Special coverage in the Trump Era

From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."

Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line

Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...

"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.

Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."

Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington

The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version

Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version  of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.

What's New?

October 23, 2012

Karen Greenberg: Preparing for a Digital 9/11

Will the Apocalypse Arrive Online?
How Fear of Cyber Attack Could Take Down Your Liberties and the Constitution

Karen Greenberg, author and director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, has written an important contribution on the dangers inherent in cyberwarfare. 

Excerpts:
From the introduction by Tom Englehardt, of TomDispatch, source of this on-line article, posted on October 21, 2012.

"In recent years, in one of the more dangerous, if largely undiscussed, developments of our time, the Bush and then Obama administrations have launched the first state-planned war in cyber space (in conjunction with the Israelis), until recently utterly secret and purely by presidential fiat.  The target: Iran, its nuclear program, and banks outside that country that may be helping the Iranians launder their money.  First, there were the "Olympic Games," then the Stuxnet virus, then Flame, and now it turns out that other sophisticated malware programs have evidently followed."...

From the article by Karen Greenberg:

"On the eve of the presidential election, it is noteworthy that neither presidential candidate has had the urge to discuss cyber security lately.  And yet the U.S. has launched a cyber war and has seemingly recently experienced the first case of cyber blowback.  The websites of several of the major banks were attacked last month, presumably by Iran, interrupting online access to accounts.

"With so little reliable information in the public sphere and so many potential pitfalls, both Obama and Romney seem to have decided that it’s just not worth their while to raise the issue. In this, they have followed Congress’s example. The failure to pass regulatory legislation this year on the subject revealed a bipartisan unwillingness of our representatives to expose themselves to political risk when it comes to cyber legislation." ...

Read complete article here


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