"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."

I think Archimedes was serious. I know _we_ need to be. Now is the time to choose our future, as the Earth Charter declares. This means thinking big: embracing a vision so enormous it overflows our sense of the possible. For instance:

"Beginning with even just a small group united behind a shared vision of how to end war by dismantling the war machine, it will be possible to rally the global community to the vision of a future in which war is no longer something we accept." So Judith Hand wrote recently at the blog A Future Without War [2].

"I believe," she went on, "the world is actually yearning for such a movement to begin. I also believe that when it does, we will move amazingly swiftly to achieve a worldview shift of epic, stunning, historical magnitude."

Recent news stories have revealed the breathtaking scope of President Obama's indiscriminate spying on American citizens who aren't suspected of any wrongdoing. The government has been using data from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple, to spy Americans.

There is something fundamentally un-American and deeply undemocratic about this kind of government surveillance. But since 9/11, we have seen first George W. Bush and now Barack Obama engage in shockingly broad executive power grabs that undermine our constitutionally protected civil liberties, all in the name of "national security."

President Obama is a constitutional scholar who ran on the platform of transparency in government. We don't believe he has the constitutional right to collect and examine the telephone records of virtually all Americans. But if he thinks that he has the authority to spy on Americans, he should acknowledge these programs and provide his legal rationale for them.

Demand President Obama acknowledge his administration's spying programs and provide a full legal justification for indiscriminately spying on Americans.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- After executing four killers from Thailand, Laos and Myanmar last year, China's security forces have extended their reach by uniting those countries along the Mekong River in a "war on drugs" and arrested 812 people in the narcotics-rich Golden Triangle.

China's new push into Southeast Asia is described as an anti-drug operation which began on April 19 and will end on June 20.

It includes protecting commerical and passenger ships on the Mekong River against thieves, kidnappers and guerrillas.

Up to now, security forces from China, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos said they confiscated more than two tons of drugs -- including heroin, opium and methamphetamines -- plus guns and ammunition.

The 812 arrests include citizens from all four countries, plus Vietnam, according to Lan Weihong, an officer at the Narcotics Department in China's powerful Public Security Ministry.

Mr. Lan made the announcement at their "command center...staffed by drug enforcement agents from all four countries," located in Jinghong, a Mekong River port in the southern province of Yunnan, China Daily reported on May 21.

After two days of wrangling, several major mainstream media organizations agreed to meet Friday, May 31 with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the circumstances under which the Justice Department would imprison journalists for reporting on human rights abuses if that reporting is deemed to be damaging to national security. Neither the Columbus Free Press nor Wikileaks was invited to attend or offer comment.

Several news organizations, including the Associated Press and Fox News, both of whom have been placed under electronic surveillance, declined to attend the meeting because it would be secret and off the record. It is not known if the First Amendment was on the agenda, which was secret.

At the last moment, Holder loosened the rule for journalists attending the meeting, permitting them to interview each other after the meeting without threat of imprisonment. Three out of the five journalists who did attend spoke briefly with reporters. They have not yet been arrested.

Hackivist Jeremy Hammond accepted a non-cooperating plea agreement Thursday, May 30 in the Stratfor case which could land him in prison for 10 years. Hammond was arrested in March 2012 for his role in the LulzSec hacking attacks on private security and public safety servers.

StratFor is the the trade name for Strategic Forecasting Inc., which bills itself as a private CIA. In documents released by Hammond to Wikileaks, it was revealed that StratFor was spying on ecological and corporate justice activists and marketing it's intelligence to major corporations and government agencies for a subscription fee that often ran to $40,000.

Hammond has spent 15 months in incarcerated without bail and the last several months in total isolation where he is restricted from family visits for 1 year and community visits for 2 years. Additionally, he may be required to pay up to $2.5 million in restitution to his victim, the private intelligence firm StatFor, for lost business and a judgement in civil action against them by their clients for failing to properly secure their private data.