Should Harry Reid’s corporate interests trump public grazing rights?

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a problem. All but one rancher has sold his grazing rights and gotten out of the cattle business on a certain piece of real estate in Nevada. Senator Reid wants that land for a multi-billion dollar solar farm and factory.

But since the economic incentive didn’t work for the Cliven Bundy family, Reid and the Bureau of Land Management sent in armed contract cowboys this month to rustle 300 cattle with helicopters and guns, killing some in the process.

The Bundy family has been grazing their cattle on public lands in Clark County for six generations. They rely on grazing rights established in 1877, which Harry Reid, via the federal government, wants to quash so that a Chinese energy company can develop the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone.

How eminent domain defeats bankster mortgage fraud

By Ellen Brown
Web of Debt

The Stone that Brings Down Goliath?
Richmond and Eminent Domain

In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorganChase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging; yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater (meaning the balance owed exceeds the current value of the home), sapping homeowners’ budgets, the housing market and the economy. Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands.

Return of the Golden Calf

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

’Tis the season to feel rage and heartache about the economy.

I feel hope as well, praise the Lord, thanks to Pope Francis and the alley behind my house, where nothing of value goes to waste.

I’m the kind of person who can’t throw anything away, but sometimes I have to anyway — an old microwave, a sewing machine that hasn’t been used in 20 years, a threadbare easy chair, tangled computer wires and other excruciating miscellany — and when I do, it’s usually gone within a day, if not an hour. When I can no longer find value in what I possess, others see it as a gift from the universe.

Antonio Banderas: Chávez ideas will solve US crisis

By Alex Dunham
The Local

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas surprised CNN viewers when he criticized US President Barack Obama and suggested Europe and the US should apply the same economic policies as Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez.

During his talk with Spanish journalist Ana Pastor, Banderas was asked several questions about the current financial crisis and possible solutions to it.

The Malaga-born star pointed the finger of blame at “the markets, the lobbies, the big corporations” and suggested they didn’t have to take responsibility when countries and governments had problems.

“We’re not being governed by the people we voted for,” he told Pastor.

One Legal System Is True law, the One We Follow Enslaves Us

By A Liberal Patriot

The material below is extremely critical to all of us.  But an introduction might be valuable.

We can bring this country together if liberals recognize that those who have known this information for some time are typically conservatives, and often fundamentalists, but they have not been heard.  The information is on their liberty and patriot sites, which liberals have been taught to link to nuts or dangerous groups.

Solution to the “Shutdown”: The Fed Could Simply Cancel $2 Trillion of Government Debt

By Washington’s Blog
Global Research

Bipartisan Proposal Would Take Pressure Off the Budget Crisis

Congressman Alan Grayson and former congressman Ron Paul are two of the fiercest warriors against an out-of-control Federal Reserve.

Paul has campaigned to dissolve the Fed for 35 years, and wrote an entire book called “End the Fed“. Grayson has  repeatedly slammed the Fed, and absolutely demolished it … to its face.    Paul and Grayson also co-sponsored a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. (Their desire to rein in the Fed is supported by numerous top economists.)

So when the two of them support a Fed-related solution to the “government shutdown” crisis,  I listen.

Martial Law and the Economy: Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse?

By Ellen Brown
Global Research

Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?

Obamacare a Private Sector Rip-Off of Americans

By Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

Obamacare works for the insurance companies, but not for the uninsured.

.The government of the “world’s only superpower,” the “exceptional,” the “indispensable” country, claims to know what is best for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Mali, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, China, indeed for the entire world. However, the “indispensable” country cannot even govern itself, much less the world over which the “superpower” desires hegemony. The government of the “world’s only superpower” has shut itself down.

“National Security” versus “Food Insecurity”: One in Seven Hungry in America as Obama Prepares for Syrian War

By Rady Ananda
Global Research

The number of starving US citizens during Obama’s terms in office is a whopping one in seven, worse than the global average of one in eight. As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents.

Hunger Games: Republicrats seek $20 billion cut to Food Stamps

They required the entire nation but themselves to buy ObamaCare, and they still get all their profit shares, and they have their wars, ecocide and population reduction, and they got their bailouts, but for us?  Starve. ~Ed.

A Socialist Worker Editorial

UNEMPLOYMENT IS stubbornly high, and many people are still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. So what’s Congress’ plan to get people back to work? Here’s their grand idea: Make the unemployed go hungry to really motivate them to find a job. [emphasis added]

On June 20, by a margin of 234 to 195, the House defeated the proposed farm bill that emerged from the House Agriculture Subcommittee. The bill, which sets agriculture policy as well as spending on nutrition assistance, would cut $20.1 billion over 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps.

A new center of the resistance in Greece

Supporters of the ERT workers’ occupation rally outside the headquarters in Athens (Panos Petrou)

By Panos Petrou
Socialist Worker

The resistance to austerity and social crisis in Greece has united behind a workers’ occupation of the state TV and radio station ERT after the government — for the first time since Greece was ruled by a military junta–tried to shut down the broadcaster. For more than a week, thousands of people have gathered on the grounds of the ERT headquarters to defend the occupiers from an assault by riot police.

Max Igan: Dealing with Corporatocracy

By Max Igan

Universal Law trumps all others.

1. No man or woman, in or out of government shall initiate force, threat of force or fraud against my life and property and, any and all contracts I am a party to, not giving full disclosure to me, whether signed by me or not, are void at my discretion.

2. I may use force in self-defense against anyone that violates Law 1.

3. There shall be no exceptions to Law 1 and 2.

Ecowarriors destroy 6,000 GM beets in Oregon

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom News

To protect against genetic contamination, a group of ecodefenders destroyed 6,000 genetically modified beets in Jackson County, Oregon earlier this month. The FBI is involved and has deemed the act “economic sabotage,” despite that Syngenta is creating products that economically destroy organic crops through genetic contamination and pesticide aerial drift.

When cross contamination occurs, then our corrupt judicial system blames the victim farmer who is ordered to pay Monsanto for the company’s failure to control its frankenseeds that contaminated her organic crops.

One Million Protest in Brazil Last Night – Tropical Spring

By Michael Collins
COTO Report

Sparked by a public transportation fare increase in Sao Paolo a week ago, an estimated one million people showed up in cities across Brazil expressing  discontent with the limited opportunities they face and an indifferent government.

“It’s not really about the price anymore,” said Camila Sena, an 18-year-old university student at a Wednesday protest in Rio de Janeiro’s sister city of Niteroi. “People are so disgusted with the system, so fed up that now we’re demanding change.”  USA Today, June 20, 2013

How to Keep Your Info Private (Even from the NSA)

By Dan Schointuch
Money Talk News

Thwarting the efforts of a billion-dollar super-secret government spy agency — or anyone else who wants access to your personal information — is not that difficult.

With the recent revelations that the NSA and other agencies have been tapping into corporate streams of data that can provide them with massive amounts of private information about U.S. citizens, now is a good time to start thinking about how best to keep your private information private.

There is a War on Ordinary People and Feminists are Needed at the Front

By John Pilger
Global Research

As editor of the Daily Mail in 1970s and 80s, David English invented a newspaper for those urgently seeking membership of the English middle classes. Whether his readers ever achieved their ambitions was beside the point; their prejudices and illusions were reflected, often brilliantly. Women were central to his project. The Mail became “their” paper, boasting a new “media feminism” that subtly divided men and women into opposing camps and added a dash of moral panic.

This is now standard media practice. “Most weeks some lovely, caring berks tell me I am a man-hating witch,” wrote Suzanne Moore recently in the Guardian, “so let’s get it out there. Sometimes I am. The acceptable kind of suck-it-up feminism (I love men really!) is hard to sustain after yet more abuse stories… Do I think all men are rapists? No. Do I think all women can be raped. Yes?”

Measuring Up As Men

By Volaar

“I call on men and boys everywhere to take a stand against the mistreatment of girls and women. It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.”  — Desmond Tutu, November, 2012

Not three months prior to Tutu’s statement, two teenage boys brutally assaulted, humiliated and traumatized a sixteen year old girl who was inebriated past the point of being able to take care of herself, let alone call for help from others.

To this very day, the victim’s family and the victim continue to receive death threats and threats of bodily harm from the victim’s teenage peers in the Ohio town of Steubenville, population under 19,000.

Rivero: All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars

Commentary by Chris Pratt
Questions of Conscience

Twelve trillion US dollars in banker bailouts, billions more in quantitative easing that now will continue monthly. Constant war and military interventions, yet people keep voting Republican or Democrat as if this is the answer. Our sons and daughters are being sacrificed. FOR WHAT? For freedom and democracy? Do you really think so?

The film below is well-researched and less than 45 minutes long. If you review it on its factual merits versus the propaganda that has been drilled into your head since birth, perhaps an awakening will occur.

Totalitarianism in the US: An Accident Waiting to Happen

By Numerian
First appeared in The Agonist

Listening to Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention, I couldn’t place where I had come across something quite like this before. Then it struck me – Pravda! I used to subscribe to Pravda in high school and college, first to learn Russian, and second, to pursue a college program in Soviet studies. Pravda was a newspaper that specialized in the Big Lie – the Five Year Plan was always ahead of schedule, Soviet industrial capabilities exceeded that of any other country, people were starving on streets all across America. The newspaper was a non-stop stream of lies, just as Paul Ryan’s speech was studded with Big Lies – lies that were easily disprovable, such as Barack Obama did nothing about the Simpson-Bowles recommendations to reduce the budget deficit (Paul Ryan didn’t mention he voted against these recommendations when the House killed any chance of enacting them); or that Obama made it easier for people to live off welfare (the President altered the enrollment rules of welfare at the request of Republican governors); or the Romney favorite – Obama cut over $700 billion of Medicare benefits for individuals (the cuts were imposed on hospitals and insurance companies, not beneficiaries, and Romney has the same cuts in his economic plan). (Image: Wikipedia)

A Return to Humanity

By Chris Pratt
COTO Report

Our inaction, our passivity, our naivety and the ease with which we can be manipulated has fueled the forces of fear, power, greed and suppression. Most U.S. citizens now walk around in self-induced comas, too ignorant to question, too afraid to ask and too numb to feel.

Is our government capable of killing its own people?  Look … at what we have done to the environment and the poor for oil.  Look … at the brutal dictators we have brought to power and continue to fund.  Look … at the wars we have manufactured.