The Future by Committee

Published on ZNet (first on TomDispatch), by Tom Engelhardt, Jn 23, 2017.

They call themselves the U.S. Intelligence Community, or the IC. If you include the office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which in 2005 began as a crew of 12 people, including its director, and by 2008 had already grown to a staff of 1,750, there are 17 members (adding up to an alphabet soup of acronyms including the CIA, the NSA, and the DIA). The IC spends something like $70 billion of your taxpayer dollars annually, mostly in secret, hires staggering numbers of private contractors from various warrior corporations to lend a hand, sucks up communications of every sort across the planet, runs a drone air force, monitors satellites galore, builds its agencies multi-billion-dollar headquarters and storage facilities, and does all of this, ostensibly, to provide the president and the rest of the government with the best information imaginable on what’s happening in the world and what dangers the United States faces. Continuer la lecture de « The Future by Committee »

Women's March on Washington

… many articles – published out of Google News-search;

(my comment: yes, what Trump said was ugly for women, but my father also spoke with much contempt about us as second class, and so did the whole generation of males when I was young. This made him not a bad guy, it only made me feminist.
This said, all these women now in America’s street have nothing to f… that Trump will stop war with Russia, a war we the European women would have had to suffer if this ugly Clinton were in power? For sure I prefer some bad jokes.
You American women are blind about that? Would you prefer Washington’s Gangster-Elite in power and put Europe into war with Russia? Really?
Yes, I fear that you could succeed, Trump could be assassinated and war with Russia would become reality again.
If you insist this will happen, you certainly not get world’s most urgent threats, and for me you would have no more anything to say
– Heidi). Continuer la lecture de « Women's March on Washington »

Trump’s “Russia Connection”, Behind America’s Perpetual Wars

… why the Enemy Structures US Identity – Published on Global Research.ca, by Prof. John McMurtry, Jan 20, 2017.

The enemy in one form or another drives the US – the gun culture on the streets, the rich behind weapon-guarded enclaves, the pervasive violence entertainments of good vs. evil killers, the never-ending destabilizations of societies not submitting to US military and corporate globalization, and the hundreds of billions of public dollars pouring into continuous armed threats and wars. Continuer la lecture de « Trump’s “Russia Connection”, Behind America’s Perpetual Wars »

A Critical Week for the World Social Forum

Published on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin No. 1358, by Pierre Beaudet, Jan 20, 2017 – Translated by John Bradley.

It all began right here in Porto Alegre in 2001 when this city in the south of Brazil became a major site of popular mobilization. Influenced by the Workers’ Party (PT), unions were, along with popular movements, at the forefront of a proactive political effort that included the support of the left within the Catholic Church, inspired by liberation theology. Continuer la lecture de « A Critical Week for the World Social Forum »

Does the end of high food prices mark the end of the global land rush?

Published on farmlandgrab.org, by Pascal Liu, FAO, Jan 18, 2017.

The surge in commodity prices in 2007-2008 was one of the main causes of what has sometimes been described as the “global land rush” – a wave of large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries by foreign investors. Non-governmental organisations and the media were quick to denounce these deals as “land grabbing”, which were blamed for ignoring the rights and interests of the people who make their living from a land that is legitimately theirs.   Continuer la lecture de « Does the end of high food prices mark the end of the global land rush? »