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The NSA Deserves a Permanent Shutdown

To the people in control of the Executive Branch, violating our civil liberties is an essential government service. So -- to ensure total fulfillment of Big Brother’s vast responsibilities -- the National Security Agency is insulated from any fiscal disruption.

The NSA’s surveillance programs are exempt from a government shutdown. With typical understatement, an unnamed official told [1] _The Hill_ that “a shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSA operations.”

At the top of the federal government, even a brief shutdown of “core NSA operations” is unthinkable. But at the grassroots, a permanent shutdown of the NSA should be more than thinkable; we should strive to make it achievable.

NSA documents, revealed by intrepid whistleblower Edward Snowden, make clear what’s at stake. In a word: _democracy_.

Wielded under the authority of the president, the NSA is the main surveillance tool of the U.S. government. For a dozen years, it has functioned to wreck our civil liberties. It’s a tool that should not exist.

In this century, the institutional momentum of the NSA -- now fueled by

Third Parties in Ohio knocked off the ballot

Editor’s Note: This testimony was given today at the Ohio Statehouse following the committee session. The bill was passed out of committee with minor changes, none addressing the issues raised in this testimony. It was then reported to the Ohio Senate where it was quickly passed as an emergency measure.
Comments of Bob Fitrakis, Ohio Green Party Co-Chair
State Government and Oversight and Reform Committee regarding SB 193
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Honorable Chairman and members of the Oversight and Reform Committee Usually reform is taken and oversight required when there is an actual problem. There is nothing wrong with the status quo regarding political parties in Ohio. State such as Florida, Vermont and Mississippi allow political parties on the ballot without petitions. They are not plagued by crowded ballots. Others like Idaho require a political party to file a petition, but once filed, the party remains as long it runs at least three candidates every even numbered state election year. South Carolina similarly requires a petition, but once a party is on the ballot it stays on if it runs just one candidate every four years.

Things people like more than Congress

Support Citizen Koch doumentary on PBS

"Citizen Koch" was pulled from a national public television broadcast because of fear of upsetting David Koch, who has been a major donor to public television. But public television stations should answer to viewers like me, not to billionaires like the Koch brothers--and I want to see this important documentary.

Will you join the call for a national broadcast of "Citizen Koch" on Independent Lens?

That's why I signed a petition to WOSU TV 34, Columbus, Oh., which says:

"Koch money shouldn't influence public television programming--we want to see the film "Citizen Koch" aired on PBS."

Will you sign the petition too?

Click here to add your name

World Action Now on Fukushima

Journalist, author, activist and historian Harvey Wasserman has been reporting on, and participating in, the nuclear free movement for decades. In that time, by his judgment, only one other event matches the danger to the world posed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. That event is the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.


Save the Nobel Peace Prize from itself

On October 11, we'll learn whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee is interested in reviving the Nobel Peace Prize or putting another nail in its coffin.

Alfred Nobel's vision for the Nobel Peace Prize created in his will was a good one and, one might have thought, a legally binding one as well.

The peace prize is not supposed to be awarded to proponents of war, such as Barack Obama or the European Union.

It is not supposed to be awarded to good humanitarians whose work has little or nothing to do with peace, such as most other recent recipients. As with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace which works for almost anything but, in violation of its creator's will, and as with many a "peace and justice" group focused on all sorts of good causes that aren't the elimination of militarism, the Nobel has become a "peace" prize, rather than a peace prize.

If Saudi Arabian women drive cars, they won't damage their ovaries

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Saudi Arabian women scored a hilarious boost to their campaign for the right to drive when an Islamist cleric became an international laughingstock for insisting ovaries suffer damage if women hold a steering wheel because it "pushes the pelvis upwards."

Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan's remarks in an interview published on the Arabic-language news site sabq.org on September 27, were quickly translated into English and went viral across Internet, attracting mockery, insults and dismay.

His rant was highlighted further when "Reuters earlier wrongly identified him as Sheikh Saleh bin Mohammed al-Lohaidan, a member of the Senior Council of Scholars, one of the top religious bodies in the birthplace of Islam," Reuters news agency said on September 29 correcting its initial report.

"By contrast, Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan, the person quoted in the sabq.org report, is a judicial adviser to an association of Gulf psychologists," Reuters said in its newer update headlined: "Top Saudi cleric says women who drive risk damaging their ovaries."

The shutdown’s untold story: Republicans have already won

As the Republicans in Washington effectively draw everyone’s attention toward ‘recalcitrant’ and ‘unreasonable’ Democrats concerning a perceivable impasse over the Affordable Care Act, one story is going unreported in the mainstream media. At the end of the day, when the government reopens, Republicans will have won.

Of course, this Republican victory will have nothing whatever to do with the Affordable Care Act and their repeated attempts to defund and delay the legislation. Even most Republicans in the House of Representatives acknowledge that President Obama has neither the inclination nor the will to sign a bill that includes a delay of his signature piece of legislation. No, the Republican victory will have everything to do with money.

This hostage scenario, as conceived and carried out by the House Republicans, will come to an end when they vote on a ‘Clean CR,’ which only means a temporary government funding measure. When that happens it is crucial to remember that a certain amount of money has already been allocated in government spending. But let’s back up for a minute.

Banana Republicans exposed

As soon as the federal government shut down for the first time in nearly a decade, a surreal disquiet settled over the D.C. area. For political junkies inside the beltway the whole scene leading up to the shutdown was actually something of a spectacle. With countdown clocks, last minute deals, and dramatic speeches on the house and senate floors, this was political theatre at its finest. But as soon as October 1 came the hype started to fizzle and a harsh reality set in.

More than 800,000 federal workers were sent home without pay. Funding for national science programs all but completely came to a halt. National parks closed their access to the public. Cuts to the Head Start program were amplified, although the shutdown is only an additional burden to the across-the-board sequester cuts that affected Head Start in March.

Hope Flows From Hollow Water

The community was out of control — the children, oh my God, the children, were sniffing gasoline and pretty much abandoning any pretense of a future — and the social and criminal-justice systems were just adding to the problem. Nothing was working.

“Our children slammed us against a brick wall,” Burma Bushie said.

This is the story of a culture in shambles. It was the early ’80s. Bushie’s community is called the Hollow Water First Nation Reserve, a village of about 900 people in eastern Manitoba, more or less at the end of the highway. There was one road in and one road out.

They may have felt utterly isolated in their troubles, but what a few of them started to do — in synchronicity with people in other indigenous communities — has spread hope and awareness across the planet. They began reaching beyond the known (i.e., Western) world, deep into their souls and into the roots of a lost way of life, to save their children and the future. Without intending to, they started a movement. And the slow reverberation of change continues to spread.

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