Monthly Archives: October 2016

Dakota Access Pipeline Police Celebrate Columbus Day by Continuing Brutal Tradition

By Nick Bernabe. Published 10-10-2016 by The Anti-Media

Water Protectors with prayer and burning sage at a roadblock with riot police and military style armored vehicles outside St Anthony, ND on Oct 5 2016. Photo: Sacred Stone Camp/Facebook

North Dakota — Militarized Dakota Access Pipeline police celebrated Columbus Day in truly fascistic fashion when they descended upon peaceful protesters and began mass arresting as many of them as possible. According to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, 27 water protectors were arrested Monday, two of whom were charged with felonies for chaining themselves to pipeline construction equipment.

The mass arrests of Native American protesters and allies on Columbus Day comes just a day after the U.S. Court of Appeals denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for an injunction to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Continue reading →

The US Edges Dangerously Closer to War with Russia: What You Aren’t Being Told

Leave a reply

By Darius Shahtahmasebi. Published 10-7-2016 by The Anti-Media

Barack Obama and Vladmir Putin at G8 summit 2013. Photo by ShadowNinja1080 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As hawkish as presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton may be, the fact the Obama administration is pressing for direct war in Syria before she even has a chance to be elected raises serious questions about the urgency underpinning the U.S. establishment’s push to unseat Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power.

Just this week, Russia deployed its S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Syria’s western coast in a move to preemptively counter any threat from U.S.-coalition airstrikes. The move came shortly after a number of reports surfaced in the corporate media claiming the Obama administration was mulling over attacking Syrian troops directly. Continue reading →

Scores Dead After Saudi-Led, US-Backed Coalition Bombs Yemen Funeral

Leave a reply

‘The silence of the United Nations and the international community is the munition of the murderers’

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-8-2016

Photo: Twitter

The Saudi-led coalition, whose planes the U.S. continues to refuel, reportedly killed at least 90 people in Yemen on Saturday when airstrikes targeted a funeral hall in the capital of Sanaa.

Some put the death toll as high as 155.

According to Reuters: Continue reading →

Iceland, Where Bad Bankers Go to Jail, Finds Nine Guilty in Historic Case

Leave a reply

Since its 2008 crisis, Iceland has received recognition for its strategy of prosecuting executives, letting banks go bust, and focusing on social welfare

By Nadia Prupis, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-7-2016

The verdict from Iceland’s Supreme Court overturns a June 2015 decision by the Reykjavik District Court, which found seven of the nine defendants guilty and acquitted two. (Photo: Daniel/flickr/cc)

Iceland, which became a gold standard for corporate accountability in the wake of its 2008-2011 financial crisis, has found nine bankers guilty for market manipulation in one of the biggest cases of its kind in the country’s history.

The verdict from Iceland’s Supreme Court, issued Thursday, overturns a June 2015 decision by the Reykjavik District Court, which found seven of the nine defendants guilty and acquitted two. Continue reading →

The War in Syria: Who Is Actually to Blame?

Leave a reply

By Darius Shahtahmasebi. Published 10-602016 by The Anti-Media

Aftermath of coalition air strike. Photo: Twitter

Depending on which news outlets you follow, your understanding of what is going on in Syria is likely coming from one of two main camps — Western media or Eastern media. Western media, in tandem with the Arab Gulf states, has almost completely pinned the blame for the crisis in Syria on the current president, Bashar al-Assad. Any residual blame left for the taking is delivered to Russia and Iran.

Those of us who inform ourselves daily from an eclectic range of media sources tend to have a broader understanding of the conflict in Syria. The more critical one becomes of both ends of the media spectrum, the more one can evaluate the veracity of the respective outlets (for example, the peddling of statistics from a T-shirt shop in England versus the use of satellite imagery). Continue reading →

Senate Dems to DOJ: Don’t Let Wells Fargo Executives Off the Hook

Leave a reply

Not doing so, they warned, could reinforce ‘the notion that the wealthy and powerful have purchased a higher class of justice for themselves’

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-5-2016

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf testified on Capitol Hill last month. Photo: YouTube

In a blistering letter sent Wednesday, 14 U.S. senators demand the Department of Justice (DOJ) “thoroughly investigate the culpability of senior executives” at Wells Fargo as part of its probe into the financial giant’s recent fake-accounts scandal.

Not to do so, they warn, could reinforce “the notion that the wealthy and powerful have purchased a higher class of justice for themselves.”

The missive from senators including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Al Franken (D-Minn.) to Attorney General Loretta Lynch cites a 2015 memo in which the DOJ vowed to finally crack down on corporate criminals. Continue reading →

‘Shameful’: Yahoo Spied on Email Customers at Government’s Request

Leave a reply

Rights groups said the news proves “the failure of U.S. government reforms to curb NSA’s tendency to try and indiscriminately vacuum up the world’s data.”

By Lauren McCauley and Deirdre Fulton, staff writers for Common Dreams. Published 10-4-2016

Snowden and others react to new allegations that Yahoo scanned all of its customers incoming emails last year on behalf of the government. (Image: Esther Vargas/flickr/cc)

In an astounding and “unprecedented” new account of U.S. government surveillance,Reuters reported Tuesday that Yahoo secretly scanned all of its customer’s incoming emails for a specific set of characters, per request of the National Security Agency (NSA) or FBI.

The news agency broke the investigation after speaking with “two former employees and a third person apprised of the events,” who described how the email giant complied with the vast government directive and built a custom software program to scan hundreds of millions of accounts for a “specific set of characters.” Continue reading →

US Suspends All Contact With Russia Over Syria As Putin Halts US Nuclear Pact

Leave a reply

By James Holbrooks. Published 10-3-2016 by Underground Reporter

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/MARIAJONER.

Following weeks of deteriorating diplomatic efforts between the U.S. and Russia over Syria — to the point where the U.S. has now placed additional military options on the table — Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended a nuclear pact with Washington on Monday, Reuters reports, indicating his willingness to play the nuclear card with the United States.

Reports the news agency: Continue reading →

Internet Undergoes ‘Biggest Change in a Generation’ (That You Never Heard About)

Leave a reply

Transition to ICANN goes ahead despite fear-mongering crusade led by Ted Cruz and other Republican lawmakers

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-1-2016

Transition to international multi-stakeholder nonprofit said to be “the best way to assure that the internet of tomorrow remains as free, open and accessible as the internet of today.” (Photo: Christiann Colen/cc/flickr)

Though Republican lawmakers have painted this moment in Internet history as ‘doomsday,’ and rallied a last ditch-effort to block it, at midnight on Saturday the U.S. government cede control of the web’s core naming directory to a multi-stakeholder nonprofit.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based group of international stakeholders will now control the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which includes the database that translates website names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Continue reading →

Warren Blasts Dept of Ed. for ‘Hounding’ Students Defrauded by For-Profit School

Leave a reply

Investigation by the senator’s staff found that nearly 80,000 former Corinthian College students are being forced into debt collection

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-30-2016

“Instead of adding insult to injury,” Warren wrote, the Department of Education “should stand up for these students as it promised to do for more than a year and immediately halt all collections on these debt.” (Photo: Mystery Pill/cc/flickr)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is taking a stand for the tens of thousands of students who, first, were defrauded by the now-defunct, for-profit Corinthian College system and now, according to an investigation by her own staff, are being “hounded” by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to pay off those debts.

In a searing letter (pdf) to DOE secretary John King on Thursday, Warren said that the department’s student loan bank is pushing nearly 80,000 former Corinthian College students into some form of debt collection, despite assurances that they would be eligible for loan discharges. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Monthly Archives: October 2016

The US Edges Dangerously Closer to War with Russia: What You Aren’t Being Told

Scores Dead After Saudi-Led, US-Backed Coalition Bombs Yemen Funeral

‘The silence of the United Nations and the international community is the munition of the murderers’

‘Shameful’: Yahoo Spied on Email Customers at Government’s Request

Rights groups said the news proves “the failure of U.S. government reforms to curb NSA’s tendency to try and indiscriminately vacuum up the world’s data.”

US Suspends All Contact With Russia Over Syria As Putin Halts US Nuclear Pact

Internet Undergoes ‘Biggest Change in a Generation’ (That You Never Heard About)

Transition to ICANN goes ahead despite fear-mongering crusade led by Ted Cruz and other Republican lawmakers