Eternity News Now

The Star (Canada) - Former professional boxer and Toronto-based justice advocate Rubin (Hurricane) Carter says he’s dying and would like to see one final wish come true. Carter, 77, wants New York State justice officials to take a fresh and unbiased look at what he considers the wrongful murder conviction of David McCallum of Brooklyn .  Read more .

RT.com - Nearly 30 retired New York City firefighters and police officers have been arrested for falsely claiming Social Security benefits in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.  Read more.

RT.com - British and American surveillance agencies teamed up to develop a system that collected millions of images from the webcams of unsuspecting and innocent internet users, new leaked documents reveal.   Read more .

RT.com - Air pollution in parts of China is now so extreme it could lead to conditions similar to a “nuclear winter,” scientists say. The smog that covers the country has become so thick it is impeding photosynthesis, potentially disrupting China’s food supply.   Read more .

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Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - Though the official makers of the lethal drug pentobarbital now refuse to sell the lethal drug to those planning to use it for executing human being, that didn't stop the state of Missouri from finding some compounding agency from mixing up their own brew of it so that it could kill convicted murderer Michael Taylor early Wednesday morning.   Read more .

Richard Waddell @ Truthout - Wealth, poverty, and inequality are all - in excess - poisonous to our nation. They poison our economy, political system, education system, justice system and our culture.   Read more .

Aaron Leonard @ Truthout - In Betty Medsger's The Burglary: The Discovery of J Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI and Seth Rosenfeld's Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power, it is clear that an empire of the magnitude of the United States does not exist without a secret police.   Read more.

RT.com - A new report published by the United States Department of Agriculture demonstrates that the vast majority of corn and soybean crops grown in America are genetically-engineered variants made to withstand certain conditions and chemicals. But while GMO seeds have been sowed on US soil for 15 years now, the latest USDA report reveals that Americans still have concerns about consuming custom-made, laboratory-created products, albeit nowhere near as much as in Europe.  Read more .

John Nichols @ The Nation - Chokwe Lumumba maintained a civil rights commitment that was rooted in the moment when his mother showed her eight-year-old son the Jet magazine photograph of a beaten Emmett Till in his open casket. The commitment was nurtured on the streets of Detroit, where Lumumba and his mother collected money to support the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.   Read more .

Lauren McCauley @ Common Dreams - Chokwe Lumumba—human rights attorney, civil rights activist and revolutionary Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi—unexpectedly died Tuesday of heart failure at the age of 66. Before entering politics, Lumumba rose to prominence as a civil rights activist and human rights attorney—defending notable clients including Black Panther Assata Shakur. Lumumba served as a leading figure in the Republic of New Afrika, and co-founded the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.   Read more.

Sarah Lazare @ Common Dreams - Israel's "systematic oppression" of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza appears to constitute the "inhuman" and "degrading" practice of "apartheid," charged a United Nations investigator. Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, chronicles Israel's human rights abuses in a searing 22-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council... read more .

RT.com - About one week after a leak resulted in record levels of radiation near the United States’ first nuclear waste depository, more airborne radiation has been detected, according to the Associated Press.   Read more .

Karen J Greenberg @ TomDispatch - In January 2009, Barack Obama entered the Oval Office projecting idealism and proud to be the constitutional law professor devoted to turning democratic principles into action. In his first weeks in office, in a series of executive orders and public statements, the new president broadcast for all to hear the five commandments by which life in his new world of national security would be lived.   Read more .

Lauren McCauley @ Common Dreams - A radioactive plume released from the Fukushima meltdown is expected to reach the west coast of the U.S. in April, said a panel of researchers in Honolulu Monday. However, without any federal or international monitoring, scientists are bereft of "actual data," guessing at the amount of radiation coming at us.   Read more .

Andrea Germanos @ Common Dreams - Syrians are set to become the world's largest refugee population, a United Nations official has warned.   Read more .

John Whitehead @ The Rutherford Institute - The following incidents are cautionary tales for anyone who still thinks that they can defy police officers, even if it’s simply to disagree about a speeding ticket, challenge a search warrant or defend oneself against an unreasonable or unjust charge, without deadly repercussions. The message they send is that “we the people” have very little protection from the standing army that is law enforcement. For example, Seattle police repeatedly tasered seven-months pregnant Malaika Brooks for refusing to sign a speeding ticket. While Brooks bears permanent burn scars on her body from the encounter, police were cleared of any wrongdoing on the grounds that they didn’t know that tasering a pregnant woman was wrong.   Read more .

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Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - According to newly published documents, Western spy agencies like the GCHQ and NSA have developed sophisticated online operations in which covert agents infiltrate online communities, networks and forums in order to "manipulate, deceive"—even destroy the reputations of—targeted individuals and groups even if those people have not be charged, or necessarily accused, of a crime.  Read more .

Lauren McCauley @ Common Dreams - In a speech at the Pentagon on Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a new budget plan that calls for the reduction of total soldiers across the U.S. military. But analysts say that although less troops on the ground in foreign countries would be a welcome development, the news highlights well-known plans for the U.S. to maintain its global military dominance by shifting to a more secretive, nimble, and technologically advanced force structure.   Read more .

Glenn Greenwald @ The Intercept - I’m going to have a story published later today about a new document, but until then, this new interview with (and profile of) Director of National Intelligence James Clapper by the Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake is worth spending a few moments examining. Last week, Lake published one excerpt of his interview where Clapper admitted that the U.S. Government should have told the American people that the NSA was collecting their communications records: as pure a vindication of Edward Snowden’s choice as it gets, for obvious reasons. But there are several new, noteworthy revelations from this morning’s article:   Read more .

RT.com - Developers say they are less than a year away from deploying prototype satellites that could someday soon broadcast free and universal internet all over the globe from high in orbit.   Read more .

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RT.com - CNN is pulling the plug on its weeknight talk-show Piers Morgan Live, and the British journalist says his staunch anti-gun stance may be what's getting him sacked.   Read more .

RT.com - The CEO of ExxonMobil – the top producer of natural gas in the US – has joined a lawsuit that challenges the construction of a water tower connected to hydraulic fracturing operations near his Texas home, given that it may reduce the property value.   Read more .

Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - Arrangement allows Comcast to charge Netflix in exchange for preferential access to its network, undermining key 'net neutrality' principle... read more .

Reuters - Ukraine's interim leadership pledged to put the country back on course for European integration now Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich had been ousted from the presidency, while the United States warned Russia against sending in its forces.   Read more .

RT.com - The opposition-controlled Ukrainian parliament has voted to appoint its freshly-elected Speaker Aleksandr Turchinov as acting president. MPs supporting the move arguing that President Yanukovich has de facto resigned his office.   Read more .

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Dan Froomkin @ The Intercept - A federal judge in Newark has thrown out a lawsuit against the New York Police Department for spying on New Jersey Muslims, saying if anyone was at fault, it was the Associated Press for telling people about it.  Read more .

RT.com - The US government’s pursuit of secrecy and power lends itself to unilateralism which the Founding Fathers feared, Chelsea Manning has said. The whistleblower spoke out after being awarded the Sam Adams prize for Integrity in Intelligence.   Read more .

Common Dreams - Unrest continued in Venezuela on Saturday when competing pro- and anti-government marches brought an estimated hundreds of thousands onto the streets.   Read more .

CNN - Arizona's Legislature has passed a controversial bill that would allow business owners, as long as they assert their religious beliefs, to deny service to gay and lesbian customers.   Read more .

Max Eternity @ Truthout - In America, everyone has a right to be and to be a part of, because every American matters, at least in theory—whether glorified or vilified—we all have civil rights—with each person respectfully deserving a place to express and be who they truly are, even if that place is in an asylum for sociopathic liars and the criminally insane. Think: Condoleezza Rice, James Clapper, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Paulson, and a growing list of others whose heinous transgressions are well documented and on the public record, including Barack Obama.   Read more .

Jacob Chamberlain @ Common Dreams - Plans to create new rules regulating broadband giants will be ineffective unless FCC takes bolder steps... read more .

Candace Clement @ Free Press - On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission broke its silence and issued the agency’s first big announcement since a federal court struck down the Net Neutrality rules last month.   Read more .

Jon Walker @ FireDogLake - Since we are only seven weeks into 2014 I feel confident calling President Obama’s decision to remove the chained-CPI Social Security benefit cut from his budget the biggest victory for progressives so far this year.   Read more.

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RT.com - Amid a new spate of violence and bloodshed on Thursday, Ukrainian parliament voted to halt counter-terrorism operations in the country and pull back law enforcement from central Kiev. The resolution, though, would not be signed until Friday.   Read more .

Inter Press Service - An estimated 400 million acres of farmland in the United States will likely change hands over the coming two decades as older farmers retire, even as new evidence indicates this land is being strongly pursued by private equity investors.   Read more .

RT.com - A US judge has handed down sentences to three peace activists, including an 84-year-old nun, who were convicted of breaking into a Tennessee defense facility where enrichment material for nuclear weapons is held, and staging a protest on federal property. Sister Megan Rice, 84, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, were found guilty in May of destroying US government property and causing more than $1,000 in damage to federal property in the demonstration.   Read more .

RT.com - Though the Ukrainian conflict is complex, with "its own dynamic," protesters are certainly emboldened by support from Western powers, Brian Becker, director of the anti-war ANSWER Coalition, told RT in an interview. "The United States and NATO and the EU are together using their combined forces to signal to these demonstrators that 'We are with you,'" he said. The EU, NATO leadership and the Obama administration "are neck deep now in a plan to carry out regime change in this extremely important part of Europe, trying to integrate a former Soviet republic into the EU and, of course, into NATO ultimately."  Read more .

Tom Engelhardt @ TomDispatch.com - To gain a reasonable picture of our national security state, five, 10, 20 Snowdens, each at a different agency or outfit, would have to step out of the shadows -- and that would just be for starters.  Then we would need a media that was ready to roll and a Congress not wrapped in “security” and “secrecy” but demanding answers, as the Church committee did in the Watergate era, with subpoenas in hand (and the threat of prison for no-shows and perjurers).   Read more .

Dahr Jamail @ Truthout - Most people are unaware that the third-largest nuclear disaster in world history occurred in New Mexico.   Read more .

Mike Ludwig @ Truthout - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Wednesday that it would write new net neutrality rules to prevent telecommunications companies from blocking, slowing or otherwise discriminating against web content.  Last month, a federal appeals court threw out the FCC's 2010 net neutrality rules after a legal challenge from Verizon. The court said the FCC has some authority to protect consumers and regulate Internet service provides but declared the 2010 rules invalid because the agency had failed to classify the Internet as a "common carrier" service like telephones that could be regulated more like a public utility.   Read more .

Truthout - Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and too many more unarmed young black men - killed. One feature seems prominent: the claims that it's not about race. And in so many cases, the bar to be reached for hate-crime prosecution to be successful is never reached; the assertion that "hate" factored into the commission of these crimes is hard to prove convincingly. In the case of the killing of Davis, Michael Dunn's defense attorney, Michael Stolla, said, "This is not a black-and-white issue. This is what [Dunn] would call a subculture-thug issue. It's not about race." Dunn's own letters from prison contain statements that seem to correlate with that, even as they also show the ways culture and race were fused together:   Read more .

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RT.com - A meeting last year between top Apple brass and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sparked speculation that the hugely successful electronics maker is interested in purchasing the forward-thinking electric car company.   Read more .

The Telegraph - Venezuela's president orders US diplomats to leave the country after Obama administration defends opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, accused of leading a "fascist" plot to oust the socialist government... read more .

Reuters - Ukrainian riot police charged protesters occupying a central Kiev square early on Wednesday after the bloodiest day since the former Soviet republic, caught in a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West, won its independence.   Read more .

RT.com - At least 18 people have been killed in Kiev as the Ukrainian capital plunges back into chaos. Rioters have attacked police, seized buildings, torched vehicles, and burned tires. Seven policemen are among the dead, all of whom died from gunshot wounds.   Read more .

Al Jazeera - Fighting has resumed in South Sudan after rebel forces attacked a key oil town in the state of Upper Nile, a South Sudanese military official said. A government official confirmed that the rebels have reached ... read more.

Creative Times Report - As environmentalism goes mainstream, corporations are marketing the word “green” as a panacea for the world’s climate crisis. Today the word describes a set of prescribed, mostly consumerist actions: buy local, organic and fresh; go vegan; eat in season; skip the elevator; take the stairs. “Green” has come to mean shopping at Whole Foods and possessing a Prius. Meanwhile, leading corporate polluters like BP and Exxon Mobil place commercials on CNN advertising their “green” practices. It should come as no surprise, then, that “green” lifestyles don’t resonate with low-income communities; being “green” involves a set of behaviors that are financially or culturally inaccessible to millions of Americans.   Read more .

Andrea Germanos @ Common Dreams - The U.S. Navy is getting ready to roll out its Laser Weapon System this year—a technology the military has touted as "revolutionizing" modern warfare. A prototype of the weapon, which can target "asymmetrical threats" like drones and boat swarms, is set to be mounted on the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf later this year... read more .

Dan Froomkin @ The Intercept - he Intercept’s inaugural exposé, by my colleagues Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, illuminates the deeply flawed interaction between omnipresent electronic surveillance and targeted drone killings –- two of the three new, highly disruptive instruments of national power that President Obama has pursued with unanticipated enthusiasm.   Read more .

Andrea Germanos @ Common Dreams - Toxic chemicals including some pesticides and solvents may be behind the increasing number of cases of neurodevelopmental disabilities—including autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—among children, researchers warn.   Read more .

Khaled Beydoun @ Common Dreams - Jordan Davis was afraid. He wished he was at home with his parents after the first shot – never anticipating that his routine goodbye before a night out with is friends would be his final farewell. The second shot ricocheted off of the red SUV, and eight more would follow from Michael Dunn’s gun.   Read more .

Ellen Brown @ Web of Debt Blog - The credit card business is now the banking industry’s biggest cash cow, and it’s largely due to lucrative hidden fees.   Read more .

Dr. Wilmer J Leon III @ Truthout - The verdict is in. Michael Dunn was found guilty on three counts of attempted second-degree murder, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the most significant charge of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Jordan Davis. Instead of celebrating what would have been his 19th birthday, Davis' parents continue to mourn the legally unrecognized murder of their son. I can only imagine that this verdict is analogous to killing him again. Davis has become another victim of a murderous historical American continuum.   Read more .

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RT.com - Officials are monitoring the levels of airborne radiation at the deep underground facility in southeastern New Mexico where the US government disposes of its low-grade nuclear waste.   Read more .

RT.com - The Obama administration is under fire for doling out an unprecedented number of plum diplomatic postings to political appointees, many of which go to top dollar campaign contributors, sidelining career diplomats. One former ambassador called it the selling of public offices. Another State Department vet blasted it as a patronage practice reflective “of banana republics, dictatorships and two-bit monarchies.”   Read more .

Jim Hightower  - Years ago the delightfully-naughty movie star, Mae West, said: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." Less delightful are some of the purity claims of such food manufacturing giants as PepsiCo, which has long marketed a line of its Frito-Lay snack foods as "Simply Natural."   Read more .

Boston.com - A Florida man was convicted Saturday of three counts of attempted second-degree murder and one lesser charge in the killing of a Georgia teenager... read more .

NY Times - The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States.  Read more .

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Jacob Chamberlain @ Common Dreams - The United Auto Workers union was dealt a serious blow Friday when auto workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted against unionization in a closely watched fight that could have historical implications for the future of unions in the U.S.   Read more .

RT.com - The heaviest snowfall in decades has left 3 dead and more than 800 injured across Japan, local media reports. The snow has paralyzed the public transport system causing numerous traffic accidents.   Read more.

RT.com - A member station within the Public Broadcasting Service announced Friday that it would return a $3.5 million grant to a former Enron executive who first provided the money to fund an anti-pension series. WNET, the New York City affiliate of PBS, said production on the planned series, dubbed “Pension Peril,” would be suspended indefinitely after journalist David Sirota of PandoDaily revealed the money was coming from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.   Read more .

ABC News - The federal government has approved three new fracking jobs off the shores of California as state coastal regulators voiced concerns about potential environmental impacts. The work in the Santa Barbara Channel, site of a 1969 oil platform blowout, has not yet begun and it was not immediately clear when it would.   Read more .

David Bacon @ Truthout - Despite the fragmentation of Mexico's left movements, thousands demonstrated - against education and labor “reforms," attacks on indigenous rights by multinational mining companies, and privatization of the oil and electricity industries - on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.   Read more .

Sydney Morning Herald - To most Australians, zoos recreate a garden of eden, devoted to the production and nurturing of life where animals live to a healthy old age. The images from Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark where keepers ended the life of an 18-month-old male giraffe, named Marius, dissected the animal before a crowd of onlookers and then fed the remains to its lions shattered this illusion for many.   Read more .

National Geographic - When Marius, a young male giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo, was shot to death by his keepers a few days ago, the world caught its breath. How could the zoo and Marius's keepers do such a thing—particularly when people around the world were clamoring for the zoo to spare him?   Read more .

Guardian UK - In the chilly dawn of Sunday morning a healthy young giraffe in a Danish zoo was given its favourite meal of rye bread by a keeper – and then shot in the head by a vet. The death of Marius, an 18-month-old giraffe considered useless for breeding because his genes were too common, was followed by his dissection in front of a large crowd, including fascinated-looking children, prompting outrage and protests around the world.   Read more .

Thomas S. Harrington @ Common Dreams - Oh, what fun it is to mock Putin and his attempts to present a civilized and modern face to the world. In the Boston Globe this week, David Filipov who is manning the paper’s "life on the street" beat in Sochi, explains with clear scorn and condescension how, in Putin's Russia, those that want to protest against the government are relegated to doing so in "protest parks" far from the cameras and the crowds.   Read more .

David Sirota @ Pando Daily - On December 18th, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled “The Pension Peril.” The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on  major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.   Read more .

Reuters - A deadly and intensifying winter storm packing heavy snow, sleet and rain pelted a huge swath of the U.S. East Coast on Thursday, grounding flights and shuttering schools and government offices. Winter storm warnings and advisories were in place from Georgia up to Maine, and the powerful system could blanket the Atlantic Coast over the next two days with 12 to 18 inches (30 to 46 cms) of snow, said Jared Guyer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.   Read more .

Ann Wright @ Buzzflash - It looks like the U.S. Navy is playing fast and loose with the new military exercise regulations in areas with a concentration of marine mammals that it has received from the National Marine Fisheries Service.   Read more .

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Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - It may be the 'country of the First Amendment,' but the United States once again received an abysmal ranking from Reporters Without Borders, an international press monitoring and journalism advocacy group, in its annual review of how well nations protect the rights of individual journalists and overall press freedoms.   Read more .

RT.com - More than 6,000 websites, including Reddit, Tumblr, Mozilla, are taking part in an online protest against government surveillance. The action marks two years since website blackouts against SOPA and PIPA and commemorates Aaron Swartz’s death. The February 11 online protest, going by the title ‘The Day We Fight Back’, is supposed to see around 6, 200 websites each host a large banner at the top reading “Dear internet, we’re sick of complaining about the NSA. We want new laws that curtail online surveillance.”   Read more .

Jim Hightower @ Creators.com - Assume that you ran a business that was found guilty of bribery, forgery, perjury, defrauding homeowners, fleecing investors, swindling consumers, cheating credit card holders, violating U.S. trade laws and bilking American soldiers. Can you even imagine the kind of punishment you'd get?   Read more .

Matt Taibbi @ Rolling Stone - all it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century.   Read more .

Candice Bernd @ Truthout - Don't be fooled by the US Chamber of Commerce's rhetoric that it represents the interests of small businesses in America, because the interests of those really funding the Chamber are likely very different from the concerns of the nation's mom-and-pop shops.   Read more .

ABC News - Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to "join a growing national conversation about capital punishment." The first-term Democrat said he came to the decision after months of review, meetings with family members of victims, prosecutors and law enforcement. "There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today," Inslee said at a news conference. "There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system."   Read more .

LA Times - Shirley Temple Black, who as the most popular child movie star of all time lifted a filmgoing nation’s spirits during the Depression and then grew up to be a diplomat, has died. She was 85.  Read more .

West Virginia Gazette - More than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into an eastern Kanawha County stream Tuesday in what officials were calling a "significant spill" from a Patriot Coal processing facility. Emergency officials and environmental inspectors said that roughly six miles of Fields Creek had been blackened and that a smaller amount of the slurry made it into the Kanawha River near Chesapeake.   Read more.

Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - In the first investigative piece co-written for their new media venture, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill on Monday published a much-anticipated story—based on eye-witness accounts and leaked documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden—describing how the National Security Agency uses its digital surveillance capabilities to assist the CIA and Pentagon as they carrying out controversial overseas assassinations ordered by President Obama. Read more .

Henry A Giroux @ Truthout - The revelations of whistle-blowers such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden about government lawlessness and corporate spying provide a new meaning if not a revitalized urgency and relevance to George Orwell's dystopian fable 1984. Orwell offered his readers an image of the modern state that had become dystopian - one in which privacy as a civil virtue and a crucial right was no longer valued as a measure of the robust strength of a healthy and thriving democracy. Orwell was clear that the right to privacy had come under egregious assault. But the right to privacy pointed to something more sinister than the violation of individual rights.   Read more .

Ahmed Teleb @  Truthout - On January 25, 2011, Egyptians shocked the world and themselves when tens of thousands besieged Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo until Hosni Mubarak astonishingly resigned his 30-year rule on February 11. Nonplused, the demonstrators did not know how to follow through.   Read more .

Mike Ludwig @ Truthout - A ruptured Duke Energy pipe in Eden, North Carolina, caused the release of up to 82,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water into the Dan River. "The ecological disaster that is unleashed here is going to play out in the order of months, if not years," said Matt Wasson of Appalachian Voices.   Read more .

Jon Queally @ Common Dreams - Last week, more than 550 groups, representing tens of millions of individual members, signed a letter to members of Congress urging them to vote against a push by President Obama for 'fast track' authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a so-called "free trade" now under negotation between the U.S. and eleven other Pacific rim nations.   Read more .

Noam Choamsky @ Truthout - As the year 2013 drew to an end, the BBC reported on the results of the WIN/Gallup International poll on the question: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” The United States was the champion by a substantial margin, winning three times the votes of second-place Pakistan.  Read more .

James Anderson @ Truthout - About 15 prisoners in the High Security Unit at Menard Correctional Facility in Chester, Illinois, have been on hunger strike since January 15, 2014, to protest their placement and conditions of confinement. When the Tamms Correctional Center closed its doors after activists campaigned against the harsh conditions and prolonged solitary confinement at the former "supermax" facility in Illinois, many prisoners were transferred to Menard.   Read more .

Mark Karlin @ Buzzflash - If you are poor and cash-starved, you might regularly turn to a payday loan lender by signing over your paycheck for a small loan. Once you do that, you will likely end up in a bind because interest rates (when combined with fees) can be as much as 1000%.  This means a poor or minimum wage working person is caught in a cycle of debt and paying off interest exponentially worse than exorbitant credit card rates.   Read more.

RT.com - Some of the most drought-ravaged areas of the US are also heavily targeted for oil and gas development using hydraulic fracturing - a practice that exacerbates water shortages - according to a new report. Three-quarters of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled in the US since 2011 were located in areas of the country facing water scarcity, according to research by the Ceres investor network. Over half of those new wells were in areas experiencing drought conditions. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in those wells required the use of 97 billion gallons of water, Ceres found.   Read more .

RT.com - Michael McFaul wrote in his twitter that he will quit the post of US Ambassador to Russia soon after the Sochi Olympics. The diplomat also wrote that “he will miss Russia and its people” and in the subsequent tweet invited all those interested in the reasons behind the decision to read his blog hosted by the Russian-owned platform, Livejournal.  Read more .

Sarah Lazare @ Common Dreams - Israel's Jerusalem municipality gave the green-light on Wednesday to 558 new settlement properties in the occupied West Bank, despite being in the midst of the so-called peace process brokered by the United States.   Read more .

Robert C. Kohler @ Buzzflash - The young guys were half a block ahead of us. Nothing was happening except that they were walking. A police car pulled up behind them, slowed to their pace, aimed a spotlight at them.   Read more .

RT.com - The president of Uruguay has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. According to his advocates, José “Pepe” Mujica's much talked-about marijuana legalization is in fact "a tool for peace and understanding."   Read more .

Beth Buczynski @ Care2 - As long as their have been human societies, there have been criminals. Despite the best efforts of lawmakers and religions, humans can’t be trusted to do the right thing, even when we’re aware of the consequences. The prison system used to be a last resort, a place you sent people when other forms of punishment were ineffective. Now it’s grown into something much darker, and even less rehabilitative.   Read more .

Michael Boldin @ Truthout - On Tuesday, January 28th, a transpartisan group of four Vermont state representatives introduced legislation that would block some of the practical effects of mass data collection by the National Security Agency (NSA).   Read more.

RT.com - Over 1,000 people from civil war-torn Syria have received temporary asylum in Russia, the head of the asylum department of the Federal Migration Service has said.   Read more .

Deustche Welle (Germany) - A joint report by a major German newspaper and regional broadcaster has said that the National Security Agency tapped the telephone communications of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, before Angela Merkel.   Read more .

Joanne Lin @ Blog of Rights/ACLU - The lead statement of the House GOP immigration standards released last week says, "Border Security and Interior Enforcement Must Come First." While catchy, this phrase suggests that enforcement has not been taking place. The reality is that since 1996, our nation's singular immigration policy has been enforcement-first and enforcement-only. This folly of decades of enforcement-first has come at a tremendous cost – to American taxpayers who have funded it, to immigrant families torn asunder, and to all of our civil liberties.   Read more .