwise. Military enthusiasts like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld believed they could torture and kill their way out of the war on terror. They embarked on a deadly game of "Whac-A-Mole" with results as frustrating as that game. After criticizing them for this, the Obama Administration joined them. Like Michael Corleone in the Godfather saga, we keep whacking our enemies, yet a state of war and terror drags on, insidiously warping our nation's core beliefs and freedoms.

If we continue to focus on whacking terrorists (or terroristic nations), we suppress any chance of charting a less violent, less terrifying, course. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III, just when we think we're out of the war on terror, they'll pull us back in.

What we won't recognize is that the "they" doing the pulling will be us. We won't recognize it because we've invested so much of our national hopes and dreams into the killing abilities of our armed forces.

Yet however much we admire their competence in war, we must not allow that competence to inform our attitudes and aspirations for civil society. For when warriors become the civil elite, the role models par excellence, democracy is imperiled.

Professor Astore writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/peril-idolizing-our-military-1328451169. All rights are reserved.