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Under Amazon’s CIA Cloud: The Washington Post

News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.

The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon -- which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.

Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.

And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.

Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”

U.S.-Trained Army supports Thailand's election & opposes insurrection

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's U.S.-trained military appears to support next February's endangered election, and oppose a right-wing insurrection bent on destroying the government, seizing power, blacklisting politicians, and cancelling the polls.

The blockades and sit-ins, mostly by Bangkok's wealthy and middle class, are also trying to prevent poorer urban and rural voters repeatedly electing politicians who the comparatively well-off protesters despise.

In some ways, the protesters can be perceived as Thailand's "opulent minority" against the working class, wrote analyst Apivat Hanvongse.

Another commentator said the goal of the insurrection is to clamp this poorly educated Southeast Asian country under a closed system of "elites electing elites to rule the majority."

Wedging itself into this split is the military.

Army generals, including some who participated in a bloodless 2006 coup, are mediating between the protesters' rich and loudly threatening leader, Suthep Thaugsuban, and the damaged government of Caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Ban Weaponized Drones! – Statement by the European Section Global Anti-Drone Network

Statement by the European Section Global Anti-Drone Network
Ban Weaponized Drones!
We oppose the use of drone technology for killing, surveillance and repression.

We oppose weaponized and surveillance drones because their deployment lowers the threshold to armed aggression, is used for “targeted” killing of people within and outside warzones – without indictment, trial and conviction, terrorizes the population of the targeted territories, fuels hatred, thereby increasing the cycle of violence, leads to the development of autonomous kille robots, thereby making even more horrifying wars likely, initiates a new round in the arms race.

We demand that all governments cease the production and acquisition of armed drones, as well as their research and development, and work towards a worldwide ban of these weapons.

Endorsed by:

Althaler, Birgit – Palestine Solidarity Basel, Switzerland
Aune, Björn – Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment (BDS) Campaign Berlin, Germany
Baloch, Farooq – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Germany
Benjamin, Medea - Code Pink (Co-­Founder), USA

Love letter to friends on Jeju Island

Dear friends on Jeju Island : Sung Hee, Paco, Silver, Sister Stella, Dr Park and many others at Gangjeong Village,
I lived in a gorgeous agricultural village in Bamiyan Province of Afghanistan for seven years and like yourselves on Jeju Island in South Korea, every morning, I woke up to a window scene of ‘heaven’. No eyes would believe that wars had brought ‘hell’ to occupy this land.

I imagine you walking on the simple yet unpolluted paths in Gangjeong Village and that if you stopped for a little breather, you’ll be caressed and cared for by the tree shadows with their sunlight, the chatty play of the neighbourhood children, and the wafts of floral perfume dancing by. Neither you nor the villagers I lived among would want to lose your aviary-like homes to Greed.

Save Jeju Island Now

The Afghan Peace Volunteers and I recognize the love which has compelled you to stop the military base construction trucks with your young and old bodies, demonstrating again that the human spirit can speak to heavy, metallic machines.

Stopping an excavator on Jeju island

Memories of South Africa

Earlier this year I had the great pleasure to visit South Africa. Compared to most Americans, the passing of Nelson Mandela brought tears to my eyes many times as I recalled being in many of the places being shown on countless news shows.

In particular, I was fortunate in spending significant time with several black elderly South Africans who knew Mandela and were prisoners also, and who spoke in considerable detail about the horrors of living in the apartheid society. Nothing I have seen and heard on many news outlets has presented the true horrors of what life was like for not only blacks but also other people of color in the apartheid society. There were virtually no freedoms whatsoever for nonwhites and the blacks suffered the most. I recall listening to these apartheid experts and feeling absolutely bewildered that the apartheid government and society could actually have been created and prospered for so many decades.

After apartheid and Jim Crow: Still not equal

As Nelson Mandela’s body is laid to rest, the leaders from across the world who came to pay tribute to him leave with shared perspectives. They see the fruits of the remarkable triumphs of Mandela and the African National Congress — the defeat of apartheid, the transition of power from the oppressive minority to the newly empowered majority, the creation of a great democracy. And they see the continued inequality that scars South Africa, the gulf between the wealthy and the impoverished, still largely reflecting a color line.

We see the same in this country. We celebrate, as we should, the remarkable triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement: the end of apartheid in the South, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the legal prohibition of racial discrimination in employment and education.

Yet we also see the gulf between rich and poor, a gulf still often tracing a color line in many of our cities and regions.

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