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from the Washington Post

"Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get ready for another threat to peace. In today’s politics, the bipartisan center usually applauds when entrenched interests and big money speak. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance favoring banks that are too big to fail.

"Economist James Galbraithcalls this the “predator state,” one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges and monopolies. This isn’t the free market; it’s a rigged market. …"

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from the Ottawa Citizen

"The Defence Department has quietly removed from the Internet a report into the killing of a Canadian military officer by Israeli forces, a move the soldier’s widow says is linked to the Conservative government’s reluctance to criticize Israel for any wrongdoing.

"Maj Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three other United Nations observers were killed in 2006 when the Israeli military targeted their small outpost with repeated artillery barrages as well as an attack by a fighter aircraft. …"

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from Mining.com

Latin American governments are allowing destruction of forests, rivers and local communities in exchange for money from companies with ties to environmentally destructive industries, claims a regional study published by Washington-based advocacy group Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

According to the document, governments are racing to attract foreign investors eager to cash in on natural resources, which has led Latin American countries to return to a "colonial mentality."

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from truthdig

"I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual — a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq. …"

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from the Georgia Straight

"On August 4, 1961, an earnest Clarence Earl Gideon stood before a judge in Florida, accused of stealing $5 in change and a few loose bottles of beer and soda from a closed pool hall. His voice was too low to be recorded in many instances, but he told the judge that he was not ready to go to trial because he did not have a lawyer and felt he needed one. The judge asked him if he knew his matter was set for trial. He replied that he did. The judge then asked why he had not made arrangements to have a lawyer. Gideon replied that he did not have the money for a lawyer. He then requested that the court appoint a lawyer because the US constitution provided him with that right. The trial judge declined to do so. Gideon was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, the maximum legal sentence.

"He appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Those nine judges agreed with Gideon. At his second trial, with a lawyer able to point the jury to weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, Gideon was acquitted.

"Today in the US, any person accused of a crime has the right to a state-funded lawyer if he or she cannot afford one.

"In Canada, we have a similar right, although it is not nearly as broad as in the US Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been interpreted to allow for state-funded counsel where the accused can prove that trial without a lawyer would be unfair and where the accused cannot reasonably afford a lawyer. …"

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