ELIZABETH RENTER, - Natural News
Stephan: I found this a fascinating example of how small choices made by ordinary people who think of themselves as powerless can, in aggregate, have big effects.
In some parts of the world, good food is food prepared with care, attention, and a plenty of time. This sort of food philosophy, where meals are made with fresh ingredients and patience, doesn’t lend itself well to fast food where cheap ingredients are premade so they can be warmed and slapped together in record-time. This sort of food dichotomy is exactly why McDonald’s couldn’t thrive in Bolivia-the first Latin America country to essentially kick the fast-food-giant out by keeping them in the red.
McDonald’s restaurants operated in Bolivia for 14 years, according to Hispanically Speaking. In 2002, they had to shutter their final remaining 8 stores because they simply couldn’t turn a profit-and if you know fast food companies, you know it’s not because they didn’t try.
The Golden Arches sunk plenty of money into marketing and campaigning-trying to get the food-loving Bolivians to warm to their French fries and burgers, but it simply wasn’t happening.
Some 60 percent of Bolivians are indigenous. ‘Fast
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DAN GILLMORE, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This is a shocking but accurate article; the natural by product of the growing American police state. I have to make a conscious decision each day to post the articles I do, accepting that by publishing facts, wherever they may lead, and by reading all manner of publications in search of the facts that describe the trends affecting our world, I am almost certainly drawing attention to myself, and surely putting myself on all manner of lists.
I’m a longtime subscriber to an Internet [3] mail list that features items from smart, thoughtful people. The list editor forwards items he personally finds interesting, often related to technology and/or civil liberties. Not long after the Guardian and Washington Post first started publishing the leaks describing the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance [4]dragnet, an item appeared about a White House petition [5] urging President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden [6]. The post brought this reply, among others:
‘Once upon a time I would have signed a White House petition to this administration with no qualms. Now, however, a chilling thought occurs: what ‘watch lists’ will signing a petition like this put me on? NSA [7]? IRS? It’s not a paranoid question anymore, in the United States [8] of Surveillance.’
As we Americans watch our parades and fire up our grills this 4 July, the 237th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – the seminal document of the United States – we should take the time to ask ourselves some related questions: how did we come to this state of mind and behavior? How did we become so fearful and timid that we’ve given away essential liberties? Do […]
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ERIC LICHTBLAU, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is the latest on the trend of the growing secret police and judicial apparat. Ultimately I think history more than anything else is going to define Obama as the President who finished what George Bush had begun, and made America a police state.
WASHINGTON – In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.
The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.
The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon […]
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Stephan: A glimmer of good news about U.S. public education.
It’s been awhile, but it looks like U.S. schools are finally doing something right. According to the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) - also known as ‘The Nation’s Report Card
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Stephan: I am constantly amazed at the growing corruption of the American government. It is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime. We have 17 millions children who go to bed hungry; we have elders who have lost even the one meal a day they could rely upon; we have 47 million people without health insurance. But we have plenty of money to throw at the mad scheme on our southern border. An utterly useless waste of billions. But it is going to make a small group of corporations vastly richer. It is a disgusting trend illustrating the failure of both the Congress and the Presidency to serve the real interests of the people.
Last week, John McCain gleefully announced that the Senate immigration bill would result in the ‘most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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