Stephen Lendman

Public anger in Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, Brazil, Chile, across Europe, in America against Wall Street, and elsewhere is real. It's visceral. It's deep-seated. It's growing. It reflects what media scoundrels won't explain.

Democracy's more illusion than real. People get the best kind money can buy. Manipulated elections control things. Systemic rule is hardline. Progressive change is verboten. Monied interests have final say. Corporate giants rule the world. Exploiting nations, markets and people for profit matters most. Governments conspire with business to facilitate it. Popular needs more than ever go begging. People increasingly are on their own sink or swim. Wealth, power, and privilege are hugely disproportionate.

Wars on humanity rage. Freedom's on the chopping block for elimination. Rule of law principles don't matter. Might makes right. Police state tactics assure it. They're vicious. Things go from bad to worse. Humanity and planet earth are up for grabs. Independent thought is verboten. Controlling the message is prioritized.

Most nations aren't fit places to live in. Hardline governments keep things that way. Popular uprisings reflect discontent too intense to contain. Public anger rages against systemic injustice. It's exploitive. It's predatory. It's uncaring. It's merciless. It's untenable.

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Wayne Madsen

Obama’s personalization of his war against a single American citizen has not only made Snowden a political refugee but an American folk hero.

President Barack Obama has met his unlikely match in a former Army Special Forces recruit-turned CIA technician-turned National Security Agency contractor. Obama has issued what amounts to an «all-points-bulletin» for Edward Snowden who, in May, left his job at NSA Hawaii as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton and departed Honolulu for Hong Kong with a treasure trove of classified documents pointing to NSA’s massive electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant and billions of people around the world.

Obama, who fancies himself as a cool-under -fire seasoned politician from the rough and tumble south side of Chicago clearly did not like being upstaged by a young white privacy-minded intelligence specialist who grew up in North Carolina and the Maryland suburbs of Baltimore. After all, Obama inherited from George W. Bush the most intrusive surveillance powers ever amassed in a president of the United States and he was not about to have an impudent young man with the Anglo name of Snowden embarrassing the first African-American president, moreover one with a Kenyan last name.

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