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Killing the Putin-Obama ‘Trust’

“Putin will not talk to Obama under pressure,” American journalist Josh Rogin was told late last week by a close associate of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. If Russia’s President will no longer call or accept calls from President Obama, this strikes me as the most important casualty so far from U.S.-provoked “regime change” in Ukraine. Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin apparently had conversations on Ukraine almost every week in March; their last talk took place on April 14. U.S. “pressure” – including token economic and travel sanctions against some Russian companies and friends of Putin – is likely to continue. But it is not likely to become more extensive if key European countries “man up” and tell Washington what was obvious from the start; namely, that Russia holds very high cards in this area and that the Europeans will not damage their own flagging economies by approving stronger economic sanctions that would inflict real “punishment” on Russia.

USAID's "Technological Mercenaries" Deceive Cubans

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) used "technological mercenaries" in a dumb, secret, illegal assault against Cuba's government and unsuspecting population, comparable to the strategy of deceptive Nazi propaganda, according to Cuban Ambassador Victor Ramirez Pena. "ZunZuneo, in the two years that it was in operation, didn't have enough time to do what it wanted, which was to subvert the order in Cuba," Ambassador Pena said in an interview, referring to USAID's Internet-based social media site named ZunZuneo "It was working on profiling people," in Cuba who had no idea that USAID was sucking up their personal data by secretly hosting and spying on their accounts, to later spam them with anti-communist and pro-American propaganda, he said. "That is something that nobody should be doing because it's illegal by U.S. law, it's illegal by international regulations," Ambassador Pena said. "Does one have to accept that the continuous use of deceit, lies -- as Goebbels said -- to make it a truth, is something that we have to accept?

The United States Democracy Is Illegitimate. Time for the American Awakening.

Two weeks ago in reaction to the McCutcheon decision we touched on an issue that will become central to our movement: Has the democratic legitimacy of the US government been lost? We raised this issue by quoting a Supreme Court Justice, former US president and a sitting US Senator: “The legitimacy of the US government is now in question. By illegitimate we mean it is ruled by the 1%, not a democracy ‘of, by and for the people.’ The US has become a carefully designed plutocracy that creates laws to favor the few. As Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissenting opinion, American law is now ‘incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy.’ Or, as former president, Jimmy Carter said on July 16, 2013 “America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.” “Even members of Congress admit there is a problem. Long before the McCutcheondecision Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) described the impact of the big banks on the government saying: ‘They own the place.’ We have moved into an era of a predatory form of capitalism rooted in big finance where profits are more important than people’s needs or protection of the planet.”

Sterling and Bundy are embarrassing, but real threat to equal rights is from Supreme Court, Congress

"Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on," goes the refrain of a famous song from the civil rights movement. We marched for freedom -- for new laws that would end segregation, guarantee equal rights, enforce voting rights, and provide affirmative actions to help correct decades of being locked out or left out. We couldn't let lunatic sheriffs or Klan rallies or jail distract us. We had to keep our eyes on the prize and hold on. That advice applies today where public expression of racial animus can distract from the far more serious legal reverses equal rights has suffered. First we had the rancher and conservative folk hero Cliven Bundy embarrassing himself and his right-wing allies with his foolishness about "the Negro," suggesting that African Americans might have been "better off as slaves."

THE REAL CURE FOR SCUMBAG TEAM OWNERS IS FOR THE PUBLIC TO OWN THE TEAMS

Enough is enough, sports fans. It's been known for decades that the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers is a racist jerk. Ditto the owner of that professional football team in our nation's capital, whose current horrific anti-indigenous team name is a global embarrassment. But these guys are the tip of the iceberg. The real question is: why are these teams owned by individuals at all? Why do we allow our precious sports clubs to be the playthings of a bunch of billionaires? Why aren't the football, baseball, basketball, hockey and other major sports franchises so many of us so passionately love and support not owned by the communities that give them their life? Why is our nation powerless to remove the racist logo from a public stadium just down the street from the White House and Congress? There's a model out there that does work. It's called the Green Bay Packers (of which I'm proud owner of 2 shares). There are plenty of flaws in the set-up. But when snow covers the field, the community comes out to shovel it off.

Social Media Fail or Big Media Fail?

The mainstream media was quick to observe how the New York Police Department (NYPD) fell flat in its latest social media campaign. Many media outlets, pretending that they are internet savvy, or at least remove the ball-gags from their intern’s mouths, called it “Epic Fail.” Was the #myNYPD twitter gaff a failure of a large institution to understand the dynamics of social media, or a failure of the institutions of the press to live up to the responsibility of media as society's watchdogs? After careful quantitative and qualitative analysis, the Free Press concludes the latter is likely true. The NYPD, in the hopes of getting good photos for publication and building its community relations, encouraged Twitter users to tweet pictures of their interactions with the police with the #myNYPD hashtag. This predictably led to the posting of many pictures and videos of police brutality. The mainstream press noted the backfire and reported on the story.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 Good, But Not Great

 

 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the inevitable, simply titled sequel to 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, is less snore-inducingly tedious than the first installment, but that’s a pretty low bar. ASM was terrible. ASM2 is good, but not great.

The problem with ASM2 is that the action scenes are excellent. Andrew Garfield is a better Spider-Man than he is a Peter Parker, and his delivery of the superhero’s trademark banter is pitch-perfect. Those scenes are exciting, they’re clear, and they’re well-directed. How is that a problem? They’re far too little of the movie, and it makes the rest of it even worse by comparison.

Central Ohio Workers Celebrate May Day to Tell Columbus: #OhioNeedsARaise, Announce Formation of Central Ohio Worker Center

 

 

Central Ohio Workers Celebrate May Day to Tell Columbus:

#OhioNeedsARaise, Announce Formation of

Central Ohio Worker Center

 

 

 

What: #OhioNeedsARaise – May Day Celebration

Lucasville prisoners: If we must die

 

 

Let’s fight poverty, not the poor

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the so-called “War on Poverty” that President Lyndon B. Johnson declared when the official poverty rate was at 19 percent. Five decades later, the poverty rate stands at 15 percent with 46.5 million people living below the official poverty line, which is about $23,000 for a family of four (2012 Census Data). More than 20 million people earn less than half the poverty line, in other words, they live in extreme poverty in the richest country in the history of the world. The statistics are even more depressing when we consider that the child poverty rate (under age 18) is an alarming 21.8 percent. Even worse, for children under the age of 5, some states register poverty rates of up to 36 percent.

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