The Drone That Killed My Grandson

The Article: The Drone That Killed My Grandson by Nasser al-Awlaki in The New York Times.

The Text: I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died.

The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen.

I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead.

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Mind Rape And The Christian Right

The Article: Mind Rape and the Christian Right by Chris Hedges in TruthDig.

The Text: Noel Lyons, a member of the U.S. Ski Team from 1976 to 1981 and once one of the country’s top professional skiers, found herself in a Vail, Colo., hospital in the spring of 2010 after another round of binge drinking. “I had given up on myself,” she would say later. Her boyfriend and sister decided she needed rehabilitative help. Because their resources were limited, they turned to the free Total Freedom Program, a Florida ministry for women and men that identifies itself as Christian.

Cate Iannello, the wife of the leader of Total Freedom Program, “Pastor Guy,” met Lyons in July 2010 at the Orlando airport and drove her to what she called “the girls’ house,” a yellow ranch house in a nondescript neighborhood of nearby Ocoee. Lyons says she arrived “scared out of my mind” and holding a decorative pillow with the image of a buffalo on it. Because the pillow had “past associations” that could evoke demons, she was soon told to put it in the trash.

Lyons walked into the living room with the pastor’s wife. She met a woman there who introduced herself as Connie Prince, “the house mom”—a position Lyons herself would assume eventually. She was introduced to about five other “girls,” all white and ranging in age from the 20s into the 50s, who lived in the house.

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Why Your Town Could Be The Next Detroit

The Article: There will be more Detroits: Your town could be next by Robert Hennelly in Salon.

The Text: President Obama comes to Galesburg, Illinois (population: 32,000) today, where he is expected to once again hit the reset button on his domestic economic agenda for the rest of his second term. His advance folks know the appealing Norman Rockwell-like backdrop of this rural farming community. It is also the birthplace of Carl Sandburg, who as America’s poet, understood the power of pride in a particular place.

But these days, in a global economy where U.S. multi-nationals can stash hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in off-shore tax havens, the smart play to win all the marbles is to really be from no place in particular. There’s nothing to protect other than your data.

Take the sad case of the City of Detroit, whose name is now synonymous with a global brand “Detroit,” as in the auto industry. Detroit, the municipality, filed for bankruptcy. America’s 18th largest city, overwhelmingly African-American, just 400 miles northeast of Galesburg, was once a thriving industrial powerhouse of almost two million people. Now it has dwindled down to 700,000 residents who live in one of the nation’s most violent cities where it can take an hour for a 911 response.

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Nutritionism In America Is A Crock Of Bull

The Article: Curse of American Nutritionism: Industry Ignores Realities of Healthful Eating by E. Douglas Kihn in Truth Out.

The Text: It all started in the US in the late 1960s as a result of the countercultural revolt. Disaffected youths rebelled against conventional norms, including the proliferation of processed food and the chemicals used to grow, process and preserve food. Gradually during the past four decades, however, this legitimate concern has given rise to a monstrous industry that contributes heavily to neurotic disorders, physical disease and capitalist profits.

The nutritionist industry inadvertently serves a political purpose as well, keeping the American working class confused, self-hating, tranquilized and demoralized. Nutritionismis an original American belief that a person’s health hinges onwhatone puts into one’s mouth. “You are what you eat,” has become the national slogan; “Eat right!” has become the prime medical imperative, so if you’re interested in eating right, you should check out this helpful list of what to eat on a juice cleanse for losing weight.

Nutritionism and American advertising

Only in industrially advanced, English-speaking countries, especially the United States, do we find nearly all packaged grocery store items with health claims plastered all over their exteriors.
“Our healthy/natural/organic/calorie-reduced food . . . which is fat-free/sugar-free/low in carbs/protein-rich/vitamin-enriched. . . and is fortified with anti-oxidants/omega 3 fatty acids/extra fiber/phytonutrients/folic acid/vitamin Z . . . will boost your energy/cleanse your body/burn fat/strengthen bones/make you smarter/reverse aging/get you laid.”

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Edward Snowden’s Fear Of Flying Is Justified

The Article: Edward Snowden’s fear of flying is justified by Geoffrey Robertson in The Guardian.

The Text: As Edward Snowden sits in an airside hotel, awaiting confirmation of Russia’s offer of asylum, it is clear that he has already revealed enough to prove that European privacy protections are a delusion: under Prism and other programmes, the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ can, without much legal hindrance, scoop up any electronic communication whenever one of 70,000 “keywords” or “search terms” are mentioned. These revelations are of obvious public interest: even President Obama has conceded that they invite a necessary debate. But the US treats Snowden as a spy and has charged him under the Espionage Act, which has no public interest defence.

That is despite the fact that Snowden has exposed secret rulings from a secret US court, where pliant judges have turned down only 10 surveillance warrant requests between 2001 and 2012 (while granting 20,909) and have issued clandestine rulings which erode first amendment protection of freedom of speech and fourth amendment protection of privacy. Revelations about interception of European communications (many leaked through servers in the US) and the bugging of EU offices in Washington have infuriated officials in Brussels. In Germany, with its memories of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the protests are loudest, and opposition parties, gearing up for an election in September, want him to tell more.

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