Wednesday, July 8th, 2015
Glenn Greenwald and David Mirand, - Reader Supported News/The Intercept
Stephan: This is U.S. foreign policy with the curtain pulled back. The truth is the American government spies on everyone. Friend and foe alike. Has it produced a happier, healthier, more peaceful world? It has not.
U.S. president Barack Obama listens to the national anthem as he stands with Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil.
Credit: Eraldo Peres/AP
Top secret data from the National Security Agency, shared with The Intercept by WikiLeaks, reveals that the U.S. spy agency targeted the cellphones and other communications devices of more than a dozen top Brazilian political and financial officials, including the country’s president Dilma Rousseff, whose presidential plane’s telephone was on the list. President Rousseff just yesterday returned to Brazil after a trip to the U.S. that included a meeting with President Obama, a visit she had delayed for almost two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil.
That Rousseff’s personal cell phone was successfully targeted by NSA spying was previously reported in 2013 by Fantastico, a program on the Brazilian television network Globo Rede. That revelation – along with others exposing NSA mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Brazilians, and […]
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2015
Mike Whitney, - OpEd News
Stephan: As one of the small group who created the all-volunteer armed forces I can tell you that we never considered that when only one per cent of yours population is engaged with the military it is possible to make war a permanent feature of your foreign policy.
While the rest of the world is building new infrastructure, and preparing for the future, we pour our wealth into the craw of the military-intelligence- corporate monster. Fabulous sums of money, all dead end dollars.
When a country spends a dollar on healthcare it increases wellness. A dollar spent on a hand grenade does just the opposite.
Martin Dempsey Releases 2015 National Military Strategy for the US
On Wednesday, the Pentagon released its 2015 National Military Strategy, a 24-page blueprint for ruling the world through military force. While the language in the report is subtler and less incendiary than similar documents in the past, the determination to unilaterally pursue US interests through extreme violence remains the cornerstone of the new strategy. Readers will not find even a hint of remorse in the NMS for the vast destruction and loss of life the US caused in countries that posed not the slightest threat to US national security. Instead, the report reflects the steely resolve of its authors and elite constituents to continue the carnage and bloodletting until all potential rivals have been killed or eliminated and until such time that Washington feels confident that its control over the levers of global power cannot be challenged.
As one would expect, the NMS conceals its hostile intentions behind the deceptive language of “national security.” The US does not initiate wars of aggression against blameless states […]
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2015
Valerie Tarico, - The Raw Story/Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: It is one of America's sad ironies that we have one of the highest abortion rates in the developed world. The reason: The Theocratic Right's sexual dysfunction. Here is an excellent essay on the issue.
Bristol Palin, daughter of half term Alaska governor Sarah Palin in her second unwed pregnancy signs her book about sexual abstinence.
Credit; Gage Skidmore/Flckr
America’s high rate of abortion can be directly attributed to conservative Christianity’s obsession with controlling and suppressing sexuality.
The most effective way to reduce abortion is to de-stigmatize sexuality, improve sexual education, and ensure broad access to excellent contraceptives. In the highly secular Netherlands, this formula has knocked abortion down to 7 per 1000 women annually, one third the U.S. rate.
So why does the anti-abortion movement keep their focus on restrictive laws instead of contraceptive access? Why do they oppose medically accurate sex ed? Why do they pledge to defund Title X family planning? Why are they having fits about programs that provide top tier contraceptives to pregnant teens in Colorado and Washington (and virtually eliminate abortion among participating teens)? Because abortion isn’t really what interests them. They want purity. They […]
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Katie Valentine, - Climate Progress
Stephan: I grew up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, and it has always held a special place for me. In many ways it could be said that America exists as a country because of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers, and sheltered harbors. Watching it be polluted by industrial animal and fowl husbandry operations, dumping thousands of tons of fecal matter into the bay's waters, along with massive blasts of antibiotics and hormones was a disturbing experience. But now there is some hope, as this story describes. This is good news.
Chesapeake Bay
The future of the Chesapeake Bay looks a little cleaner Monday, after a federal appeals court struck down a case that sought to undermine an effort to clean up the bay.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ newly-released opinion upholds a decision made by a lower court that found that the Environmental Protection Agency-led cleanup effort, which involves all six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, is legal. The plan, called the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint, establishes a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for how much nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment can enter the bay each year — limits that aim to cut these forms of pollution by 20-25 percent by 2025.
The EPA’s plan is being put in place by the states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. But a range of agriculture groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Fertilizer Institute, and the National Pork Producers Council, have taken issue with the plan, with the Farm Bureau suing the EPA over it in 2011. That lawsuit […]
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Julie Ray, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: This isn't getting any play in media at all, but I think this study is telling us something important: It describes another step in the end of American Exceptionalism. We live in a multipolar world, in which the real power centers increasingly are multinational corporations — although the nation state forms will continue. But neither the U.S. political process, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, nor the media seems willing to grapple with this emerging truth.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Worldwide, Germany’s leadership has been as popular — or almost as popular — as the leadership of the U.S. in all but the two early years of President Barack Obama’s administration. This includes 2014, when a median of 41% of residents in 135 countries and areas approved of Germany’s leadership.
The approval rating of Germany’s leadership in 2014, which for most of the world likely means long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel, was about where it has been for most of the past eight years. In 2007 and 2008, the last two years of the Bush administration, global residents actually held Germany’s leadership under Merkel in higher regard than U.S. leadership. The chancellor has navigated through some trying economic and political times for Europe during her tenure, with Germany emerging as a leader throughout the eurozone’s recent sovereign debt crisis and in Western diplomacy throughout the Ukraine conflict.
Germany’s Leadership Most Popular in European Union
Majorities of residents in 46 countries approved of Germany’s leadership in 2014. Illustrating the country’s regional political and economic clout, more than half of these countries are […]
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