NFL Cheerleaders' Pay Akin to Bangladesh Garment Workers'!

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Sunday March 16, 2014 · 9:50 AM PDT

2014/03/16 · 09:50

Maybe you received an email petition from change.org in the weeks before the 2014 Super Bowl demanding that the owners of its team participants -- Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos -- commit to pay their cheerleaders a living wage.

They don’t.

And they didn’t. Commit, that is.

In our present economic ethical freakshow engineered by predatory sociopathic corporate capitalists injustice is becoming more and more gobsmackingly rampant and extreme. You’ve heard the latest statistic of how there are 85 human beings who have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. 3.5 billion people.

Sometimes the worst victims of the avaricious ruling rich are from groups one would not readily assume. Like the professional NFL cheerleaders, as an example of one relatively small but unlikely high profile group. It was the professional cheerleading ranks from which the likes of singer Paula Abdul (LA Lakers) and actress Teri Hatcher (SF 49ers) emerged.

NFL football is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Tony Romo, a Dallas Cowboys quarterback, reportedly earned a base salary in 2013 of $11.5 million.

libbyliberal

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Sunday March 16, 2014 · 12:04 AM PDT

2014/03/16 · 00:04

I’m thinking whistleblower Edward Snowden far better fits the profile of a latter day Paul Revere than Obama’s nomination of the fourth-amendment-eliminating NSA.

Edward Snowden believed that the American citizenry should have the right to know about and to choose for itself how big a part of its civil liberties should be sacrificed for “security” -- if any -- and to be able to reject the alarming degree of constitutional protections now being arbitrarily and secretly defied by a growing US police state. The checks and balance system is not working within our government. Hundreds of millions of innocent Americans (and foreigners) are unconstitutionally (not to mention seemingly gratuitously and expensively) being spied upon by the US government.

Edward Snowden risked and is still risking his life to protect hard-won American freedoms that have been and are currently being violated by the NSA, now with a disturbing, robust enabling of our current Democratic President.

This is what David Swanson had to say in “Obama Fans Aren't even Pretending That Was a Good Speech” about Obama’s misdirected Paul Revere patriotism-conjuring at the beginning of his January 17th, NSA speech from the Justice Department.

Obama began Friday’s speech with a Sarah Palinesque bit of Paul Revere history. Revere is now an honorary NSA spy. In reality, the British would have hit Revere with a hellfire missile if Obama had been their king.
snip

Obama has not proposed to end abuses. He's proposed to appoint two new bureaucrats plus John Podesta. Out of this speech we get reviews of policies, a commitment to tell the Director of National Intelligence to read court rulings that impact the crimes and abuses he's engaged in, and a promise that the "Intelligence Community" will inspect itself. (Congress, the courts, and the people don't come up in this list of reforms.) Usually this sort of imperial-presidential fluff wins praise from Obama's followers. This time, I'm not hearing it.

Colin Friedersdorf in “The NSA Speech: Obama Accepts the Logic of Staying Terrorized” had this to say about the reference:

The president began his speech on NSA reform by harkening back to "the dawn of our republic," when a small, secret "surveillance committee" was established in Boston. "The group’s members included Paul Revere," he said, "and at night they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids." In this telling, the patriots, literal revolutionaries rebelling against the government of their day, were forerunners of the National Security Agency.
That is egregious historical malpractice. In fact, King George's colonial overseers and the general warrants they enforced are much closer analogues to domestic-surveillance efforts today. Had colonial governors had access to five years of communications metadata and "two-hop" network analysis, it is highly likely that they would've arrested the Founding Fathers, tried them for treason, and sentenced them to death for their crimes.

Or would the FFs have been rendered, detained and tortured indefinitely?

So many of us assumed that Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency would guarantee a U-turn from the relentless march to the slippery slope of fascism led by the Bush cabal. INSTEAD, OBAMA SEEMS TO HAVE BROUGHT A SLED!

libbyliberal

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Saturday March 15, 2014 · 5:18 PM PDT

2014/03/15 · 17:18

According to Julie Hyland in “What the Western-backed regime is planning for Ukrainian workers” the new regime which came to power in the guise of a “democratic revolution” is made up of “former bankers, fascists and oligarchs” and is preparing “draconian austerity measures” for the Ukrainian people.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) are going to apply the “Greek Model” of economic austerity explains Hyland. This model, she goes on, has caused Greece’s economy “to collapse by nearly 25 percent in five years and produced a massive growth in unemployment and poverty.”

The IMF and the EU assert they are “rescuing” the country. They are promising now a loan package of $15 billion which is going to be dedicated to REPAYING WESTERN BANKS! The loan will be guaranteed by massive cuts in social spending for pensions and subsidizing fuel.

The former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov BEFORE THE COUP decided that conditions of a renewed IMF loan were far too harsh which was why his government decided not to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and instead agree to a no-strings loan from Russia of $15 billion along with gas subsidies. Hyland maintains this refusal of the EU "help" was the pretext for US- and EU-sponsored protests and the coup.

libbyliberal

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Saturday March 15, 2014 · 2:35 PM PDT

2014/03/15 · 14:35

Glen Ford in “Hillary and Other Assorted Barbarians at Russia’s Gate”:

When John Kerry praises the “brave Ukrainians” that “took to the streets to stand against tyranny and demand democracy,” he makes common cause with the direct political heirs of the Ukrainian Waffen SS units and concentration camp guards that eagerly joined Hitler’s genocidal rampage in the mid-20th century. The Ukrainian fascists, who command 40 percent of the electorate in some western regions of the country, return the compliment, hoisting the Confederate flag in Kiev’s city hall. They see, correctly, that the epicenter of their ideology is not Berlin, but Washington.

Margaret Kimberley in “Freedom Rider: “Journalists” Follow Obama on Ukraine”:

The corporate media are a key component of the U.S. imperial machine. Although styling themselves as watchdogs, they are in fact the dogs of war, whose mission is to hide Washington’s aggressions behind a fog of lies. War “crimes are committed with impunity in part because presidents get a helping hand from their corporate media partners.”

snip

It is not too harsh to point out that the propaganda and lies spread by networks and newspapers are part of an enormous crime. America is the evil doer in Iraq and Haiti and Libya and Venezuela and Ukraine. Nations are invaded and economies are ruined because our government is determined to have its way in the world. The crimes are committed with impunity in part because presidents get a helping hand from their corporate media partners.

Trying to research and communicate the realpolitik behind the Ukraine coup is extra challenging because the US media is not committing its usual sin of real news omission, but has reached strident and obscene levels of disinformation by pouring out the sociopathic-level lying of President Obama and his cabal. The “smoke and mirrors” metaphor seems pathetically inadequate to describe this level of state propaganda. Better to compare it to those noise cannons that were used on OWS protesters during Bloomberg’s media-minimized Gestapo moments in NYC in the Fall of 2011.

It is both utterly frightening and heartbreakingly discouraging to witness the Obama administration as well as the mainstream media propaganda machines denying any western responsibility for the regime change -- the coup establishing a fascist junta -- in the Ukraine at the end of February, 2014, and for the profoundly undeserved demonization of Putin and Russia. We are talking ends-justify-whatever amoral and violent means necessary gangsterism at all levels pulled off by the US and its allies -- AGAIN!!!!

It is also both utterly frightening and heartbreakingly discouraging to witness the continuing blind trust and/or disinterest of too many of our “good German” citizenry after so much war criminality on the part of our government under BOTH Bush and Obama.

libbyliberal

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Saturday March 15, 2014 · 1:42 AM PDT

2014/03/15 · 01:42

It happened over ten or so years ago. I was working “non-traditional" shifts at a major NYC midtown law firm.

It was early one Fall Sunday night. It was a work night for me.

No matter what my intention, my departure for work usually resembled the proverbial fireman’s exit. So it was this particular night.

I had opted to wear a mid-calf denim skirt ruffled at the bottom, a crisp white tailored man’s shirt, and a rust colored vest. The dress code for weekends was generous, but I had decided it was high time to spruce myself up more than my usual jeans and a pullover. I threw on a favorite long black suit jacket. I decided I’d have to apply makeup later at the office as I stuffed a pair of gold hoop earrings in my vest pocket to be inserted while awaiting the subway.

The last thing I always did upon leaving for work was grab hold of my keys hanging from a hook next to the door and from another hook one of those clear plastic neck holders often used for passports. I kept my office ID card in it. The card not only provided access to the building but onto the half dozen floors belonging to the firm. Wearing it around my neck was most convenient at the busy office.

I bounded down the apartment stairs and rushed through the mailboxed entryway. As I emerged onto the avenue I was startled by a number of things. It was darker than I had anticipated, eerily quiet even for a Sunday night and there was a serious chill in the air. I should have grabbed a heavier jacket I mourned, but did not want to take the time to go back and get one. To avoid the cold I decided instead of walking across to the west side from the 6 train stop I would switch to the shuttle at 42nd Street.

As I was calculating my route to work and its timing I suddenly stopped to take in a rather surreal image. I gasped. The sidewalks running up and down my block on both sides of the street were generously festooned with yellow crime scene tape. What on earth?

libbyliberal

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Friday March 14, 2014 · 3:30 AM PDT

2014/03/14 · 03:30

It comes as no surprise at least to some citizens that the CIA is an intelligence agency that operates outside US law and defies congressional oversight. Interestingly this week, one of its strongest and most consistent apologists, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has outrightly charged the CIA with perpetrating criminal behaviors.

Joseph Kishore and Barry Grey in “high crimes and misdemeanors” write:

The speech delivered Tuesday on the Senate floor by Senator Dianne Feinstein provides clear and direct evidence of crimes against the US Constitution and the democratic rights of the American people, implicating top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House, up to and including the president. Feinstein’s allegations of CIA intimidation, obstruction and spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which she chairs, constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional basis for impeachment.

Senator Feinstein in an hour long speech charged the CIA with spying on and withholding documents from Congress to cover up facts about the torture program of the Bush regime.

CIA Director Brennan -- coincidentally Brennan was the director of counter-terrorism under Bush and implicated in the torture program under investigation -- has been accused by Feinstein of attempting to intimidate the Senate Intelligence Committee by accusing its staff members of stealing classified documents and demanding that the Justice Department launch an investigation of the Committee.

Kishore and Grey call out the corporate mainstream media for too readily dismissing and minimizing this extraordinary situation as a “turf war” between Congress and the CIA. They see it as far more profound. The CIA and the Justice Department fall under the jurisdiction of the executive branch. Senator Feinstein represents the legislative branch:

What is involved is nothing less than an open attack on the constitutional order that arose on the basis of the American Revolution, which is founded on the “separation of powers” and a system of “checks and balances” between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government—something the founders deemed essential to prevent the emergence of a dictatorship.
The CIA’s subversion of the Senate probe into its activities—including its refusal to sanction the publication of a declassified version of the Intelligence Committee’s 6,300 page report—is a milestone in the establishment of a de facto dictatorship of the military/intelligence establishment over the people.

libbyliberal

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Thursday March 13, 2014 · 3:05 AM PDT

2014/03/13 · 03:05

So after an ugly 25-year Middle Eastern trail of blood and tears, dead or maimed bodies, massive displacement and devastation, the US government, its military, its corporate media and its predatory fellow country flunkies, drifting toward fascism as much as the US is, are defying international law, yet again, all in the name of “freedom.”

And, unfrigginbelievably getting away with it.

Once again, like with the imaginary wmds of Iraq, corporate western and even world media is all over this “story” (using the term very loosely) guaranteeing the fake legitimacy of the west’s shameless and opportunistic lies, double-standards and hypocritically reconfigured boundaries of international law.

Corporate media is busy applying the proverbial white and black hats, once again to the wrong heads. Apparently they had quite a few white ones left over from the Al-Qaeda-linked “rebels” in Syria to use now on the neo-Nazi “rebels” in the Ukraine.

There was no democratic revolution in the Ukraine. It was an illegitimate coup spearheaded by ruthless neo-Nazis setting up a fascist junta for their own empowerment as well as co-conspiring opportunistic Ukrainian oligarchs, economic cronies of the US and the EU.

Robert Parry in “Reagan-Style Hypocrisy and the Ukraine Crisis”:

Today, if you make the case that universal rules should apply to the United States, you are accused of not embracing America as an “exceptional” country. As a result, very few mainstream observers in Official Washington even blink now at the U.S. government taking contradictory positions on issues such as intervening in other countries.
Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are “justified” as are drone strikes and aerial bombardments of countries from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia to Libya. It’s also okay to threaten to bomb Syria and Iran.

Supporting the overthrow of sovereign governments is also fine – for the United States but not for anyone else. Just during the Obama administration, the U.S. government has backed coups in Honduras, Libya and now Ukraine. U.S.-endorsed secessions are okay, too, as with oil-rich South Sudan from Sudan.

Yet, when the geopolitical shoe is on the other foot – when Russia objects to the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s duly-elected President Viktor Yanukovych and, as a result, supports a secession referendum by Crimea on whether its citizens want to join the Russian Federation – Official Washington cries out in moral outrage.

libbyliberal

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Wednesday March 12, 2014 · 8:10 PM PDT

2014/03/12 · 20:10

I read an exciting article by David Sirota recently entitled “How the 1 Percent Always Gets Its Way”.

Sirota’s answer for that is simple. BOTH legacy parties are “up for sale.”

I figure MSNBC and others of Team Dem are doing a more than adequate job inventorying and calling out the lack of empathy and the greed of the rabid leadership of the Republican party.

That’s why I feel free and am drawn to focus on the hypocrisy and betrayal of the leadership of the not really very left, hypocritical, cowardly and selling-out Dem Party.

Sirota cites the campaign finance system as a catalyst for the betrayal of Democratic representatives whereby they are effectively and consistently bribed to abandon the interests of average and poor Americans for corporate agendas.

Their repeated betraying of the labor movement is one profound example. The Dem leadership along with a colluding corporate-owned and -run media brainwashes self-identified progressives, including a vulnerable and dependent labor rank and file, to frame every issue into what Sirota sees as “partisan blue vs. red terms.” From there, “lesser evilism” thrives.

libbyliberal

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Wednesday March 12, 2014 · 11:30 AM PDT

2014/03/12 · 11:30

As I followed some stone steps leading through a pretty courtyard to the side entrance of the Unitarian Church of All Souls on the upper East side of New York last Thursday [1-9-14], I drew in a serious lungful of cold, crisp night air to help gird myself for what I was about to hear and see.

I was grateful for the upcoming forum and the opportunity to learn of the present situation of the detainees at Guantanamo, but the grim memory of past horrors inflicted on them and learning of fresh ones I knew would be enraging and depressing. Maybe, though, I would find some hope and inspiration.

I felt guilty for not being on top of the latest status of the prisoners. I had read somewhere an announcement that Obama had released eleven detainees since August, but not whether this signaled a promising momentum for more releases. That news was uplifting but cryptic. What about the 150 or so men remaining? What was the status of the intrepid hunger strike involving nearly a hundred that had commenced a year ago and that had incited such shocking and violent pushback from the military authorities? A recent email from The World Can’t Wait had reminded me it was the 12th anniversary of the Guantanamo gulag. Twelve years!

I knew I would be guaranteed a thorough consciousness-raising of the situation. Debra Sweet head of The World Can’t Wait would be speaking along with Guantanamo prisoners’ activist Andy Worthington visiting for the fifth year from the UK. There was also to be a viewing of a new documentary “Doctors of the Dark Side” about the scandal behind the torture scandal, directed by psychologist Martha Davis, also attending. Medical professionals through these long, dozen Orwellian years had participated in the amoral US detention and torture programs with little if any ethical or legal accountability.

libbyliberal

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Wednesday March 12, 2014 · 10:13 AM PDT

2014/03/12 · 10:13

I have three blogs that are in various levels of development but I am shooting this one from the hip, so to speak, in five minutes of an adrenalin rush upon arriving home.

Ten minutes ago I left my NYC neighborhood Duane Reade pharmacy and on my way out the door withdrew some cash from a Chase ATM machine.

As my transaction finished a row of balloons spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY flashed merrily on the screen.

Whaaaaa.....????.

My jaw dropped but I reasoned it was just a coincidence. My birthday had occurred last week and was coinciding with some Chase public relations promotion. But there was no other text on the screen. Just one letter per balloon spelling out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY.”

I think if it had said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LIBBY” I would have had a heart attack!

Was it about MY birthday? My REAL birthday???? ULP.

Should I worry if it was for my birthday that this bank I rely on for financial calculations was six days off?

I am sorry, but I don’t want my local ATMs to cultivate a faux-personal relationship with me. NO WAY, JOSE!!! Especially with the specter of the NSA haunting all of us global citizens.

Remember HAL in the movie "2001"? What a kind and reasonable voice he -- it -- had!

Color me paranoid but behind the bright, pretty balloons was to me a sinister reminder. "First off, we know your birthday!" (Of course they do!) "And WE (big NSA brother and all those crony corporate siblings) know everything else about you." I had just used my “club” discount card which tracked everything I had bought at Duane Reade. After 3000 points worth of purchases I get $5 off. A cheap price for the data-mining of me and my consumer footprints. But I am one more willing sucker for that $5.

libbyliberal

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Wednesday March 12, 2014 · 6:13 AM PDT

2014/03/12 · 06:13

Don’t hold your breath about a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. But even if it did happen, what would it really mean for a struggling American working -- or, formerly working -- class?

In the “lesser evilism” Obama-world view I should just STFU and appreciate how so very evil and cruel those millionaire Congressional Republicans are being and appreciate that those millionaire crony-capitalist Dem pols, just in time for election 2014 coincidentally, are “championing” (not terribly hard) struggling Americans to get a few more “crumbs” for bottom-line survival.

“Lesser evilism.” Ya gotta love it. It just keeps on giving. Well, at least to the monumentally hypocritical Dem election-time populist-posing politicians, with Mr.-Hypocrisy-on-Steroids Obama out in front.

According to Andre Damon in “The US Minimum Wage Debate” the recent Congressional Budget Report concluded that an increase in the minimum wage to the proposed level of $10.10 would increase pay for 16.5 million Americans, but eliminate 500,000 jobs. The increase would “lift” 900,000 people out of poverty. Sounds good, except Damon calculates that this would raise ONLY 0.2 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION OUT OF POVERTY. A “tiny fraction”, points out Damon, in relation to the 46.5 MILLION PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 15% of the population -- 15 out of every 100 Americans -- who are now living below the federal poverty line.

libbyliberal

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Wednesday March 12, 2014 · 2:16 AM PDT

2014/03/12 · 02:16

What constitutes commitment of a citizen to a nation? Let’s say this particular United States nation.

Blind or myopic or passionate loyalty? Indifference to, numbness of or a profound lack of curiosity in whatever is going on with our tax dollars in the powerful hands of our elected representatives and their networks?

There seems a naturally inclined co-dependent sensibility with said country -- a dimension of shared narcissism. Whatever ends justify the means profiteering said country achieves (no matter how unethical or illegal, though these possibilities we quickly dismiss from our minds), we presume the wins and profits will impact us (especially not true in these hard economic times but hope springs eternal) as we presume seeming losses and debits will also impact us.

What constitutes a commitment of a human being to the global human family?

I’m guessing the affiliations to country and to humanity are in conflict more than most of us are consciously aware.

I am judging that the intellectual, moral, social, economic challenges of serving humanity over country is too far outside most of our comfort zones to be seriously committed to in a sustained way.

This week I am wondering if leaders of my government helped engineer or aided and abetted murders of police AND protesters in Kiev at the end of February. If they did not, are they nevertheless now accessories to said murders after the fact?

I’m thinking yes. They probably are implicated.

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NFL Cheerleaders' Pay Akin to Bangladesh Garment Workers'!

When Obama Re-Framed Paul Revere as 'NSA Poster Boy'

The Plight of the Ukrainian People

Obama/Media Ukraine Propaganda War - Lying Akin to WMD Whopper

NYPD's Authoritarian-Following Risk-Taking & Me

CIA Criminality Grounds for Impeachment

Ukraine [W]reckoning: Disaster Capitalism, Nazism, Media Propaganda

Sirota: ‘Liberal Washing’ -- the Enabling of Plutocratic Exploitation

Close Guantanamo Now/Doctors of the Dark Side

An ATM Just Wished Me Happy B-day & I FREAKED!

Lesser Evil Dems Faux-Fight for Near-Starvation Minimum Wage

Ukraine Regime Change-Faster Than A Speeding (Sniper) Bullet