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OpEdNews Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be

Todays collection of articles in the OpEd News point at a difficult year ahead. Not the least of our problems is ten months of political campaigning. Keep looking here to see a candid look at the warts and all of the political newsmakers.

It appears that war with Iran is inevitable no matter who is in the White House, though Rick Santorium says he will bomb them. Haven’t any of these politicians noticed how poorly we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan? The seem to still think we can go marching in and defeat any government we want to overthrow. This is sheer madness, but read about it here.

The indefinite detention issue in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is likely to become a firestorm. The congress sneaked it in with little fanfare and no coverage in the mainstream media (MSM). Now citizens are outraged and hopefully will continue to be outraged until we get our civil rights back. We can not depend on the politicians to do that for us.

Another issue for the year will be a constitution amendment to say that corporations are not people and money is not speech. Until the decision of the Supreme Court is overturned by the people, our government will be run by and for the benefit of corporate America. A society where money counts more than votes can not long endure as a democracy.

Hopefully the Occupy movement will continue to voice the concerns of what remains of the middle class and the poor now that half of the country is now considered poor. The Occupy movement is also taking a stand against the NDAA. Read the account of the OWS recapture of Zuccoti Park.

Keep up with the latest developments with OpEd’s story list.

OpEdNews

Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be

Dailey Headlines

By John Grant

Iran and Historical Forgetting

As we enter the Presidential silly season, we’re hearing drum beats for war against Iran. The problem is our national trait of forgetting history and believing the myth of American exceptionalism.

By paul craig roberts
Tyranny in the Forecast — The Outlook for the New Year

If the American police state were merely an unintended consequence of a real war against terror, it could be dismantled when the war was over. However, the evidence is that the police state is an intended consequence. The PATRIOT Act is a voluminous, clever attack on the Constitution. It is not possible that it could have been written in the short time between 9/11 and its introduction in Congress. It was waiting on the shelf.

By Ralph Nader
How can the expectation levels of this two party duopoly sink any lower?
President Obama is deemed by his fellow Democrats to have won the financial battles, but the Republicans won the rest. How can the expectation levels of this two party duopoly sink any lower?

By Harvey Wasserman
2012 is the Year to Finally Bury Nuke Power
The year 2012 has opened with news that Fukushima’s radioactive cloud may already have killed some 14,000 Americans, according to a major study just published in the International Journal of Health Services.

By Glenn Greenwald
End of the pro-democracy pretense
one of the prime aims of America’s support for Arab dictators has been to ensure that the actual views and beliefs of those nations’ populations remain suppressed, because those views are often so antithetical to the perceived national interests of the U.S. government. The last thing the U.S. government has wanted (or wants now) is actual democracy in the Arab world…

By Daily kos
Rick Ungar: More Proof Big-Profit Insurers Doomed; Single Payer Coming Sooner Rather Than Later
As many of you who follow health care issues are probably aware, Forbes Columnist Rick Ungar recently garnered national attention for his argument that the Affordable Care Act MLR rules will lead to the death of the for-profit, bloodsucking, health insurance industry sooner rather than later.

By lila york
URGENT Call to Action Against NDAA by OWS in New York

OWS urgent call to action for today, January 3, 2012. see schedule

By Russ Baker
Obama’s Only Friend Left?

The Times resolutely insists on never going beyond a brief mention of Mr. Wolf — never bothering to consider what it means that a powerful banker, and one from an especially problematical bank, should be one of the only people who Obama will spend time with.

By Bob Alexander
From Now On … Our Biggest Mistake is Believing We Are Free

By signing this perversion, Constitutional professor Barack Obama has put himself above the Constitution. From now on the President of the United States is a king. We have to depend upon his noblesse oblige to keep us out of the gulag.

Climate Change, Migration and Conflict: Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century

The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st century. Even if nations across our planet were to take immediate steps to rein in carbon emissions–an unlikely prospect–a warmer climate is inevitable. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007, human-created “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Commission Requires Presidential Aptitude Test —
satire, but not far off base

Up next: Indiana anti-union bill
On Wednesday morning, national Republican politics will shift away from Iowa and toward New Hampshire and South Carolina for the primaries there. But at the local level, where Republican politics have been turning into Republican policy, at least part of the game moves to Indiana.

Santorum: States Should Have The Right To Outlaw Birth Control

Rick Santorum reiterated his belief that sates should have the right to outlaw contraception during an interview with ABC News yesterday, saying, “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” Watch the Jake Tapper interview… Santorum has long opposed the Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling “that invalidated a Connecticut law banning contraception” and has also pledged to completely defund federal funding for contraception if elected president.

Occupying the Occupy Movement
Revolutions aimed at liberating the downtrodden, often forget about the women. The same struggle occurred in the 60’s. An excellent critique of the Occupy Movement worldwide from a feminist perspective, from Robin Morgan, published by the Women’s Media Center.

By Abdus-Sattar Ghazali
A “smart legal coup d’etat” is underway in Pakistan?
It is said that power in Pakistan rests on three “A’s: America, Allah and the Army. While America was mollified by obedience and Allah by giving in to key demands of religious forces, the army was mollified by following its policies. But for the two years a rift between the Army and the US-client government of President Zardari was widening and the latest Memogate scandal has brought it to an open confrontation.

By Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt: Lessons from Lost Wars in 2012

A devastating, full-frontal assessment of a decade of disastrous American war-making on the Eurasian continent and what lies ahead this year and beyond.

By Chris Floyd
Blood in my Eyes for You: The Deep Progressive Love for the Laureate’s “Industrial Killing Machine”

The reality of children being torn to shreds by drone bombs at the order of a Democratic president is no less evil than children shredded by Republican neo-cons or libertarian extremists — or by the worst kind of psychopathic child-murderer stalking some city street somewhere.

By earl ofari hutchinson
Ron Paul’s Fetish on Civil Rights
GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul just can’t seem to help himself when it comes to his fetish on a law which has been on the books for nearly five decades and which has long since been rendered a moot point by even avowed white supremacists. That’s the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

By Tom Engelhardt
Debacle!

Simply to fight its war, Washington has made itself dependent on the kindness of strangers — in this case, Pakistan and Russia. It’s one thing when a superpower or great power on the rise casts its lot with countries that may not be natural allies; it’s quite a different story when a declining power does so.

By WILLIAM FISHER
Saudis to Reinforce Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters, Amnesty Says
In Saudi Arabia, our ally and oil-supplier, the Arab Spring has been greeted by yet more repression. Here’s the scoop on what may become SA’s latest contribution to the rule of law.

By Roger Shuler
Chief Justice Draws Guffaws With His Claim That Federal Courts Operate Honestly

The chief justice of our highest court actually believes federal judges behave in an ethical fashion. For our next joke . . .

By Stephen Lendman
Crisis Conditions Grip Eurozone
From inception, the euro system was doomed to fail. In the 1990s, Progressive Radio News Hour regular Bob Chapman predicted it.

Latest Articles

Rodger Cook for Congress
Rodger Cook is running for Congress in the 12th District of Southern Illinois. He will change the direction of the country to a path which we’re all too painfully familiar.

Iraq: The Legacy of Deception and Its Costs
Most Americans are shocked to discover that War in Iraq was entirely avoidable. Every objective had been addressed in a comprehensive peace framework that Republican leaders were determined to hide from the public. Here’s why.

Proposed FCC Media Consolidation Rules
In October 2007, then FCC chairman Kevin Martin proposed lifting the 1975 media cross-ownership rule. It forbid owning a newspaper and television or radio station in the same city even though conglomerates like Rupert Murdock’s News Corp. and the (Chicago) Tribune Company already did.

What REALLY Happened at Zuccotti Park on New Years When We Re-Occupied and Re-Energized OWS

The November Hosni Bloomberg Scorched Earth attack on Occupy Wall Street proved that “YOU CAN’T EVICT AN IDEA” While Mayor Bloomberg & Lady Gaga smootch at the Times Square BALL DROP, & Justin Beiber excites pedophiles, and the Central Park Fireworks show constitute the Mid Town & Uptown New Years Experience, Veteran Occupyers begin our own traditions and rituals, Down Town, to pump up #OWS Espirit de Corps.

Declare Independence From Corporate Power!

A year from now, Americans will be caught in an unprecedented blizzard of campaign ads. Most of this ad blizzard will not come from the candidates, but from ads secretly funded by huge corporations. This is because a five-man cabal on the Supreme Court issued an edict that perverts nature itself.

Iran/Iraq “Defectors” and Disinformation

Official Washington has a soft spot for “defectors” from hostile nations, especially if their tales of perfidy about their ex-homelands fit with favored policy. That was the case with Iraq before the 2003 invasion and now with Iran, but these “defectors” often tell lies.

A “Culture of Domination” Helps Produce Child Sex-Abuse Scandals

Is the desire to dominate driving dysfunction in the U.S.?

Best News Links from the Web

Santorum’s Racist Welfare Rant
From Think Progress: I think the key phrase here was “other people’s money.” In other words, taxpayers are white, undeserving recipients of welfare are black.

Preparing to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons – “No Option can be taken off the Table.”

When a US sponsored nuclear war becomes an “instrument of peace”, condoned and accepted by the World’s institutions and the highest authority, including the United Nations, there is no turning back – human society has indelibly been precipitated headlong onto the path of self-destruction.

Great (if Hypocritical) News! Iowa GOP Caucuses Will Vote on Publicly Hand-Counted Paper Ballots!
Voters in the GOP-run (not state-run) Iowa Caucuses next Tuesday will be able to register to vote right then and there,and then cast their vote on a paper ballot without having to show any form of Photo ID.Those paper ballots will then be counted publicly, at the “precinct”, with the results of the voting at each site announced to everyone right then and there, before they are sent to a central clearing house to be compiled and announced to the media.Those are all among the best, most transparent, and most reliable election practices we’re aware of, even while they are all things that Republicans have fought virulently against -for years -when it comes to elections in which Dem voters may be allowed to participate.Despite that great news for voters in Iowa (at least voters in the Repub caucuses,if not in their general elections), we are still left to conclude: Hypocrisy thy name is GOP.

Jonathan Turley: Final Curtain: Obama Signs Indefinite Detention of Citizens Into Law As Final Act of 2011

President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country . . . and citizens partied only blissfully into the New Year.

In West Bank, Israel’s rule is that of the jungle

In the diplomatic arena, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has excelled mainly at stagnation; in contrast, he has shown excessive creativity when it comes to nurturing the settlements. Every time the judicial system has ordered the removal of an illegal outpost, including those erected on private Palestinian lands, a magical solution has been found to breach the court order.

Rick Santorum Says He Would bomb Iran Nuclear Facilities

GOP hopeful Rick Santorum criticized Barack Obama for being too soft on Iran and said he would bomb the country’s nuclear sites unless it opened them to UN inspectors. “I would be saying to the Iranians, you either open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes,” he said.

Bradley Manning’s Own Defense Appears To Concede He’s No Hero | Mediaite

The characterization of Bradley Manning by his own lawyers suggests he was no hero; not a man standing for principle nor acting in the best interest of the country but, rather, a sad troubled soul worthy of sympathy. It is a defense which appears to concede that he leaked the documents but also abandons any pretense of righteousness in exchange for an apologia for his behavior.

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