Sacha Stone speaks to Bishop of Jerusalem (Riah Abu El-Assal)

Staff Writer, DB Holmes
Israel / Palestine

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 Sacha Stone speaks to Bishop of Jerusalem (Riah Abu El-Assal)

A frank discussion about the states and peoples of Israel and Palestine. 

Source: New Earth Nation 

Season II Finale: Another Ferguson Shooting & Failures of the Democratic Party

Staff Writer, DB Holmes

News / Government
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Season II Finale: Another Ferguson Shooting & 

Failures of the Democratic Party

In this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin comments on yet another shooting in Ferguson, MO, involving a local resident who was shot in the head by an unknown person, yet after police confiscated the bullet there has been no follow-up or investigation into who shot her. Abby then reports on the latest violence in Gaza, and speaks with Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant about her letter to the Obama administration denouncing Israel’s ongoing siege and blockade of Gaza. BTS wraps up the show - an interview with author and journalist Nafeez Ahmed, discussing his four-part investigation into the Pentagon’s mass social science project called The Minerva Research Initiative, as well as his latest book ‘Zero Point’.

Source: Breaking the Set

Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack

Staff Writer, R. Patrick Chapman

News / Government
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Glenn Greenwald wrote this special report defining America's role in the Israeli conflict with Gaza: Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack.

A portion of the article reads: 

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the nextto support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.

To read the rest, click on the source link below.

Source: The Intercept

McDonalds Crushes Workers, History of Corporate Personhood & FBI Forensic Fail

Staff Writer, DB Holmes

News / Government
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As always, vote with your dollar.

McDonalds Crushes Workers, History of 

Corporate Personhood & FBI Forensic Fail

Abby Martin on the findings of a 2012 FBI investigation showing how 45 death row inmates may have been wrongly convicted in the US since the 1980s. McDonalds called out for firing nine employees after they tried to unionize, and we highlight efforts by the National Labor Relations Board to give workers a better chance at demanding a living wage. Mikey Huff and Andy Roth of Project Censored discuss the backlash faced by whistleblowers in the US, as well as providing a perspective on the way media outlets are reporting on the conflict in Gaza.

Source: Breaking the Set

US Loses 40% of Guns in Afghanistan, Decriminalizing Piracy & Why Weed isn’t Legal

Staff Writer, DB Holmes

Government / News 
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US Loses 40% of Guns in Afghanistan, 

Decriminalizing Piracy & Why Weed isn’t Legal

Abby Martin on a recent report by the US Inspector General for Afghanistan, highlighting how the Pentagon has lost track of more than 40 percent of guns delivered to Afghan security forces. A recent UK agreement that reduces the likelihood of individuals being sued by entertainment companies for file sharing. RT’s Sam Sacks discusses the shift in state policy on marijuana use, citing a report by journalist Lee Fang that outlines why marijuana is such a threat to the bottom line of American pharmaceutical companies. Abby then breaks through the propaganda rhetoric of ‘Human Shields’, calling out instances such as the second Iraq War and the current conflict in Gaza. Finally, BTS’s Manuel Rapalo remarks on the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI and a few of the most outrageous pretexts for war in modern history.

Source: Breaking the Set

​BTS Producer Raided by SWAT, Dangers of Oil Transport & NSA Target Speaks Out

Staff Writer, DB Holmes

News / Government
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BTS Producer Raided by SWAT, Dangers of Oil Transport 

& NSA Target Speaks Out

Abby Martin on the high prevalence of SWAT raids across the US, and how only one day after reporting on the issue, one Breaking the Set producer’s home was violently raided by a SWAT team. We call out the media framing of the current violence in Gaza and Israel. RT’s Anya Parampil goes over some of the biggest misconceptions about the island nation of Cuba. The anniversary of the 2013 Quebec train disaster, the deadliest freight train accident in Canada’s history, and the dangers of transporting volatile fossil fuels across large distances. Finally, lawyer and former Homeland Security official Faisal Gill, one of five Muslim-American men targeted for surveillance by the NSA and FBI after doing nothing wrong.

Source: Breaking the Set