“(Chris) Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot,” writes Chris Hedges of the reeling New Jersey governor. “He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth.”

And he still might wind up becoming our next president.

This is our kind of guy — media spectacle, bully, errand boy for the moneyed interests. His presidential aspirations may not survive “bridge-gate,” but in his national prominence he sure defines the abject state of American democracy. We give power to would-be despots, “caricatures” only in the sense that they lack life-and-death control over their subjects and are forced to express their wrath through lane closures and the infliction of mere inconvenience on their political foes.

The Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) have voted overwhelmingly to present the 2014 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence to Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, U.S. Army Pvt. Manning is the 25 year-old intelligence analyst who in 2010 provided to WikiLeaks the "Collateral Murder" video – gun barrel footage from a U.S. Apache helicopter, exposing the reckless murder of 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, during the “surge” in Iraq. The Pentagon had repeatedly denied the existence of the "Collateral Murder" video and declined to release it despite a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Reuters, which had sought clarity on the circumstances of its journalists' deaths.

Release of this video and other documents sparked a worldwide dialogue about the importance of government accountability for human rights abuses as well as the dangers of excessive secrecy and over-classification of documents.

American journalism has entered highly dangerous terrain.

A tip-off is that the Washington Post refuses to face up to a conflict of interest involving Jeff Bezos -- who’s now the sole owner of the powerful newspaper at the same time he remains Amazon’s CEO and main stakeholder.

The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million “cloud” computing deal with the CIA.

The situation is unprecedented. But in an email exchange early this month, Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron told me that the newspaper doesn’t need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA. He wrote that such in-story acknowledgment would be “far outside the norm of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest at media organizations.”

But there isn’t anything normal about the new situation. As I wrote to Baron, “few journalists could have anticipated ownership of the paper by a multibillionaire whose outside company would be so closely tied to the CIA.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Security forces and six million residents are worriedly preparing to survive a 19-day "shutdown Bangkok" protest beginning on Monday (Jan. 13), designed to topple the elected government amid fears that the military may help the urban insurrection by staging a coup.

Street clashes have killed at least eight people during the past two months of protests leading to the shutdown which plans to cripple Thailand's government and economy until the end of January.

Tens of thousands of anti-election protesters plan to erect huge stages and makeshift defensive structures at several key intersections, congesting the heart of Bangkok.

"Even demonstrations that are meant to be peaceful can turn confrontational, and can escalate into violence without warning," the American Embassy said on Tuesday (Jan. 7) in an e-mailed "security message for U.S. citizens" describing the upcoming shutdown.

Thousands of people staged a "practice" march in Bangkok on Tuesday (Jan. 7), cheering the stocky protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, thrusting cash into his hands, and begging for his autograph.

On December 20th, the Cincinnati Business Courier ran an item by Randy Simes entitled “New report challenges negative views on gentrification” — and it was republished on December 23rd with UrbanCincy.com under the title “Gentrification occurring in more than Cincinnati’s center city neighborhoods.” These items reference research conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and that data extols the virtues of gentrification, suggesting that people end up with higher credit scores when a neighborhood is gentrified. The Business Courier’s headline especially bolsters such a reading.

Simes writes that “[o]ne of the biggest concerns shared by those worried about the gentrification of neighborhoods is that it is particularly those that rent, rather than own, who are affected most. This too, however, is challenged by Hartley’s research.”