The latest episode of the weekly show Last Week Tonight had the host travel to Russia to interview Edward Snowden and suggest to him how to frame the issue in such a way that ordinary people could relate to and become as outraged as they should be about the extent of US government surveillance.
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There are many reasons to hate the death penalty. But one of the main ones is because poor defendants are often sent to death row by prosecutors who simply don’t care if they are guilty of the crime or not but simply want to get a conviction. The latest example of this is that of Anthony Ray Hinton who was sentenced to death and spent 28 years in jail in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. He has just been released at age 58 after vigorous efforts on his behalf. But he could well have ended up dead, one more innocent person killed because our society’s obsession with vengeance is matched by a shocking lack of concern about fairness and justice.
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It looks like the P5+1 nations (US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany) have arrived at a framework for a deal with Iran on partially reducing the sanctions regime against that nation in return for concessions on its nuclear program, and both sides are claiming satisfaction with the deal. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains what the preliminary deal struck between Iran and the western powers involves, and says that Iran had made some extraordinary concessions.
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Jonathan Turley describes two more cases in which the police acted aggressively against people for no other reason that they did not immediately acquiesce to their demands, something that I have written about before too.
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With the recent news that president Obama has lifted the freeze on sending weapons to Egypt and authorized the selling of $1.3 billion worth of military hardware, we see that the US relationship with that nation has come full circle.
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There has been an odd sequel following comedian Chris Rock’s statement that he gets pulled over by the police all the time. Each time that happens, while stopped and waiting for the police to come up to him, he takes a photo and posts it on Instagram with a comment that ends with the sign-off “Wish me luck”.
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All families have secrets. Sometimes these secrets are known widely within the family but not shared with outsiders. In other cases, these secrets are kept from close members of the family even, or particularly, those directly affected by them. But eventually the truth usually emerges and the process can be painful for those involved.
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Capitalism has been incredibly successful in producing advances in technology and quality of life for many people, especially in the developed world. But the system is also inherently exploitative, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the US where it has spawned an incredible level of economic inequality and greater insecurity for the vast majority of the population even as a tiny segment of the population get obscenely richer.
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In America we are used to having religion-based educational institutions that teach an anti-science, anti-gay, anti-sex, and anti-women curriculum. It is appalling that these schools, because they shelter under the mantle of religion, benefit from tax-exempt status which means that all of us are essentially subsidizing the propagation of odious viewpoints. But apparently there are also schools in Great Britain that have tax-exempt status that promote the most appalling views.
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