OpEdNews – Abdus-Sattar Ghazali – Are We Living In Orwell’s 1984 Oceania Surveilance State? – 15 June 2013

Perhaps, Georg Orwell’s worst nightmare has come true in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s startling revelations of secret government surveillance.

Writing under the title, “So Are We Living in 1984?” Ian Crouch of New Yorker argued that Edward Snowden, sounded, in the Guardian interview in which he came forward, like he’d been guided by Orwell’s pen.

OpEdNews – RSN Files Media Access Motion In Manning Trial – 2 June 2013

This article originally appeared in Reader Supported News

Bradley Manning Graphic (illustration: Marc Ash/RSN)

By Scott Galindez and Marc Ash, Reader Supported News

Reader Supported News through counsel William Simpich has filed a MOTION TO INTERVENE with the United States Army First Judicial District in the matter of the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning.

OpEdNews – Attorney General Holder Under Investigation On Perjury Suspicions – 29 May 2013

US Attorney General Eric Holder (Retuers/Kevin Lamarque)

The House Committee on the Judiciary is said to be targeting US Attorney General Eric Holder over fears he may have lied to Congress during a May hearing regarding private phone records of AP staff, according to a source close to the congressional probe.

OpEdNews – Richard (RJ) Eskow – Simpson-Bowles Austerity Gang : Go Home – 19 May 2013

Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called “austerity economics,” a product that’s designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else’s expense. This philosophy provides some (very thin) intellectual cover for the Republicans’ lunatic bloodbath of spending cuts.

Of course, Simpson and Bowles and austerity’s other sales people aren’t really economic thinkers. They’re paid to pitch a product. They didn’t invent austerity any more than Alex Rodriguez invented Pepsi.

OpEdNews – Pepe Escobar – Catfight – And It’s US vs EU – 18 May 2013

Source: Asia Times

PARIS – Lovers of turbo-neoliberalism, rejoice — and take your bottles of Moet to a prime ringside seat; there won’t be a nastier catfight this summer than the opening rounds opposing two Western giants. Forget about the Pentagon “pivoting” to Asia without ever abandoning the Middle East; nothing compares with this voyage in the entrails of turbo-capitalism, worthy of a neo-Balzac. 

OpEdNews – Harvey Wasserman – Grassroots Activism Brings San Onofre To The No Nukes Brink – 17 May 2013

In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk.

San Onofre 2001 by Wikipedia

With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison  was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart:  a No Nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win.

OpEdNews – David Sirota – Bush Used The IRS, FBI, CIA And Secret Service To Go After Opponents – Where Was The Fox And GOP Outrage? – 15 May 2013

Source: Salon

The recent IRS flap shows an obvious double standard in Washington’s reactions to Bush era and Obama era misconduct.

Former US President George W. Bush thanks US President Barack Obama during a dedication ceremony at the George W. Bush Library and Museum on the grounds of  Southern Methodist University  on April 25, 2013 in Dallas, Texas.

OpEdNews – Robert Parry – Ronald Reagan: Accessory To Genocide – 13 May 2013

Source: Consortium News

President Ronald Reagan

The conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide against Mayan villagers in the 1980s has a special meaning for Americans who idolize Ronald Reagan. It means that their hero was an accessory to one of the most grievous crimes that can be committed against humanity.

OpEdNews – Richard (RJ) Eskow – Tick-Tick-Tick: Do 60 Minutes And America’s Billionaires Want Us To Beg? – 11 May 2013

If you’re a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care,  60 Minutes  has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it. That was part of the powerful, if covert, message behind last Sunday’s  60 Minutes  broadcast.

The rest of Sunday night’s message, which tracks closely with the right-wing agenda promoted by billionaires like Pete Peterson, goes like this: Keep downsizing government. Keep tolerating and promoting the hijacking of our national wealth by the rich, even as it suffocates the middle class and creates soaring poverty rates. Surrender democratic control over the social safety net to wealthy donors.

OpEdNews – Greg Coleridge -127 Reasons Why Reversing Citizens United is NOT Enough – 10 May 2013

Corporations are Not People by Eye on Miami

127.

That’s the number of years corporations, artificial legal creations of government, have possessed inalienable rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.