Article 12

"The New Digital Age" is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America's geopolitical visionary. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces -- forever.

The Air Force has admitted that it's critics in Vermont have been right all along -- that basing the F-35 strike fighter in Burlington, the state's only area with population at urban-concentration levels, will render thousands more homes "unsuitable for residential use" than originally estimate.

By Patrick Walker
"44" Is NOT "42"--the Tragic Inevitability of Uncle Tom's White House
A fervent critic of Obama, I was deeply provoked by Robert Parry's interesting--but in my view misapplied--comparison of Obama to the heroic Jackie Robinson in his OEN article "42 and 44." I contend that the proper comparison is a purely speculative one: a consideration of the overwhelming pressures Robinson would have faced NOT as a player, but if he'd been 1st black baseball commissioner after major (lucrative) scandals.

I'm just back from Egypt. There are enormous unsolved problems here; the country is teetering on an edge. But there are also many bright, caring, courageous Egyptians, determined not to let their country implode, or slide into feudal Islam. I'd come to Egypt to help the country use stories of its own heroes to inspire people to act with the courage, vision and skill to make a difference. There is hope.

Official Washington still glorifies George W. Bush's "successful surge" in Iraq while ignoring the wanton slaughter inflicted on Iraqis. So, there remains a high-level desire to harshly punish Pvt. Bradley Manning for exposing the horrific truth about that and other war crimes.

The original London Bridge was in use for nearly 650 years; America's bridges should be so well-built!

DEA letters: Is this how the feds might fight state's marijuana market | The Pot Blog - seattlepi.com
The feds are writing threatening letters to owners of buildings in Washington State where medical marijuana is sold.

By Christopher Mandel
Examining the Beliefs Behind Political Labels
This is an analysis of the underlying philosophic assumptions of some of the ideologies shaping our political landscape.

A report from the 2013 public banking conference

During the summer months, I'm combining the New & Full Moon Cosmic Story into one article. So here are some of the cosmic happenings for June 2013. It's a time to change our thoughts and open up to our intuition and feeling. We will be dealing with the ongoing energies of the Uranus/Pluto square, the 60's energy of rebellion and rebirth. The Cosmic Story is meant to inspire us to hope, to imagine and to create anew.

The economic wreckage destroying tens of millions of lives across the globe was an entirely preventable disaster. In the case of both the United States and Europe unsustainable asset bubbles were allowed to grow to ever more dangerous levels. It was inevitable that the bubbles would burst and when they did the outcome would be a severe downturn from which it would not easy to recover.

A bill making its way through the state Legislature would allow government officials access to the bank accounts of the unemployed to recover overpayments, penalize those trying to update their skills and improve job prospects with training, and punish jobless people who have been already victimized by identity theft, if unauthorized parties are able to fraudulently access benefits. People who would like to be workers are not only getting no protection at all, but are being treated like common criminals for the sin of not being able to find a job.

The battle in Qusayr on the Syrian-Lebanon border is critical to the outcome of the civil war and, perhaps, the future of the Middle East. Can Assad's Army turn the tide? Will the al Qaeda aligned al-Nusra front be a key to the rebels holding their own? Or, are we looking at the dismemberment of Syria with more to come creating a series of vassal states in the Middle East.

U.N. nuclear investigators may no longer find anything if granted access to Iran's Parchin military site, their chief said on Monday, in view of suspected Iranian efforts to remove any traces of illicit atomic activity there.

Republican fissures over the expansion of Medicaid, a critical piece of the 2010 health-care law designed to provide coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, continue to deepen, with battles in Arizona and elsewhere showing just how bitter the divisions have become.Despite expressing distaste for the new law, some GOP governors have endorsed an expansion of Medicaid, and three -- Jan Brewer of Arizona, John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan -- are trying to persuade their Republican-controlled legislatures to go along. The governors are unwilling to turn down Washington's offer to spend millions, if not billions, in their states to add people to the state-federal program for the poor.

David Swanson,of War Is A Crime.org, although endorsing, along with almost every serious antiwar journalist and organization, the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, wrote recently: US Presidents Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes and Military Aggressions" Readers in nations bombed, invaded and murderously occupied by America and Americans will sense or suspect a "fall guy' trick to absolve everyone els

"The high court, in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, handed a victory to the state of Maryland by saying taking of DNA samples from arrestees was similar to taking fingerprints. Of the 50 states, 29 have such laws along with the federal government."

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) died Monday morning due to complications from viral pneumonia, his office said in a statement Monday morning. At 89, Lautenberg was the oldest member of the Senate. He was also the last veteran of World War II serving in the Senate.

There are the obvious, ongoing environmental concerns about this project. At some point you have to ask, is it worth the potentially devastating aftermath to squeeze every last dirty drop of crude from the dirt? Would it not make more sense to invest in environmentally-friendly energy sources?

By Dave Lefcourt
Sunni, Shiite Sectarian Bloodletting, No End in Sight
The sectarian civil war in Syria is escalating ferociously as 1000's of Shiite & Sunni Muslims beyond Syria's borders have joined the fray. Lebanese Shiite leader of Hezbollah openly declared his military support of the Assad gov't. In Iraq the sectarian bloodletting of Sunni's & Shiites has brought that country close to renewed civil war. It's hard to imagine the sectarian bloodletting abating anytime soon.