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Replaced video Jan. 12, 2014
RT America on Dec 31, 2013
People have tried (with varying success) to predict the future, from soothsayers to reading tea leaves, from Nostradamus to calling Miss Cleo. But one man, Gerald Celente, has made a career out of forecasting trends as the founder of the Trends Research Institute and publisher of “Trends Journal.” RT’s Anastasia Churkina sits down with Celente to talk about his predictions for 2014.
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democracynow on Dec 31, 2013
democracynow – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressed a major gathering of computer experts Monday at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, calling on them to join forces in resisting government intrusions on internet freedom and privacy. Continue reading
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from PressTV
December 30, 2013
Saudi largesse is throwing money again – in a bid to cover up its bloodstained hands in violence hitting the Middle East and beyond.
The latest public relations gimmick is the “donation” of $3 billion to the Lebanese army made by Saudi King Abdullah at the weekend.
The Saudi cash – twice the national military budget of Lebanon – is being regaled in the Western media as a noble offer to secure Lebanon from recent terror attacks.
Orwellian or a Blunt Tool?: Conflicting Rulings on NSA Spying Set Up Likely Supreme Court Showdown
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democracynow on Dec 30, 2013
democracynow – A federal judge has upheld the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone data just days after a separate court reached an opposite opinion. On Friday, District Judge William Pauley dismissed a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. phone records. Pauley said telephone metadata could have potentially prevented the 9/11 attacks by alerting the government to hijackers who made phone calls from the United States. The issue will likely head to the Supreme Court — Pauley’s ruling comes less than two weeks after another federal judge questioned the program’s constitutionality and described the bulk collection as “almost Orwellian.” We’re joined by two guests: Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director and director of its Center for Democracy; and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks.
by James Petras
Global Research
Dec. 28, 2013
Introduction
The transformation of Christmas from a story about a migrant working-class family fleeing state persecution, in the search for a safe haven and receiving support and solidarity to the biggest capitalist commercial bonanza of the year – has far-reaching political consequences.
Taking Christ out of Christmas
The fundamental ‘change’, engineered by the capitalist class in pursuit of profits, was to take the ‘Christ Story’ out of Christmas and to convert the weeks before and after into a consumer orgy. Continue reading
The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
December 29, 2013
Image by Jonathan D. Blundell via Flickr
The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. Continue reading
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
December 28, 2013
Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.”
At the time the gas field was:
“…the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.” (i)
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by Shepherd Bliss
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Santa Rosa, California
December 28, 2013
Christmas Eve is when many families gather to celebrate and exchange gifts. But what would you do when a beloved child of your immediate or extended family had been killed two months before?
This Christmas Eve a committee of the Justice Coalition for Andy Lopez met to plan a peaceful, dignified action to support the family whose 13-year-old son Andy Lopez was killed October 22 in Santa Rosa by Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus. They demand a halt to cops killing innocent children and then not being indicted and punished.
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RT on Dec 29, 2013
RT discusses WikiLeaks’ road movie ‘Mediastan’ with a special panel of guests, including film creator Julian Assange, journalist and director Johannes Wahlstrom, and Enayat Najafizada – a young Afghan journalist and one of the heroes of the movie.
Our guests raise many questions about the film, including Snowden’s revelations, Glenn Greenwald’s role in the story, and the NSA’s global surveillance program. Continue reading
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with Chris Hedges
by Michael Welch
Global Research
December 27, 2013
On this, the holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we present a talk by Chris Hedges.
[…]
He is also the best-selling author of several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, Continue reading
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with Bruce Gagnon
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Organizing Notes
December 27, 2013
John Robles
Voice of Russia
December 27, 2013
US “missile defense” is the key element in US first-strike attack planning. After the US launches a first-strike attack against a country like Russia or China they want to ensure that there is no retaliation, in effect guaranteeing a successful first-strike attack. This was stated by Bruce Gagnon the Coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space in an interview with the Voice of Russia. Continue reading
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Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 26, 2013
Statement by the President on H.R. 3304
Today I have signed into law H.R. 3304, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014.” I have signed this annual defense authorization legislation because it will provide pay and bonuses for our service members, enhance counterterrorism initiatives abroad, build the security capacity of key partners, and expand efforts to prevent sexual assault and strengthen protections for victims.
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
December 26, 2013
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Jim McNerney, CEO
The Boeing Company
100 North Riverside
Chicago, IL 60606
Dear Mr. McNerney:
The squeeze that you and Boeing are putting on your machinist workers’ pensions, pay scales and your stance on other labor issues regarding the assembling of the new 777X airliners is unseemly for several reasons.
First, consider your pay this year of $21.1 million, a 15 percent increase from the previous year, and much higher than your predecessors. Continue reading
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LeakSourceTV on Dec 20, 2012
“True democracy is the resistance of people armed with the truth against lies. From people in Tahrir to right here in London.”
The man on the frontline of the information battle, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, has given a Christmas address. He has delivered his speech from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he’s been ensconced for six months, after being granted political asylum.
Dandelion Salad 