Opinion & Editorials

Salon.com | Yesterday, I noted several reports from Afghanistan that as many as 20 civilians were killed by two NATO airstrikes, including a mother and her five children. Today, the U.S. confirmed at least some of those claims, acknowledging and apologizing for its responsibility for the death of that family:

Al Jazeera | Are there hidden tensions which stand to undermine the important diplomatic relationship between Washington and rising star Brazil? During a recent meeting at the White House, Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff sought to put on a good face. Brazil had made "extraordinary progress" under Rousseff, Obama declared effusively. Returning the praise, Rousseff called for greater Brazilian-US economic cooperation.

Juan Cole | Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren not only called the head of CBS news in an attempt to quash a report on the displacement of Palestinian Christians by the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but he briefed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the far right wing Likud Party on his attempt.

New World Order Report | At the Monday night Summit County GOP meeting on March 12th I publicly called on Debra Irvine to step down as GOP chair.  She turned beet red, tried to laugh it off and told me, "Not a chance."

End the Lie | When I look at the the connections of Goldman Sachs, it makes me wonder how anyone thought that people actually had the brazenness to claim that those pointing out the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington conspiracy theorists.

Reason.com | Whenever I read a news report about police assaulting a homeless guy or unleashing a stream of pepper spray on peaceful protesters, I always wonder where the good cops are. I mean, we're constantly assured that most police officers are good cops, and that their reputation is being besmirched by a few bad apples. So why aren't those good cops busy tasering their off-base colleagues? Or at least giving them a good thumping?

Glenndale Cherry Creek Chronicle | When former Arapahoe County Sheriff Pat Sullivan was arrested on November 29, 2011, for providing methamphetamine to a young man in exchange for sex, people throughout the Cherry Creek Valley and Colorado were shocked. But there was one group that could not have been less surprised — law enforcement agencies throughout the Front Range. They knew what Pat Sullivan was up to for years, if not decades, and had done little or nothing about it. The 1989 Sheriff of the Year did not have a secret double life, but instead was open and notorious about his drug lifestyle and his preying on vulnerable, young, gay males.

Post Libertarian | Six percent of Americans in a recent Reason poll identified as Libertarian. It’s hard to know how reliable that is, but there are a collection of other polls claiming anywhere from 2% to 15%, so that seems like a reasonable middle ground. Let’s say 6% of Americans really are libertarians. Now libertarians can vary in ideology as much as Republicans and Democrats, but let’s assume that if you call yourself a libertarian you are more aligned with the platform of the Libertarian Party than the Republican or Democratic parties. If libertarians were represented in Congress according to their numbers, the Libertarian Party could have 26 members in the House of Representatives and 6 in the Senate. Instead, there are zero.

Theories of Conspiracy | As the 19th century commenced, Britain was embroiled in a war with France where the very survival of the nation was at stake. In 1797, a French invasion fleet embarked for Ireland, which was ruled by Britain at the time, but the weather was so violent that troops could not land.

The Galavanter | Summit County GOP Chair Debra Irvine, Candidate for HD 61, Secretary Elizabeth Wickert and Treasurer Jay Brunvand, deprived me of my right to vote at the Summit County Republican Convention on Saturday, March 10th 2012.

Salem News | The scary US-based Unity Coalition for Israel brings together more than 200 partners claiming to represent more than 40 million Americans in the largest network of Pro-Israel groups in the world. Their Mission is “to focus the efforts of secular and religious organizations and individuals for whom the existence of the State of Israel is central and essential to the future of the free world. We educate these organizations and individuals on security issues and radical ideologies, including global Islamic terrorism... reaches millions of people through more than 200 Christian & Jewish organizations, including churches, synagogues, prayer networks, think tanks and thousands of individuals.

New York Times | The biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web site called Backpage.com.  This emporium for girls and women — some under age or forced into prostitution — is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are.

Global Research | In the 11 years since the year 2000, Israeli forces have killed 1,471 children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bulk of whom were aged between 13 and 17 years. The children of Gaza have been and continue to be at greatest risk, with almost a thousand murdered in the last 12 years

Free Thought Blogs | Our festival is already paid for, via a generous donation from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation (directly deposited into our accounts at American Atheists). So here we are with a free festival on our hands. We would have put the word out to bring canned food (and similar items). Next, we would drop off the food where it needs to go.

Tremble the Devil | Everyone from Bill Cosby to Ronald Reagan seems fond of placing the blame for our black community’s fate squarely on the shoulders of African-Americans, largely excusing the rest of America from any blame for their plight and refusing to consider that - just maybe - other factors might have come into play at some point during our shared history.

Western Center For Journalism | Congressman John Boehner, the House Speaker better known for displays of weeping than of courage, is reportedly cutting a deal with Eric Holder which would provide a “mutually satisfactory” outcome in Barack Obama’s criminal, gun running endeavor Operation Fast and Furious.

Daily Kos | At CPAC, some top conservative minds (stay with me here) got together to try to decide how to defeat the previously not terribly controversial law mandating insurance cover contraception. Their conclusion? Conservatives should just lie about it:

The Guardian | Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".

Natural News | As a warrior for Internet freedom, you helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA by supporting Web black outs by sites like Wikipedia and by contacting your lawmaker to voice your displeasure. So loud was your voice that even the president of the United States sided with you in opposing it.

Times Free Press | The father of a gay college student, whose brutal 1998 murder in Wyoming triggered a national debate over hate crimes, warned Wednesday that Tennessee lawmakers' legislation and comments targeting gays encourages harassment.

Torrent Freak | Collectively, we Australians can be a cowardly bunch, so scared of an unknown invader that we will sell our sovereignty for the illusion of protection. This fear is symbolised in the movie ‘Tomorrow When the War Began,’ a film of dubious quality that portrays an Australia under invasion from some shadowy Asiatic power.

The Guardian | David Koch and Charles G Koch: the US supreme court's Citizens United decision has enabled the industrialists to fund conservative groups to the tune of $200m already in this electoral cycle. Photograph: Getty

Al-Jazeera | SOPA - the Stop Online Piracy Act - and a sister bill, PIPA - the Protect IP Act - seek to minimise the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the internet. At the MIT Media Lab, we share those concerns, and we oppose SOPA and PIPA as threats to innovation on the internet.

Al-Jaeera | In titling last Wednesday's legal decision, upholding the controversial Citizenship Law that prevents Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from living in Israel "Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide", the court's majority well summed up the existential predicament Israel faces today - indeed, has always faced - as it attempts to be both Jewish and democratic.

The Guardian | It has been seven years since the end of the second siege of Fallujah – the US assault that left the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands more; the assault that poisoned a generation, plaguing the people who live there with cancers and their children with birth defects.

End the Lie | I have been extensively covering the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, commonly referred to as the NDAA, and the incredible dangers it presents (including authorization for covert offensive cyberwarfare) since I was first made aware of its existence.

Examiner.com | If Eric Holder's Justice Department gets its way, it could become illegal to use a fake name on Facebook.  Declan McCullaugh wrote at CNET: The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.

Mondoweiss | It happened in the last week, or the last two years. A feeling has taken root deep in the American Jewish community that Israel is hurting us, hurting our standing in the world and our future. The restrictions on democracy, the curbs on women, the intransigence vis-a-vis the Palestinians when Obama has demanded movement, the indifference to the Arab Spring-- Israel is a society we no longer recognize as Jewish like we're Jewish, and worst of all, its militarism is exposing American Jews to the accusation that we are dually loyal. And we don't like that: We're Americans.

Theories of Conspiracy | Tiny, blond, 19 year-old Private Jessica Dawn Lynch was a clerk with the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company of the U.S. Army, who had joined up to escape the 15 percent unemployment of her home in West Virginia. The motto of the 507th is “Just fix it.”

WSWS | Christine Assange, the mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, spoke with the World Socialist Web Site last week during US President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia. Early this month, Britain’s High Court dismissed an appeal by Julian Assange against his extradition to Sweden on frame-up charges of rape and sexual assault.

The correlation between the protests going on all around the world and the global banking system will continue to have a great effect. The EU is requesting $177 trillion dollars from Greece, which is the 36th biggest economic power in the world via the latest G-20 meeting. One of the biggest markets in the world needs a bailout from the 36th biggest? The reason this relates to the protesters and the average citizen of the world is quite simple : The more people are aware of how the market works or go out protesting against it, the less trading will happen.

Mystery Conspiracy | Gadaffi wanted Africa to have its first own communications satellite and in 1992, 42 African countries decided they wanted to have their own satellite instead of using others. This satellite would cover all of Africas communications and it would only cost them 400 million, a one time payment.

New York Times | "One reason Americans support Occupy Wall Street: Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers--securities that it knew were likely to go bust--and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities --that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust."

Infoshop News | Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call “The Arab Spring” has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements.

Business Insider | Next week President Obama travels to Wall Street where he’ll demand – in light of the Street’s continuing antics since the bailout, as well as its role in watering-down the Volcker rule – that the Glass-Steagall Act be resurrected and big banks be broken up.

Marketwatch | How else to accept today’s bizarre plot line: A decade ago Republican George W. Bush took our great nation into a $3 trillion war on lies. Today that party is mindlessly controlled by a cultish anti-tax pledge made to lobbyist Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform group, who once proclaimed: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Rolling Stone | I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.

Slate.com | You know that charming little cafe on New York's Lower East Side that just closed after a mere six months in business—where coffee was served on silver trays with a glass of water and a little chocolate cookie? The one that, as you calmly and correctly observed, was doomed from its inception because it was too precious and too offbeat? The one you still kind of fell for, the way one falls for a tubercular maiden? Yeah, that one was mine.

Slate | Surrendering to a feeling of deep impotence and slight absurdity, I borrowed an iPad on Thursday afternoon and used it to send my first-ever message by this means. It was addressed to one of those distinguished Frenchmen who have been at the fore in pressing the outside world to remove Muammar Qaddafi from the obscene toadlike posture in which, for more than four decades, he has squatted on the lives of the Libyan people. Please, I wrote, intercede with your friends on the National Transitional Council, plus any other revolutionary tribunal however constituted, in order to stop the killing of the Qaddafi family and to ensure smooth passage to the dock at the Hague for those who have already been indicted for crimes against humanity.

BBC | Steve Jobs said he wanted to destroy Android and would spend all of Apple's money and his dying breath if that is what it took to do so.  The full extent of his animosity towards Google's mobile operating system is revealed in a forthcoming authorised biography.

Information Liberation | Disgraceful. That’s the only way to describe the provocative conduct of the Denver Police Department, at an otherwise peaceful gathering over the weekend in Denver’s Civic Center Park.  No one called the cops.  No one complained.  There was no victim. No crime. No weapons. No harm. Nothing, but beautiful weather—equaled only by the spirit of over 2,000 people from all walks of life: All guilty of one mistake.

Business Insider | When a CEO utters this lie, everyone automatically forgives whatever they do. Add 10k jobless to the unemployment rolls ? Sorry, we did it in the BEST INTEREST OF SHAREHOLDERS.  Merge or buy a company and cut back across the board ? We did it in the Best Interest of Shareholders.

Forbes | The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to turn into a political firestorm. Everyday Americans are not too happy with their government, or the conduct of the finance industry. I say, good on them. It’s about time. The problem, however, is that we have become so divided as a nation that it is very difficult to prognosticate if anything good will come out of these protests from a political perspective.

End the Lie | Apparently wars in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya (some of which have never been declared or approved by Congress) were not enough for the winner of the world’s most ironic Nobel Peace Prize.

Reader Supported News | A Harvard law professor, one of the nation's leading bankruptcy experts and consumer advocates, the 62-year-old Warren had come up with the idea for the agency in 2007. She had advised the Obama administration on its creation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse and helped to push it through Congress. Warren had also spent the last 10 months working tirelessly to build the agency from scratch - hiring its staff of 500, including Richard Cordray, organizing its management structure, and getting the CFPB up and running for its opening on July 21.

Mindfully.org | In company with nearly every other historian and political journalist east of the Mississippi River in the summer of 1964, the late Richard Hofstadter saw the Republican Party's naming of Senator Barry Goldwater as its candidate in that year's presidential election as an event comparable to the arrival of the Mongol hordes at the gates of thirteenth-century Vienna.

Psychology Today | Quite a bit of the brain is taken up with understanding what is going on in our sensory world.  For example, if you clasp your hands behind your head, most of the area taken up by your hands reflects the amount of the brain that is devoted to making sense of the information coming in through your eyes.

The Diplomat | For the past few weeks, hundreds of protesters have been demonstrating in New York under the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ banner. The demonstrators have a range of gripes over the state of America – not least the woeful state of the economy and what they argue is a destructive corporate greed that’s choking the prospects of the average worker.

Washington Post | After 10 years of war, the vast majority of post-Sept. 11 veterans say the public does not understand the problems faced by those in the military and by their families. The public largely agrees but believes there’s nothing unfair about the outsized burden being shouldered by veterans.