USA

Prison abuse victim shot dead just before he could collect $450K settlement
It was almost time for Robert Hinton to collect a $450,000 check from the City of New York as compensation for a cruel beating at Rikers Island prison, but before he could get his hands on it, he was murdered – and the NYPD has no lead in the case.   [...]
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Medvedev: US Mideast policy contributed to rise of Islamic State
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has blamed the strengthening of terrorist group Islamic State on “irresponsible” US policies in the Middle East, calling for all nations to stop attempting to destabilize the situation in sovereign countries for their own purposes. “Instead of concentrating their common efforts on fighting terrorism, the United States and their allies have started to oppose Syri [...]
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New Docs Reveal NSA Never Ended Bulk Email Collection, Just Hid It Better
The National Security Agency (NSA) secretly replaced its program monitoring Americans' emails and moved it overseas before the operation was exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013, according to new reporting. NSA officials responded to Snowden's leaks by stating that the email records program had shut down in 2011—and in a way, it had. [...]
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Epic bombing fail? PBS uses Russian footage to depict US airstrikes on ISIS oil fields
Apparently being unable to find any footage of the US Air Force strikes against Islamic State’s oil infrastructure, PBS NewsHour spliced Russian Defense Ministry’s video into their report – but it did not go unnoticed. he PBS report last week used two objective control videos made by Russian drones while Sukhoi bombers based at Khmeimim airfield in Latakia bombed out an oil storage facili [...]
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500k+ homeless in US, numbers rise in New York, other big cities
About 565,000 people were homeless in the United States, according to a one-night federal survey. While this is a two percent drop from 2014, major cities like New York, Seattle and Los Angeles continue to battle rising homelessness. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress found that of the 565,000 homeless counted during a point [...]
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American media: Islamic State’s devoted public relations team
With every new manifestation of global terrorism, Western media outlets are dutifully serving as the mouthpiece for Islamic State, promoting its mad message and crazed claims without ever scrutinizing the group’s dubious origins. Ever since Russia opened its bombing campaign against Islamic State forces in Syria all hell has broken loose on the planet. [...]
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Armed With Fear, Not Facts, Officials Go After Encryption in Wake of Paris
Echoing the post-9/11 era, intelligence officials and lawmakers are exploiting Friday's massacre to expand mass surveillance Despite no available evidence that terror suspects used encryption to plan the Paris attacks, U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers are seizing on the massacre to demand access to protected communications—in what critics warn is a blatant attempt to exploit fear in [...]
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Los Angeles declares ‘shelter crisis’ to aid homeless
Overwhelmed by the city’s growing homeless population, which has increased by 12 percent in just two years, and facing an increase in complaints from neighborhoods about encampments, the Los Angeles City Council has declared a “shelter crisis.” The measure was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday in a 14-0 vote. [...]
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‘Close the Borders’ Movement Sweeping Nation
Americans are starting to melt down phone lines in Washington, D.C., as backlash explodes against President Obama’s migrant resettlement program. People are flooding social media to encourage Americans to call their congressional representatives to stop the resettlement of Middle Eastern migrants after government officials and contractors admitted the migrants cannot be tracked or vetted prop [...]
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Putin, Russia and the West: After Paris & Sinai, G20 summit is bad news for ISIS terrorists
Patient, consistent Russian diplomacy has trumped short-term Western hypocrisy. Reduced to desperation, NATO leaders finally attempted a rapprochement with Moscow at the G20. The current schism between Russia and the West began in September 2011. Speaking at the United Russia [...]
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Wake up, Europe: Russia is not the enemy
In the aftermath of the slew of horrific terror attacks in Paris last night, European nations must come to admit that, with their continuous and blind support of US foreign policy, they are sowing the seeds of their own demise. For more than a year and a half, Washington, with little concern for consequences, has used Europe as a tool in its futile attempts to batter Russia into submission. [...]
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Million Student March: 100+ US campuses rally against tuition fees & student debt
Students from more than 100 American universities are set to unite in a Million Student March to protest over tuition fees, student debt and higher wages for campus workers. “We are people of all colors, genders, and sexual orientation, and we are united to fight for education as a human right,” the movement’s statement reads. [...]
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A Better World Through Bombing
As October ended, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest announced that the U.S. would be sending "less than 50" boots-on-the-ground Special Operations forces into northern Syria in an “advise-and-assist” program for Kurdish rebels and their (essentially nonexistent) Arab allies. Only days before, in yet another example of twenty-first-century mission creep, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter h [...]
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As Mission Creeps in Iraq and Syria, Lawmakers Ask: Will We Ever Vote on War?
Amid intensifying U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria, a group of 35 bipartisan House lawmakers issued an open letter on Friday calling for Congress to fulfill its responsibility by voting "as quickly as possible" on whether to authorize a war that is well over a year old. [...]
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Snowden Celebrates ‘Broadly Influential’ Ruling Against NSA Dragnet
Reiterating his prior ruling which found the U.S. government's surveillance of civilians' telephone records to be unconstitutional—"Orwellian," even—a federal judge on Monday ordered the National Security Agency to halt its bulk collection program. [...]
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Carter should know the world is not a cowboy movie
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter claims Russia and China are challenging something he describes as the “international order.” What he really means is that Russia and China refuse to bend the knee to US domination and hegemony.   [...]
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Here’s why we’re committing civil disobedience: Millennials can no longer be silent about our broken system
On Nov. 9, we’re staging the largest-ever civil disobedience for racial, climate, and immigrant justice. Here’s why, by YONG JUNG CHO, WALEED SHAHID, DEVONTAE TORRIENTE AND SARA BLAZEVIC   Its election season. [...]
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‘Our Generation, Our Choice,’ Say Youth, Readying for Mass Civil Disobedience
Young people from across the country to sweep Washington, D.C. with direct action 'to demand justice on race, climate change, and immigration' Buoyed by President Barack Obama's fresh rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, thousands of young people from across the country are preparing to unleash on Monday what they say will be the "largest-ever civil disobedience for racial, climate, [...]
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‘I’m comfortable with my choices’: Snowden on CIA torture, ISIS and surveillance
In an interview with Swedish media, whistle-blower Edward Snowden opened up about CIA torture, ISIS, and mass surveillance. Two-and-a-half years after revealing the NSA’s mass surveillance tactics, he says he’s “very comfortable” with his choices. [...]
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Hackers from Anonymous say they’re set to expose hundreds of KKK members
Anonymous, a loose and decentralized coalition of hackers, plans to release the identities of at least 1,000 people it says are members of the Ku Klux Klan on Thursday, organizers said. OperationKKK, or #OpKKK as it is being called on Twitter, began one year ago when members of the KKK — a white supremacist hate group founded in 1865 — said it would use deadly force against protesters d [...]
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World ignores calls for inquiry into U.S. bombing of Afghan hospital: MSF
Calls for global support for a full inquiry into the U.S. bombing of a charity-run hospital in Afghanistan have gone ignored, according to the head of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) which is mourning the loss of 30 lives in the attack. [...]
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As US Dodges Hospital Bombing Probe, Aid Group Calls Global Silence ‘Embarrassing’
One month after the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more, the Obama administration refuses to submit to an independent inquiry while the aid group charges that the lack of global outcry over the incident has become deafening. [...]
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