US President Barack Obama's war on whistleblowers has suffered several setbacks.
Two high-profile prosecutions against whistleblowers failed and the mistreatment of alleged WikiLeaks source, military analyst Bradley Manning, has been confirmed.
The cases show a pattern of vindictive harassment against anyone involved in leaking information the US government deems “secret”.
These cases are part of a broader attack on the public's right to know what governments do behind closed doors.
United States
Luz Smedbron ― a disabled mother of three originally from Ecuador ― and about a dozen housing rights advocates, stood together on Smedbrons' porch in Addison, Illinois on July 29.
With protest signs in hand, they chanted: "The people united, will never be defeated!"
DuPage County sheriffs moved in, but protesters stood their ground.
As news cameras arrived on the scene, the officers slunk back to their patrol cars, looking confused and embarrassed. They radioed for reinforcements.
The article below is an abridged August 2 editorial from Socialist Worker (US).
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If your eyes are glazing over at the large numbers and the complicated mechanics of the deal to cut US$2.1 trillion from the United States federal budget over the next decade, here’s a short summary of the agreement: Screw the sick, poor and the elderly while imposing a permanently lower standard of living for working people, all while helping bankers and the rich grab a greater share of society’s wealth.
As the United States prepares itself for the approaching 2012 presidential election, voters in primaries to select the Republican candidate find themselves inundated by a selection of arch-conservative contenders vying for the opportunity to seize the nomination.
Guided by “God”, free-market economics and corporate tax cuts, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, darling of the right-wing Tea Party, appears at the forefront of such arch-conservative efforts to enter the White House and set in motion an uncompromising far-right agenda.
United States: The nonsense battle over debt
Dean Baker
Policy debates in Washington are moving ever further from reality as a small elite moves to strip benefits that the vast majority need and support. The battle over raising the debt ceiling is playing a central role in this effort.
The United States is running extraordinarily large budget deficits. The size of the annual deficit peaked at 10% of GDP in 2009, but it is still running at close to 9% of GDP this year.
The Grammy awards have long been the kind of thing that one simply has to deal with if you're going to approach music under capitalism.
It comes wrapped in all the elitism, commerce and segregation that necessarily has to accompany the music industry, but it's still something of a great salt lake for any artist — even those who are the most socially conscious — if they want to navigate the most treacherous waters of their craft.
Like any money-making venture, it can be just as susceptible to public pressure as it is to the forces of the market.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives threw down the gauntlet to President Barack Obama on July 19 by voting to cut federal spending by US$6 trillion and demand a constitutional balanced budget amendment in exchange for agreeing to raise the federal debt ceiling.
The US must raise the debt ceiling by August 2 or default on its debts for the first time, potentially leaving the government unable to pay its employees and plunging the world into a second credit crunch.
The bill is unlikely to pass into law.
How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned.
Something had happened. But what?
Year Zero had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant’s rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.
The United States media remain enthralled by Congress’s partisan battles over the national debt ceiling, while the assault on public sector workers across the US intensifies.
On June 14, Wisconsin’s state supreme court overturned an earlier legal challenge to the state’s anti-union “budget-repair” bill. The bill will ban collective bargaining for most of the state’s public sector workers.
The bill sparked sustained mass protests in Wisconsin in February and March, including the occupation of the Capitol building in Madison.
ZCommunications received the following open letter from indpendent filmmaker and journalist John Pilger reporting very disturbing events in progress. Visit www.johnpilger.com for more of Pilger's work.
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Dear Noam...
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who performs solo under the name The Nightwatchman, was inspired by the huge struggle in Wisconsin against a savage anti-union law to release a benefit EP of songs dedicated to workers' struggles.
A subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney on June 3 has added to a growing list of official probes into investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs. Reuters said on June 3: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc now faces probes by several government authorities into derivatives trades it executed in late 2006 and 2007. “On Thursday, sources close to the matter said Goldman received a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney, who joins the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission in examining Goldman's actions.”
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