Jeffrey Sterling vs. the CIA: An Untold Story of Race and Retribution

A dozen years before his recent sentencing to a 42-month prison term based on a jury’s conclusion that he gave classified information to a New York Times journalist, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was in the midst of a protracted and fruitless effort to find someone in Congress willing to look into his accusations about racial discrimination at the agency.

ExposeFacts.org has obtained letters from Sterling to prominent members of Congress, beseeching them in 2003 and 2006 to hear him out about racial bias at the CIA. Sterling, who is expected to enter prison soon, provided the letters last week. They indicate that he believed the CIA was retaliating against him for daring to become the first-ever black case officer to sue the agency for racial discrimination.

One Year After Thailand's Bloodless Coup


BANGKOK, Thailand -- One year after destroying a popular elected
government in a bloodless coup, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha rules with
absolute power over a country suffering from newly discovered "death
camps" for Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, a flat economy, and
diplomatic feuds with the U.S. and Europe.

Gen. Prayuth publicly shrugs off Washington's criticism of his May 22,
2014 coup and his junta's military trials and coercive "attitude
adjustment" confinement for civilian dissidents.

After ripping up Thailand's constitution, he orchestrated an interim
charter giving himself absolute power as prime minister "regardless of
the legislative, executive or judicial" branches, plus immunity from
prosecution.

Gen. Prayuth then empowered Thailand's U.S.-trained army to officially
function as police by seizing property and detaining suspects.

"Even though we didn't like the coup, we train Thailand's military so
that in the future when all this settles down, America will still have

On the U.S. Killing of Two Children in Syria


The U.S. military admitted on Thursday to killing two girls in Syria.

If a target of U.S. aggression can be alleged to have killed children, especially with the wrong kind of weapon, that is used as grounds for war. War is supposed to be the cure for that.

This was the case in 2013 with the White House's false claims to knowledge that the Syrian government had killed children with chemical weapons. President Obama told us to watch videos of dead children and either support a bombing campaign against Syria or support killing children.

But that's a Catch-22, because it's telling you to either support killing children or support killing children.

Being Pro-Voice

The abortion debates is the last place I would have looked for inspiration in methods of handling the major political and social problems of the world. Politically I've always thought of abortion -- the topic of abortion, that is -- as part of a fraud. A so-called democracy is limited to two political parties, both of which serve corporate monopolies, both of which invest primarily in war preparations, both of which cavalierly sacrifice the future habitability of the planet as well as the immediate survival of numerous species, both of which advance income inequality, both of which strip away our civil liberties -- and yet, the two of which are depicted as diametrically opposed, supposedly offering us a world of difference at the polling place. And how is this done? Easy, one of them is pro- and the other anti- abortion! I can't count how many people have listed everything they oppose about a presidential candidate and then begged me to vote for that same candidate in order to determine the abortion issue in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Disney flick takes a slow, cryptic look into the future

Photo of woman from movie

If you watch the trailers for Tomorrowland—or if you just consider the fact that it’s a Disney film named after a Disney theme-park attraction—you have a pretty good idea what to expect: It’s going to offer an optimistic view of a future in which technology is used to cure the world’s ills.

Surprisingly, it’s not like that at all. Even more surprisingly, it might have been more satisfying if it had been.

There’s a part near the beginning when it briefly lives up to expectations. A young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) visits the 1964 New York World’s Fair to show off the flawed jet pack he built from an old vacuum cleaner.

There he meets a girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who gives him a strange pin that turns out to be the key to a magic kingdom of sorts. It allows him access to a hidden world filled with gleaming structures and giant robots. One of the robots even fixes his jet pack, allowing him to soar above the exotic landscape.

After seeing this glorious scene, you might be fooled into thinking this Disney-fied view of the future is what the story is about.

Nakba and the question of ‘Palestinian strategy’

"What is the Palestinian strategy?" is a question that I have been asked all too often, including on 15 May, the day that millions of Palestinians around the world commemorated the 67th anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1947-48.

 

The question itself doesn’t require much elaboration, as in, "What is the Palestinian strategy to combat Israeli military occupation, siege violence, apartheid and racial discrimination?" The painful reality is well known to many, although few take on the moral responsibility to confront it.

 

And the posing of the question is telling in itself. It wouldn’t be asked if there was a strategy in place, being implemented, and regularly revisited and modified. The question is a testament to all the failures of past strategies, and the political disintegration of any credible Palestinian leadership, currently represented by Mahmoud Abbas and his circle of wealthy businessmen and "politicians".

 

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