Captured Soldier Bowe BergdahlIdaho Statesman – by BRIAN SKOLOFF AND RAHIM FAIEZ

HAILEY, IDAHO — Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s hometown abruptly canceled plans Wednesday for a welcome-home celebration, citing security concerns over the prospect of big crowds — both for and against the soldier.

The town of 8,000 has been swamped with hate mail and angry calls over Bergdahl, whose release after five years of Taliban captivity in Afghanistan has touched off a debate over whether the 28-year-old should be given a hero’s welcome or punished as a deserter.   Continue reading “Bergdahl’s hometown cancels celebration amid furor”

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Wednesday, June 4, 2014.Press TV

US Secretary of State John Kerry has denounced Syria’s presidential election, calling it a meaningless exercise.

The vote was “meaningless, because you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote,” said Kerry, who landed in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Wednesday on an unannounced visit.   Continue reading “Kerry calls Syrian presidential election ‘meaningless’”

Press TV

Syria’s incumbent leader Bashar al-Assad has been announced as the winner of the country’s presidential election.

On Wednesday, Syrian People’s Assembly speaker Jihad al-Laham announced that Assad won 88.7 percent of the vote, or 10,319,723 of 11,634,412 votes cast in Tuesday’s election, the official SANA news agency reported.   Continue reading “Assad wins Syrian presidential election”

Press TV

A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) says at least 208 people have died from the highly contagious Ebola virus in Guinea.

The UN health agency said on Wednesday it has registered 328 confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola, including 208 deaths, in the West African country.   Continue reading “Ebola kills 208 people in Guinea: WHO”

Edward Snowden.(AFP Photo / Channel 4)RT News

Nearly one year to the day since the National Security Agency’s secret spy programs were first exposed through leaked documents, the man responsible or those disclosures has come out and endorsed a new anti-surveillance campaign.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — the source of a trove of classified documents that since last June have revealed the inner workings of the United States intelligence community’s vast surveillance apparatus — issued a statement on Wednesday this week in support of the ‘Reset the Net’ campaign scheduled for Thursday, exactly one year after the first news stories stemming from his cache of leaked documents were published.   Continue reading “Snowden publically supports Reset the Net campaign”

The Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington.CNBC

More than 77,000 foreign banks, investment funds and other financial institutions have agreed to share information about U.S. account holders with the IRS as part of a crackdown on offshore tax evasion, the Treasury Department announced Monday.

The list includes 515 Russian financial institutions. Russian banks had to apply directly to the IRS because the U.S. broke off negotiations with the Russian government over an information-sharing agreement because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Continue reading “77,000 Foreign Banks to Share Tax Info with IRS”

Chester NezTime – by Denver Nicks

Chester Nez was one of 29 Native Americans whose work creating a secret code was instrumental in World War II

Chester Nez, the last surviving member of the original band of Navajo Native Americans whose code helped the Allies win World War II, died Wednesday. He was 93 and suffered from kidney failure, Reuters reports.   Continue reading “Last of the Navajo Code Talkers Dies at 93”

Gun Control NY.JPGSyracuse – by Michelle Breidenbach

Albany, NY – Opponents of New York’s new gun laws are demanding answers about how Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York state Legislature can rush bills into law with little time for anyone to even read the bill.

The NY Safe Act was passed with no hearings, no testimony, no time for opponents to make a case to their legislators.

It’s not the first time a controversial bill was turned into a midnight emergency.   Continue reading “The Safe Act “emergency”: How Cuomo, past governors bypassed public to make laws”

Sen. Boxer wants us to prove we 'need' a gun; her power as a U.S. senator is need enoughExaminer – by Kurt Hoffman

Exploitation of the mass stabbing/shooting in Santa Barbara, California continues apace, with the gun ban zealots evidently untroubled by the fact that even compliance with California’s most restrictive in the nation gun laws (according to the Brady Campaign and Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) proved no obstacle to the demented killer. No, the fact that oppressive “gun control” did not stop him is presented as proof that the laws are still not oppressive enough–in a jurisdiction running out of room for more restrictions short of an outright ban.   Continue reading “Sen. Boxer threatens Americans with ‘Pause for Safety Act’”

Gun Owners of America

“What is wrong with the people here in this country?” asked anti-gun Senator Barbara Boxer on the floor of the Senate Monday.

Boxer was questioning why even the anti-gun Senate had not heeded her call for more gun bans, and concluded that something was wrong with America.

Well, here’s an idea, Senator Boxer:  Nothing’s wrong with America. But something is wrong with you.   Continue reading “Boxer moves legislation to let the government take guns away from virtually anyone”

    I’m not a soldier, and nor am I a proponent of violent solutions to any problem when violence can be avoided. I don’t like the idea of combat, and nor am I looking forward to it, but I consider myself a member of the militia because once you grasp the big picture of our precarious reality, you’ll realize that there’s no place else to go. My joining the militia movement began with the realization that it’s all we have left, and knowing that in times like this, being a member of the militia also happens to be the civic duty of all Americans. 

    Demonstrators are beaten and gassed, the elections process is a farce, the courts will only run you in circles or imprison you, and any cop you meet might easily kill you on a whim, and get away with it. We have absolutely no effective way of petitioning our government for a redress of grievances, and “our government” happens to be doing all they can to destroy our nation. Continue reading “Who’s in “The Militia”?”

In These Times- by George Joseph

Between 2007 and 2009, 350 Filipino teachers arrived in Louisiana, excited for the opportunity to teach math and science in public schools throughout the state. They’d been recruited through a company called Universal Placement International Inc., which professes on its website to “successfully place teachers in different schools thru out [sic] the United States.” As a lawsuit later revealed, however, their journey through the American public school system was fraught with abuse.

Continue reading “Trafficked Teachers: Neoliberalism’s Latest Labor Source”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (C) and his wife Asma al-Assad (R) casting their votes at a polling station in Maliki, a residential area in the centre of the capital Damascus, in the country's presidential elections on June 3, 2014.(AFP Photo / HO)RT News

Bashar Assad has won a landslide victory in the Syrian presidential poll with 88.7 percent of the vote, according to the parliament speaker. It will secure him a third term in office amidst a bloody civil war, which stemmed from protests against his rule.

“I declare the victory of Dr Bashar Hafez Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election,” parliament speaker Mohammad Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament.   Continue reading “Bashar Assad wins Syria presidential election with 88.7% of vote”

KRQE News 13 – by Katherine Mozzone

TAOS, N.M. (KRQE) – Teachers are fired up over their new evaluations. The scores were released earlier this month, but many teachers say their grades don’t hold any water. It’s why a group of teachers in Taos are striking a match in protest.

Some Taos teachers say their profession is being stomped on, citing a laundry list of issues surrounding teacher evaluations. They argue the scores should factor in growth, they say they’re not even testing students on the curriculum they’re teaching and the test scores they’re basing much of the evaluations on are from last year. It’s why they decided to take a stand.    Continue reading “Taos teachers burn their evaluations”

bribery-handsFree-Man’s Perspective – by Paul Rosenberg

I know something about bribery. When I was a teenager, my dad was in the construction business in Chicago. So, as soon as I got my driver’s license (at 16), I was sent out delivering bribes. That’s just the way     things were done, and my dad let me drive a fancy car (with an FM radio!) to make the deliveries.

I delivered leather coats to wives, envelopes to government offices, other envelopes to politicians at their fundraisers, booze to lots of people, and in one case, the answers to the state driver’s exam to a guy in… um… a different line of work.   Continue reading “Bribery in America”