Ozzylot

Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence, and if that movement does not realize and exercise the power that makes it a threat, it cannot destroy such a system. In the world today, governments and corporations hold a near-total monopoly on power, a major aspect of which is violence. Unless we change the power relationships (and, preferably, destroy the infrastructure and culture of centralized power to make impossible the subjugation of the many to the few), those who currently benefit from the ubiquitous structural violence, who control the militaries, banks, bureaucracies, and corporations, will continue to call the shots. The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated.

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—	Peter Gelderloos, “How Nonviolence Protects the State” (via headandstomachached)

U.S. employees set to be forced to give bosses their Facebook PASSWORDS

antinwo:

A last minute alteration to CISPA was defeated in a Congress vote

It would have protected user’s social media passwords from employers

The late amendment was put forward by Democrat Ed Perlmutter

// read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313367/CISPA-Amendment-US-cyber-attack-law-banning-employers-asking-Facebook-passwords-blocked.html#ixzz2RJEPdKm3

I CALLED IT. Next they’ll want your PIN number…

Government Sneakily Repeals Its Own Insider Trading Law »

theyoungturks:

President Obama quietly signed legislation Monday that rolled back a provision of the STOCK Act that required high-ranking federal employees to disclose their financial information online.

The White House announced Monday that the president had signed S. 716, which repealed a requirement of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act requiring the disclosure, which had previously been delayed several times by Congress.

The Stock Act is an anti-corruption measure, put in place so that government employees and lawmakers couldn’t trade stocks using unfair insider information. And now, Congress and the Senate have come together to agree to be rid of it. Who says nothing ever gets done in Washington? Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

professorpinka:

What is the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’?

Anonymously added to a recent budget bill, the controversial rider would protect U.S. biotech companies from litigation if their GMO seeds turn out to be dangerous.

treehugger:

© KARK

Despite spilling tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil and chemicals into an Arkansas neighborhood, thanks to a loophole in a law from 1980, ExxonMobil will not be paying into a federal oil spill cleanup fund because the oil they spilled is not the right type of oil. It is a twisted example of the legal technicalities and lax regulations that all too often favor oil companies, but a coalition of environmental groups are working to close the loophole.

via Exxon won’t pay into cleanup fund because oil spilled in Arkansas isn’t “oil”

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

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—	George Orwell. (via radicalveganheathen)

China's Dead-Hog Scandal Is Gross—But So Is the Hog Feces in US Waterways »

The nearly 733,000 hogs on factory farms in Plymouth County, Iowa, produce twice as much untreated manure as the sewage from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.

The more than 857,000 hogs on factory farms in Hardin County, Iowa, produce three times as much untreated manure as the sewage from the greater Atlanta metro area.

The more than 1 million hogs on factory farms in Sioux County, Iowa, produce as much untreated manure as the sewage from the Los Angeles and Atlanta metro areas combined.

And it’s not just hogs that are crammed into the state’s factory farms. According to FWW, Iowa’s vast confinement facilities also house 1.2 million beef cattle, 52.4 million egg-laying hens, 1 million broiler chickens, and 64,500 dairy cows. Altogether, this teeming horde annually churns out “as much untreated manure as the sewage from 471 million people—more than the entire US population.”

Keeping such titanic amounts of shit out of water is a near futile task.

As you might imagine, keeping such titanic amounts of shit out of water is a near futile task. There are occasional spectacular incidents—FWW points to the time in 2008 when spring floods “destroyed at least 3 hog factory farms near Oakville, drowned up to 1,500 hogs and flooded manure from storage pits downstream into waterways throughout eastern Iowa.” And according to the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a group that fights factory farming in Iowa, there have been more than 800 documented in Iowa since 1995.