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Search Warrants Against WikiLeaks Staff: Justice Department, Google & US Media Silence Threaten Press Freedom

Kevin Gosztola Firedoglake
As of 10:30 PM EST, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, NBC News, CNN and other outlets had not published any reports. The legal precedents created as the government pursues WikiLeaks are the same legal precedents that can always be used to go after other journalists in the future. American journalists maintain their collective silence at their profession’s own peril.

'The Prospects and Consequences of a Possible Syriza Government'

Jamie Galbraith, Roger Strassburg Economist's View
... the situation in Greece quite inspiring because you have here something really very rare in any country in recent years, which is an election in which the public is making a choice that matters. The outcome is not a question of some manipulation among existing political classes, or even the evolution of a previously existing party system, which was the case in Italy. They have a clear-cut choice, and they're making it. This is what democracy should be about.

James Baldwin, a Guide in Dark Times

JoAnn Wypijewski The Nation
His essays on police brutality still burn hot, but his understanding of sex, self-knowledge and power demand equal attention now. Baldwin does not say that systems of power are unimportant. He insists that liberation is also a mandate on individuality: how one separates oneself from the “habits of thought [that] reinforce and sustain the habits of power”—in essence, how one comes into his or her humanity.

Why Do We Die?

PZ Myers Science Blogs
We are all Roy Batty. All of our moments will be lost, like tears in rain…but weren’t they extraordinary moments?

Time for Another Israeli War on Lebanon?

Belen Fernandez Middle East Eye
Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah and Iranian commanders in Syria last Sunday could be a highly risky pre-election gambit, designed to in part bolster Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral performance in 2015. And the predictable and possibly provoked Hezbollah response may set the stage for a direct Israeli confrontation with Lebanon.

The New York Times: "Distortions, Lies and Omissions" on Ukraine

Patrick Smith Salon
Ukraine is an economic, political and military mess, and a major humanitarian tragedy. But, the New York Times and the U.S. media that follow its lead have provided us with only distortions, lies and omissions about the cynical U.S. role in creating and worsening the Ukraine crisis, and the calamitous global economic impact of the U.S. orchestrated sanctions against Russia.

The Saudi Death Sentence That Threatens to Inflame The Gulf

Giorgio Cafiero Foreign Policy in Focus
Last October, Saudi Arabia’s Special Criminal Court sentenced Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a popular Shi’ite cleric and outspoken political dissident, to death. Now the fate of this Shi’ite cleric hangs over the Gulf like a sword of Damocles. Demonstrations demanding the death sentence be revoked have been held in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, and the United Kingdom, underscoring the international sensitivity surrounding al-Nimr’s imprisonment and death sentence.

Charlie Hebdo and France's Terrible Symmetry

Diana Johnstone CounterPunch
Even as Israel is aggressively seeking to recruit French Jews to move to Israel, France is undertaking measures to stem the flow of young Muslims to the Middle East to fight with Islamist extremists in Syria and Iraq. There is much talk of restoring authority and “republican values” to the schoolroom. But French leaders need to take a hard look at their own totally incoherent foreign policy, and there is no sign as yet of that happening.

NRC: No Suspension of Fukushima-Style Nuclear Reactors

Andrea Germanos Common Dreams
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a Director’s Decision Friday rejecting an appeal by environmental watchdog groups to suspend operations at the nearly two dozen reactors in the United States that have the same containment system as the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan. Greenpeace charges the NRC is “backing off post-Fukushima fixes at reactors around the country due to fear that added regulatory costs would topple more nuclear plants."