By Ron Jacobs - Dissident Voice

The nation described in [State Power and Democracy] is a fearful one. It is a nation whose agents torture at will and whose military wages war for no apparent reason other than profit and power. It is a nation whose political police forces operate as both judge and jury...It is a nation whose judicial system rarely interprets a law different than the [President] and when it does that [President] ignores the ruling. It is a nation where so many of its citizens live their lives under the illusion that [this] authoritarian rule...is somehow protecting them.

By Crawford Kilian - 21 February 2011

Chris Hedges' latest book, Death of the Liberal Class, argues that American liberalism is not just dead; it's been rotting for a century or more. He makes a persuasive case...Liberals may talk a good game...but they always give in to right-wing and corporate pressure.

Targeted for their militancy, co-captives Wallace, Woodfox and Robert King had organized a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party and they became known as the Angola 3 after they were falsely convicted by kangaroo courts and all-white juries. Wallace and Woodfox were convicted for the murder of prison guard, Brent Miller in 1972, and King was convicted separately for the death of another inmate in 1973.

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr. - November 5-7, 2010

“Police brutality is definitely not ‘isolated incidents’ as officials always say after each new killing or beating by police...When we screened the film in Atlanta people were still talking about the police murder of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston [in 2006].”

- J.R. Valrey, producer of Operation Small Axe, a film about the January 1, 2009 fatal shooting of Oscar Grant by San Francisco-Bay Area transit cop Johannes Mehserle

By Matthew Behrens - October 28, 2010

As hundreds of Tamil migrants...remain detained in British Columbia under the spurious allegation that they pose a risk to national security, Mary Jo Leddy's Our Friendly Neighbourhood Terrorist is an eloquent reminder that such hysteria predates Stephen Harper's hard core agenda...Leddy...weaves together a compelling chronology of a Kurdish refugee's 13-year struggle against the unsubstantiated terrorist label pinned on him by...the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

By SHERWOOD ROSS - October 28, 2010

Although U.S. officials have attributed the torture of Muslim prisoners in their custody to a handful of maverick guards, in fact such criminal acts were widely perpetrated and systemic...a book by a survivor suggests...Additionally, guards were responsible for countless acts of murder, including death by crucifixion, lynching, poisoning, snakebite, withholding of medicines, starvation, and bludgeoning of innocent victims. And the murders committed by U.S. troops numbered at least in the hundreds...

The recently published research paper “ZERZETSEN TORTURE REPORT” provides a blueprint on the illegal use of the “Zerzetsen” no touch torture technique against whistle-blowers. Zerzetsen is a process of character assassination and threats – its purpose is to poison every aspect of a person’s life. CSIS practices Zerzetsen in Canada with impunity and Stephen Harper’s Government is aware of it.

For peak oil devotees, When Oil Peaked is a special treat, an eminently welcome update from a heavyweight within the field. For those who are new to peak oil or who just want a general overview, however, it’s a little more of a mixed bag. The sections on logistic versus Gaussian curves and other technical matters get awfully involved and esoteric, and casual readers may lack the fortitude to wade all the way through them. But the less involved parts on solutions, recommendations for policymakers and steps that each of us can take will hold the rapt attention of serious and casual readers alike.

By Ari Melber - October 12, 2010

Facebook forces users, including minors, into legal agreements granting the company perpetual rights to personal information, pictures and data shared on the site...It has also repeatedly launched controversial programs to track and sell users' private information...Then there was "Places"...which enables users to publicize their whereabouts in real time and, despite the privacy and security implications, the live locations of other people without their consent. It's like a crowd-sourced National Security Agency.

By Bruce Levine - September 2010

...[Is] it just a coincidence that disabling mental illness and psychiatric drug use have been rapidly increasing at the same time?...[The] most scientifically identifiable factor for the increase of severe psychiatric problems is the increase in psychiatric drug use...[L]ong-term psychiatric drug use has caused children and adults with minor emotional problems to have severe and chronic disorders that result in mental illness disabilities.

By David Correia

"What has been the consequence of labor's embrace of conservative politics and financialization? Pension fund values have collapsed, public sector employees are under assault, benefits have disappeared and layoffs are commonplace."

By PATRICK COCKBURN - August 6-8, 2010

Within a few years of the Israeli invasion of 1982 Israeli soldiers returning home would throw themselves to the ground to kiss Israeli soil as soon as they crossed the border, thankful only to have made it back alive. When the last Israeli troops withdrew in 2000 from the slice of territory they still held in south Lebanon they stole away in the middle of the night, abandoning their local Christian allies to triumphant Hizbullah guerrillas.

A review of Denis Lehane’s recent book Unperson, A Life Destroyed quotes how this award winning journalist – “refused to work undercover for the CIA and MI5 who, in revenge, spread [false] rumours that he was insane, an alcoholic and a serial rapist …. He was [later on in London] arrested on a trumped-up charge of terrorism, forbidden to choose any lawyers, tried in his absence and condemned to a psychiatric prison”

By MITU SENGUPTA - June 18-20, 2010

[Sex and the City 2] has been justly disparaged for its absurd plotline, crass materialism, shallow feminism and palpable Orientalism. But here’s a point the movie’s numerous critics have missed: what’s really worrying about Sex and the City 2 is not its Orientalism or crass materialism, but how easily this seemingly benign bubble-gum flick ends up fighting a very macho war of global one-upmanship on the bodies of women and gay men.

By Paul Street - June 10, 2010

“As an African American woman, with three young children who will never know a world in which a black man could not be president of the United States, I was beyond thrilled [when Obama was elected US President]. Yet when I walked out of the election night party, full of hope and enthusiasm, I was immediately reminded of the harsh realities of the New Jim Crow. A black man was on his knees in the gutter, hands cuffed behind his back, as several police officers stood around talking, joking, and ignoring his human existence...What did the election of Barack Obama mean for him?”

-- Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness