The biggest thing to come out of Texas may turn out to be a blow to Internet freedoms: legislators there are considering a bill that would compromise privacy on the Web for all residents of the Lone Star State.
The president of the Associated Press has lashed out at the United States government in his first interview since it was revealed that the AP was being investigated by the US Department of Justice.
STATE propaganda is easy to spot. From leaflets dropped behind enemy lines to other bald appeals to flag and country, government attempts to sway public opinion often seem laughably obvious—at least in hindsight. Yet quite a lot of national pride-mongering is a bit more subtle—and more effective, and perhaps more troubling—than we like to admit. This at least is the claim of “Propaganda: Power and Persuasion”, a provocative new exhibition at the British Library in London.
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.
Mere months after it emerged some 14.7 million pounds (US$22.4 million) was spent on gagging UK Health Service employees, a report has exposed 13 police forces across the country signed over 300 compromise agreements with staff, spending millions.
As your kindergarten teacher probably told you, two wrongs do not make a right. But the discrepancy in reactions to wrongs does, indeed, show how Washington so often serves the interests of the political right.
Brianna Pena, a 5-year-old, was told she could not return to her kindergarten classroom at her Bronx, NY, charter school until she was “psychiatrically cleared” to return by a medical professional.
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
It’s been exactly one hundred days since detainees at Guantanamo Bay camp started their hunger strike. The official number of inmates refusing food has been increasing on an almost daily basis – and has reached at least one hundred. Around thirty hunger-strikers are being subjected to force-feeding – a controversial tactic condemned by the UN and the international medical community as inhumane. And all those numbers are only likely to grow.
Jon Stewart blasted President Barack Obama and his administration over the IRS’ admitted targeting of different conservative groups for extra scrutiny. Stewart also tore into the IRS for trying to issue only a simple apology after their disclosure.
ProPublica: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups’ Confidential Docs
For years, the IRS has specifically gone after groups that criticized the US government, including tea party organizations and other conservative political groups. News of the targeted audits has caused many Americans to distrust the government.
United States government is now the single largest buyer of malware in the world.
The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.
The inner strength of non-conformist or individualistic people who do not follow the herd has always been considered dangerous to the establishment because they are capable of questioning authority. And since the authority literally owns the world and does what it pleases, those kinds of people are considered a threat that should be silenced and [...]
